Also Buck Society’s Trend for Political Correctness
November, 2014 – In a unique analysis of standardized skills and competency assessment data tracked and collected from hospitality industry CEOs around the globe, AETHOS Consulting Group Managing Director James Houran, Ph.D. states that “surprisingly, contrary to the traditional belief that CEOs have a signature talent, like Steve Jobs or someone of that notoriety, our 20|20 Skills™ assessment with ten performance benchmarks show that CEOs in the hospitality industry tend to be strong generalists in their skill set.”
Houran goes on to explain that five out of ten CEO competency scores were above average (in the 76-77/100 range), compared to general industry norms. Two competency scores were average (75/100), and three were below average (72-73/100 scale), compared to general industry norms. “Interestingly, none of the above average scores reached the highest performance levels measured by the assessment.”
What does this mean? According to Houran, “Effective CEOs are superstars precisely because they are not ‘one-trick ponies’; apparently they have a strong balance of skills that arguably make them flexible and adaptable.”
AETHOS Consulting Group has tracked nearly 300 industry CEOs from around the world, over the course of the last five years, using a proprietary assessment that was co-designed by Cornell University and measures ten core competencies spanning People, Execution and Cognitive Skills, on a 0-100 scale using the same validation and scoring statistics as in popular accreditation and achievement tests like the GRE, MCAT and LSAT. The higher the score, the greater the competency in that area of specialization. Outcome studies demonstrate that scores are highly predictive of performance in the hospitality industry.
During the process of updating the assessment norms additional interesting trends were discovered:
The CEOs in our industry, as a group, tend to be organized problem-solvers who exhibit strong leadership in the service of others. Rather than being rogue, reckless and out-of-touch authority figures, the aggregate profile revealed that CEOs in hospitality have above average scores on Ethical Awareness (77/100), Analytical Thinking (77/100), Transformational Leadership (76/100), Creativity (big picture and innovative thinking) (76/100), and Service Orientation (76/100).
Hospitality CEOs buck society’s trend for being politically correct. The aggregate profile revealed tendencies for perfectionism and humility, as suggested by an average score on self-efficacy (75/100), and more notably, a below-average score on sensitivity to diversity (72/100), as compared to general industry norms.
“It seems that CEOs in hospitality naturally prefer to be direct and candid in their messaging,” stated Houran.
“CEOs in our industry score above average across the thinking and people skills categories,” adds Keith Kefgen, Managing Director and CEO of AETHOS Consulting Group. “But perhaps being too politically correct in communication with others may be a handicap in the business world.”
