But other alpha males are organizational risks, not assets. They inspire fear and resentment rather than trust and respect, often causing expensive problems for their companies. Indeed, the very term "alpha male" has become a pejorative in America , thanks to the many instances when their abuses have created corporate soap operas and dramatic news stories. When used appropriately, their courage, confidence, tireless energy, and fighting spirit make them natural leaders in competitive situations.
The trouble comes when they use their exceptional strengths inappropriately or carry them to such extremes that they turn into tragic flaws: Unfortunately for many alpha males, what works in a jungle or on a battlefield - or during a genuine crisis - is not always appropriate in today's business environment. Nowadays, leaders are expected to do more than command and control; they're called upon to motivate, inspire, teach, communicate, and model integrity and personal growth. Such skills do not come naturally to most alpha males, and those who fail to develop them are increasingly out of place.
Over the course of our careers, we have coached hundreds of prominent alpha males. We have written about them extensively and have conducted a rigorous study of their assets and liabilities. The main thrust of our consulting work - and of this article - is to help individuals and organizations harness the immense power of alpha males while minimizing their potential downside.
As you'll see, doing that requires more than simply building on the alpha's formidable strengths. It also means taking an unflinching look at how their assets can mutate into liabilities, with the potential to destroy careers and spread like viruses to teams, divisions, and entire companies. If you run a team or an organization inhabited by alpha males, your challenge is to optimize their enormous productive capacity while at the same time get the upper hand on their risk factors before they create problems.
You need to harness their competitive drive while keeping them from turning teamwork into guerrilla warfare and colleagues into stage hands for their one-man show. And you need to take full advantage of their leadership gifts while protecting employees from their potential abuses. The first step is to understand what we call the alpha male syndrome.
The first letter of the Greek alphabet, alpha has come to denote "the first of anything. Among humans, an alpha is defined as "a person tending to assume a dominant role in social or professional situations, or thought to possess the qualities and confidence for leadership. Alphas are aggressive, results-driven achievers who insist on top performance from themselves and others.
Courageous and self-confident, they are turned on by bold, innovative ideas and ambitious goals, and they pursue their objectives with tenacity and an urgent sense of mission. At their best, alpha males inspire awe, and their noble leadership skills are revered by others. Those positive traits constitute one half of the alpha male syndrome. The negative half consists of behaviors that lead to everything from minor business problems to full-fledged organizational catastrophes and personal disasters. Dysfunctional alphas create resistance, resentment, and revenge. People admire their competence, but they hate reporting to them or teaming with them.
When we're invited into a company as consultants, most of the complaints we hear are about alpha males who are driving people crazy. We're told about alpha managers who demoralize their staff with autocratic, abusive, or micromanaging tactics; about alpha coworkers who are demanding, impatient, and unwilling to listen; about alpha peers who fight to get their way even when they're demonstrably wrong; about alpha subordinates who solo rather than collaborate. The gripes we hear have usually been part of the corporate milieu for some time, consuming far too much employee time and energy.
The cost in absenteeism, turnover, stress-related health problems, and the loss of loyalty and motivation is enormous. Most alpha males, of course, are in between those extremes, fluctuating between a terrific upside and a potentially devastating downside.
How To Be An Alpha Male In 2018
What about alpha females? Even though a great many women in leadership positions possess the same fundamental traits, alpha males receive the bulk of attention for two primary reasons. First, men are more likely than women to have alpha characteristics, and the executive ranks contain many more alpha males than alpha females. Second, a great deal of wreckage is caused by boys behaving badly.
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While alphas of both sexes are aggressive, competitive, and prone to anger, the male of the species is far likely to become ruthless, intimidating, and belligerent. These common observations were borne out in our research: The instrument we use to develop alpha profiles of individuals was also used to elicit basic data.
In a series of three validation phases, we studied 1, subjects, all of whom worked full time in the business world, many in high-ranking leadership positions, Overall, our data show that alpha traits correlate with being male, with increasing levels of education, with low anxiety, with supervisory positions, and with type A personality traits. The propensity for having alpha risks relates to being male, to higher levels of stress and tension, and to a lack of self-reflection. In other words, the prototypical alpha is a well-educated man with managerial experience and the hard-driving, urgent intensity of a type A.
The most troublesome alphas are men who are under a high degree of stress and are not inclined to introspection. High alpha scores correlate strongly with anger, impatience and competitiveness, and the scores for anger and impatience are significantly higher in men than in women. One of the most significant findings corroborates something we observed repeatedly in our work in organizations: Although some subjects scored high on one scale and not on the other, in general the greater the strengths, the greater the risks.
In sum, when properly channeled and controlled, the alpha male drive to reach the top is a boon to progress, but when the ethic of "do what it takes to get results" is taken to extremes; it becomes a menace to both personal careers and corporate health. When Strengths Become Liabilities. Table The Alpha Syndrome: Takes high levels of performance for granted ; expects the impossible and fails to acknowledge what's required to achieve it.
