Worker Bees- These are hard workers who are happy with their lot in life and have few long term leadership aspirations beyond doing a good jobs and putting bread on the table for thier family. 

Survivors – These are not so hard workers who do what is necessary to survive in the business and are either looking for something else or see work as a means to end – an enjoyable life.

Aspirants- Employees in this group truly aspire to be leaders in a business and believe that hard work and doing a good job will get them recognised.  They let their work to the talking for them.  Not everyone in this will become a leader in the business however their aspire to get there.

Politicians - Employees in this group also aspire to be leaders however they often look for opportunities to climb the corporate ladder by shamelessly promoting themselves, sometimes at the costs of others, and often are divisive in the business in an attempt to curry favour or use wedge politics to get themselves noticed.

I have come across people in each of these groups during my working life.  The funny thing is that people often clearly fall into one of these categories although they often dont know it themselves.  Of course as the CEO you want a great combination of Worker Bees and Aspirants in the business and should ensure that the Survivors and Politicians are shown the door as soon as possible. 

The challenge is that the survivors are easy to spot and KPI’s often help weed them out while the politicians are harder to deal with, especially when they may be good at the work they do.

The real theme of this post is what impact does strong leadership have on these groups.  I think strong leadership allows the Worker Bees to get on with their lives, Survivors are weeded out, Aspirants are recognised and promoted for the great work they do and Politicians are starved of the much needed political opportunities and therefore are just measured on the work they do, not the politics they play.

However, it is interesting to see what happens when there is weak or no leadership in a business.  This doesn’t really impact the Worker Bees as they just on with their job and continue to deliver.  The Survivors stay around longer than they should as people are not weeding them out fast enough and the result is that mediocrity becomes OK in a business. 

Most interestingly, the Politicians get the much needed oxygen and rely on form over substance to move ahead in the business.  The real losers are the Aspirants.  They don’t like to play the political games or more likely don’t want to play the political game and therefore either start to look for other roles or become disengaged from the business.  They chat amongst themselves and the culture in the business changes.

The point is, in selecting a leader (at all levels – not just the CEO), it is important that they can lead and lead well.  I will talk more later about what makes a good leader.  The question for you is … are you a Worker Bee, Survivor, Aspirant or a Politician?