Get yourself 'carried to the top'.

• Author: Citrin, James M.
• Position: Spencer Stuart * Governance Letter

AT FIRST BLUSH, career success seems to hinge upon personal performance and outperforming others around you. That s what many people believe is the route to get promoted. Most see climbing the corporate ladder as a treacherous journey--the higher you climb, the more cutthroat and nasty the environment. Those who have battled their way to the top, therefore, must be the most aggressive, self-centered type of people, right?

Not necessarily. Happily, the facts show that the most successful individuals populating the top rung of the corporate ladder are more often those who can attract top talent and inspire them to exceptional levels of performance. When we examined the experiences of hundreds of top-performing executives, it was apparent that they were the beneficiaries of the talents and performance of their peers, subordinates, and superiors.

This fact by itself is not unusual. Nearly all of us have worked with exceptional teams at some point in our careers. We may have been rewarded for our association with a truly outstanding boss, or been recognized for the superior performance of our subordinates. What is unusual about the most successful professionals, however, is the consistency of this occurrence. They almost always seem to be surrounded by other top performers.

In our survey we asked people to describe a particularly successful executive they knew. Extraordinarily successful executives, it turns out, were not perceived as overly self-interested. Quite the opposite was true. Nearly 90% were described as being concerned about the careers of their subordinates as much as or more than their own careers. The aggressive, take-no-prisoners executive represented less than one in 20 of the top executives we identified. Our research clearly demonstrates that a leadership approach focused on the success of others is truly a significant pattern among successful executives.

But the findings raise two critical questions. First, what is it about the benevolent leadership approach that makes it so related to successful careers? And second, how can this pattern be replicated in your own career?

Let's start with the first question. Do customers feel more comfortable when executives don't steal the spotlight? Possibly, although for the better part of the 1990s, high-profile executives garnered a disproportionate share of press and exposure, in effect gaining cheap advertising for their companies. Do investors prefer an executive who is more concerned...