When Charisma Matters
On Wednesday mornings, I often tune into Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the UK Parliament. I like PMQs as an exercise in democratic accountability, since the leaders have to publicly respond to tough questions on the issues of the day.
But, I also love it as entertainment. Like my wife watches The Bachelor and my good friend Clarence is obsessed with Vanderpump Rules, PMQs is the reality show of my dreams. In addition to great debate, there’s lots of humor, and it’s delightfully parochial. Last week, one member’s “question” was just a pitch for a new hospital and leisure center in his constituency.
To be an effective Prime Minister, one must operate in at least three domains—-policy, politics, and public performance. If you don’t have the relationships and power to wrangle your colleagues, it doesn’t matter how well you know the issues. And if you can’t be funny and charismatic on Wednesdays at noon in Westminster, you’re not doing a big part of the job.
This pattern holds for those of us who aren’t in politics, and I often see professionals who struggle because they have not built their skills across all three domains.
We spend the first few decades of our lives getting good at the “policy” sphere—gaining knowledge, mastering the details of our domain, and learning how to be a manager of a team that competently executes. We’re rewarded with high grades in school, approval from our parents, and early promotions at work.
But competent professionals can quickly reach a level in their careers where mastery of policy is insufficient. I see it as a coach when people tell me a version of, “Why is that handsome, charismatic person who seems to get along with everyone getting promoted over me? He’s not dumb, but his ideas aren’t any better than mine.”
What’s sometimes missing from that analysis is the nature of senior jobs. We might talk about those roles through the lenses of “leadership,” “selecting and motivating the right people,” and “aligning the team to a vision and strategy,” but those tasks all come down to politics and performance.
Often, the toughest part of doing that analysis is realizing “That’s what it takes to get to the top, and I don’t have it.” And unfortunately, it’s hard to do a late-stage personality and relationship transplant once you’re far into your career. The best we can do is to honestly assess what skills we have today, and assess whether we’re on track to build the skills we need for the jobs we imagine down the line.