Home » The Seven Action Logics of Leadership

The Achiever

Written By: Alex McManus on April 7, 2005 One Comment

Welcome back.

The Seven Ways ["Action Logics"]

The Opportunist –wins any way possible
The Diplomat –avoids overt conflict
The Expert –rules by logic and experience
The Achiever
The Individualist
The Strategist
The Alchemist

Today we’re talking about The Achiever. Achievers meet strategic goals. They are characterized by effectively achieving goals through teams and juggling managerial duties and market demands. Their strengths are that they are action and goal oriented. The achiever is well suited for managerial roles. Thirty percent of the sample profiled at this action logic.

These kind of leaders create a positive work environment and focus their efforts on outcomes. Their weakness is they may inhibit “out of the box” thinking. They’re open to feed back and have a feel for the fact that conflict and ambiguities may be due to varying points of view.

Achievers clash with experts. In a funny anecdote, the Harvard Business review illustrates the frustration that an Expert subordinate may feel around an Achiever because he (the Expert) may feel superior but must recognize the Achievers success. At a Hewlett-Packard project meeting one lab manager (an Achiever) slammed the table and said to an (Expert) engineer, “I know we can get 18 features into this, but the customer will want delivery some time this century, and the main 8 features will do.”

What do you think?

Any achievers out there? Graffiti61 (Dominic) shared a great story yesterday in the comments about delegating work between slow carpenters and speedy carpenters. He asked which action logic we thought his actions might point to. I think it fits somewhere in this action logic, Dom. Tony shared about being an expert called up to management and the difficulties that come with that transition.Here are some questions to get things going.