Question 1

Empathy, one of the components of emotional intelligence (EI), refers to personal proficiency in managing relationships and building networks.

Accepted Answer

Empathy means thoughtfully considering employee feelings, along with other factors, in the process of making intelligent decisions. Empathy is particularly important in the business environment today for at least three reasons: the increasing use of teams, the rapid pace of globalization, and the growing need to retain talent.

Question 2

Establishing a culture of dissent can be an effective means of questioning the status quo.

Accepted Answer

Establishing a culture of dissent can be an effective means of questioning the status quo and serving as a spur toward creativity. Here norms are established whereby dissenters can openly question the perspective of a superior without fear of retaliation or retribution.

Question 3

Inspiring and motivating people with a mission or purpose is a necessary and sufficient condition for developing a learning organization.

Accepted Answer

Inspiring and motivating people with a mission or purpose is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for developing an organization that can learn and adapt to a rapidly changing, complex, and interconnected environment.

Question 4

Organizational learning works best when an organization leader gathers information and teaches it to employees who are like their students.

Accepted Answer

According to leading expert on learning organizations, Peter Senge, the days when Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan, and Tom Watson learned for the organization are gone. In an increasingly dynamic, interdependent, and unpredictable world, it is simply no longer possible for anyone to figure it all out at the top. The old model (in which the top thinks and the local acts) must now give way to integrating thinking and acting at all levels.

Question 5

Successful leaders are driven by a deeply embedded desire to achieve for the sake of achievement.

Accepted Answer

Successful executives are driven to achieve beyond expectations, their own and those of everyone else. Although many people are driven by external factors, such as money and prestige, those with leadership potential are driven by a deeply embedded desire to achieve for the sake of achievement.

Question 6

Internal benchmarking is discouraged in most organizations, because it creates competition and internal rivalries that are counterproductive.

Accepted Answer

An important benefit of the sharing of internal information at Whole Foods becomes the active process of internal benchmarking. Competition is intense at Whole Foods. Teams compete against their own goals for sales, growth, and productivity; they compete against different teams in their stores; and they compete against similar teams at different stores and regions. There is an elaborate system of peer reviews through which teams benchmark each other.

Question 7

Competitive benchmarking is a method of seeking the best examples of practices or processes that have essentially the same function regardless of industry.

Accepted Answer

Benchmarking is used to seek out the best examples of a particular practice as part of an ongoing effort to improve the corresponding practice in their own organization. Competitive benchmarking restricts the search for best practices to competitors, while functional benchmarking endeavors to determine best practices regardless of industry.

Question 8

Socially skilled people tend to have a wide circle of acquaintances as well as a knack for finding common ground and building support. This means that they are less likely to be effective in leading change or in having expertise in building and leading teams.

Accepted Answer

Socially skilled people tend to have a wide circle of acquaintances as well as a knack for finding common ground and building rapport. They recognize that nothing gets done alone, and they have a network in place when the time for action comes.

Question 9

Although many organizations encourage creativity and risk taking, few successful companies tolerate failure.

Accepted Answer

Companies that cultivate cultures of experimentation and curiosity make sure that failure is not, in essence, an obscene word. They encourage mistakes as a key part of their competitive advantage.

Question 10

People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically optimistic.

Accepted Answer

People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically optimistic. Instead, they are honest with themselves and others.

Question 11

A key function of the leaders in a learning organization is to generate an organization-wide commitment to the status quo.

Accepted Answer

A learning environment involves organization-wide commitment to change, an action orientation, and applicable tools and methods. It must be viewed by everyone as a guiding philosophy and not simply as another change program.

Question 12

Emotional intelligence (EI) is one of the components of a high intelligence quotient (IQ).

Accepted Answer

The five components of EI are: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. Findings indicate that EI is a better predictor of life success (economic well-being, satisfaction with life, friendship, family life), including occupational attainments, than IQ.

Question 13

To successfully empower employees to achieve organizational goals, leaders must perform the tasks of resource allocation and power brokering.

Accepted Answer

To empower employees at all levels, the manager role becomes one of creating an environment where employees can achieve their potential as they help move the organization toward its goals. Instead of viewing themselves as resource controllers and power brokers, leaders must envision themselves as flexible resources willing to assume numerous roles as coaches, information providers, teachers, decision makers, facilitators, supporters, or listeners, depending on the needs of their employees.

Question 14

Self-regulated people are unable to create an environment of trust and fairness, where political behavior and infighting are sharply reduced and productivity tends to be high.

Accepted Answer

Self-regulated people are able to create an environment of trust and fairness where political behavior and infighting are sharply reduced and productivity tends to be high. People who have mastered their emotions are better able to bring about and implement change in an organization. When a new initiative is announced, they are less likely to panic; they are able to suspend judgment, seek out information, and listen to executives explain the new program.

Question 15

Successful learning organizations have a proactive, creative approach to the unknown.

Accepted Answer

Successful learning organizations create a proactive, creative approach to the unknown. They actively solicit the involvement of employees at all levels. They enable all employees to use their intelligence and apply their imagination. Higher-level skills are required of everyone, not just those at the top.

Question 16

The three broad sets of capabilities into which leadership traits can be organized include technical skills, cognitive abilities, and intellectual abilities.

Accepted Answer

There has been a vast amount of literature on the successful traits of leaders. These traits include integrity, maturity, energy, judgment, motivation, intelligence, expertise, and so on. For simplicity, these traits may be grouped into three broad sets of capabilities: Purely technical skills (like accounting or operations research), cognitive abilities (like analytical reasoning or quantitative analysis), and emotional intelligence (like self-management and managing relationships).

Question 17

Emotional intelligence (EI) is generally a better predictor of life success than intelligence quotient (IQ).

Accepted Answer

Findings indicate that EI is a better predictor of life success (economic well-being, satisfaction with life, friendship, family life), including occupational attainments, than IQ.

Question 18

In order to gather information from informal sources, successful executives must be good listeners.

Accepted Answer

Leaders have to develop means to tap into some of the more informal sources of internal information. In a recent survey, respondents were asked what differentiated the successful candidates for promotion. The consensus was that the executive was seen as a person who listens. According to Peter Meyer, the author of the study, the value of listening is clear. He states that you cannot succeed in running a company if you do not hear what your people, customers, and suppliers are telling you. Listening and understanding well are key to making good decisions.

Question 19

Our emotions are driven by biological impulses which we cannot eliminate, but we can make efforts to manage them.

Accepted Answer

Biological impulses drive our emotions. Although we cannot do away with them, we can strive to manage them. Self-regulation, which is akin to an ongoing inner conversation, frees us from being prisoners of our feelings.

Question 20

People with strong self-awareness are overly critical and unrealistically optimistic and are well suited to run organizations, because they will make good judgment calls.

Accepted Answer

Self-awareness involves a person having a deep understanding of his or her emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and drives. People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically optimistic. Instead, they are honest with themselves and others. People who assess themselves honestly (i.e., self-aware people) are well suited to do the same for the organizations they run.

Quiz 11: Strategic Leadership: Creating a Learning Organization and an Ethical Organization