Journal Article

Today's Essential Power Skill for Leaders: Cooperation

Gratton, Lynda

2025

Overview

The narrative of the job of the investment analyst is that success is all about individual endeavor - analytical skills, the capacity to understand vast swaths of information, the ability to bring this information together in a coherent form to make buying recommendations. (Groysberg explored the analyst role because it's one of the few job categories where its possible to collect reliable performance data over time and across firms.) But Groysbergs analysis showed that, in most cases, an analysts star performance lost its luster after a move. While the job, on the face of it, is an individual-centered occupation where mastery is crucial, its also a role with a whole range of cooperative characteristics that need to be performed successfully. Because they know what \"good\" looks like, they are in a position to provide tough feedback. Later in my working life, when building a consulting research practice, those change skills became crucial.

• Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
• Subject: Cooperation / Productivity / Skills