EV-0044
What separates executives who make it from those who blow up
Leslie, J. B., & Van Velsor, E. (building on McCall, M. W., & Lombardo, M. M., 1983) (1996). Center for Creative Leadership, report no. 169 · Source
What this entitles us to say
Three decades of interview-based research finding that executives who derail and executives who succeed are largely indistinguishable on the things organizations select for - intelligence, track record, ambition - and that the enduring difference is dominated by problems with interpersonal relationships, the theme the authors say "more than any other, reveals the negative aspects of character."
What it found
The earliest study (McCall & Lombardo, 1983) produced 40 case studies - 20 success, 20 derailment - and found the two groups nearly identical at the outset. Both were identified as high-potential early, had outstanding track records, were seen as intelligent and ambitious, and had made sacrifices to get there.
Comparing across the 1980s, the 1990s, and across cultures, four enduring derailment themes emerge:
1. Problems with interpersonal relationships 2. Failure to meet business objectives 3. Inability to build and lead a team 4. Inability to change or adapt during a transition
On the first, the report is unusually direct: it is "the theme that, more than any other, reveals the negative aspects of character that derail managers." Derailed managers were described by others as insensitive, manipulative, critical, demanding, authoritarian, self-isolating, or aloof. It appeared in two thirds of European cases and more than a third of recent North American ones.
The report also offers an explanation with real teaching value: people who succeed early are proficient at task-based leadership, and hit trouble when the job begins to demand a relationship-based balance.
Why it matters here
This is the spine of The Case for Character, and it makes the argument better than an assertion could.
The claim is not that character matters more than competence. It is narrower and harder to dismiss: among people who already have the competence, competence stops being the differentiator. Everyone who reaches that level is bright and has a record. What is left to separate them is how they treat people, whether they do what they said, and whether they can change - which is this program's subject exactly.
Two of the four enduring themes map directly onto traits in the model. Problems with interpersonal relationships is Respect. Lack of follow-through, named in the six-cluster version of this research, is Faithfulness. The framework did not derive these from the derailment literature; they landed on the same list independently.
The task-to-relationship transition is also the best available answer to why now for a buyer: the person being promoted this year got there on task skill, and the thing that will sink them is the other half.
The limits
This is retrospective, qualitative, interview-based research on small samples - 20 senior executives from 15 companies in the North American study, and the original 1983 work yielded 40 case studies in total. It is far more famous than its sample sizes warrant, and the report says so itself. Its most serious limitation is hindsight: the authors note that the same trait was reported as a success factor by some interviewees and a derailment factor by others, and that "the same term once used positively may have been applied as an evaluative device only after it was obvious that the manager derailed." Perceptions of senior executives are not an objective record. What makes them matter anyway is that those same executives made the personnel decisions.
What we do not say
any percentage claim about how many leaders fail, or that this research proves character causes success. It is retrospective interview data on small samples, with an acknowledged hindsight problem the report itself raises. Cite it for the pattern, never for a number.