Overzealous; undervalues organizational alignment; launches into action before gathering support from others. So focused on future that present and near term are neglected; loses sight of business viability. Can be critical, demeaning; fails to appreciate others' contributions; people feel demoralized. All alpha males are aggressive, competitive, and driven to achieve.
They think big, aim high, and attack their goals with courage, confidence, and tenacity. But each of the four types expresses these common qualities in different ways.
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Think of them as spices that add flavor to the basic alpha male recipe. Understanding their nuances will give you deeper insight into yourself and the alpha males around you, enabling you to pinpoint strengths you can build upon and risks you need to address. With this more granulated view, you can home in on a specific course of action, just as a doctor can devise a better treatment plan if she knows the exact type of infection a patient has rather than only the broad category.
Here is a brief summary of each type's primary behavior traits:.
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You might say that all human beings can fit into those four categories, not just alpha males. To some extent that is true, but our concern is with alphas, and alphas bring to the four types an overlay of aggressive intensity, energetic persistence, and competitive drive that sets them apart from the rest of humanity. It is that distinctive collection of traits that led us to use the term alpha male syndrome.
It's important to note that the types are not mutually exclusive. While virtually every alpha has one dominant type PG, he or she will typically have one or two secondary patterns as well. So, for example, a visionary alpha might also have strong strategist tendencies, while another visionary might have executor traits as a secondary characteristic. The data from our Alpha Assessment study support the observation that alphas display the qualities of one primary type, but also possess traits of the other three in varying degrees. Although each type is statistically unique, there is an approximate 20 percent correlation between them.
To cite ourselves as examples, we are both visionary alphas, but Eddie has strong secondary arms as both a commander and a strategist, while Kate has a lot of executor traits. We both have big, expansive ideas, but Kate will offer practical comments about implementation challenges to justify her point of view, and she will persist until she can bring closure to the discussion. When Eddie wants to get his way, he first uses charm and humor to inspire support. Before bringing out the data, he appeals to the emotions by describing the impact his idea will have on other people.
In our experience, the most effective alpha leaders are those who blend the functional elements of more than one type - or are smart enough to surround themselves with associates who add the strengths of other types to the mix. For example, here's how the four types might look at a particular task:. You can see where all four styles have value, and that, depending on the circumstances, different combinations and proportions would be ideal.
As we've suggested earlier, the challenge for anyone coaching alpha males, whether senior executives or external consultants, is to maximize their strengths and shore up their weaknesses. We have developed a battery of effective procedures for doing exactly that. The first step is to make alpha males aware of the downside risks in their own behavior.
When told that their intimidating style can deplete morale and impair teamwork, alpha males typically become defensive. They don't realize that the skills that got them to the playoffs are not enough to take them to the championship. We illustrate the stark reality of the situation with what we call the awareness trajectory.
We have alpha clients enumerate their intentions in several categories, such as business outcomes, leadership results, and key relationships. We then compare their intentions to their actual impact and examine the reasons for the gap between expectations and results.
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Typically, high-ranking alpha males have more than enough knowledge, skill, and drive to be effective leaders. The wild card is their self-awareness vertical axis and their awareness of how they influence their peers, teams, and other key players horizontal axis. Just as smoking constricts the arteries and erupts in any number of symptoms, dysfunctional alpha males can constrict the flow of energy, information, and creativity in an organization, causing damage that shows up both locally and system-wide.
One common pattern is a deadly trap we call the alpha triangle. We find the model very helpful in understanding the consequences of alpha behavior patterns - and in illustrating those consequences to the alphas themselves. Once an alpha male recognizes the gap between his intentions and his actual impact, he becomes more amenable to feedback. We provide this with 's based on in-depth interviews. We provide both verbatim passages from the interviews and color-coded bar graphs depicting how the client was rated in different areas of competency.
These reports carry tremendous weight with alpha males, because they are typically oriented to hard data. The next step is also a powerful motivator: Because they think in bottom-line terms, alpha males become motivated to change only when they see that doing so will lead to greater influence and more sustainable business results. Once they see that their former behavior has a downside, they become willing to work on what they might otherwise demean as "soft" or counterproductive: Alpha males who turn their potent intelligence, energy, and determination inward are capable of remarkable transformation.
The triangle consists of three characters: Each one reinforces the other two: It's funny until you watch the evening news or enter the dating pool. It's time for popular culture to catch up to science on this one. Climbing to the top isn't about imposing yourself brutishly on others. It's about building alliances. Wouldn't the world be a better place if people understood this as well as chimps? To dig into the book that spawned the concept, check out "Chimpanzee Politics: We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
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Alpha Male Doesn't Mean "Bully". Send a Memo to Washington. Written by Jessica Stillman August 10, Wake up with the smartest email in your inbox.