Being perfectly normal may not be the best way to lead: On deviancy and being the person in charge.

A lot of people may not be ready for this concept.  

It's seems like it's open season on writing about what makes a good corporate--or political--leader.  What's more, there seems to be a comparative ground swell of authors who argue that to be a good leader means being--and I admit I'm putting this rather indelicately--well, crazy.  Recently I've run across two books that strongly suggest that good CEO's and great corporate-type leaders are not necessarily completely sane, say, like the rest of us!  

The psychopath test, a journey through the madness industry [by Ron Jonson, Riverhead, 2011] explores the notion that some people who share some or all of the characteristics associated with psychopathology are more than disproportionately represented in the ranks of corporate leaders.  Bryant Urstadt writes in Bloomberg Businessweek:

This makes perfect sense. Agonized intellectuals full of sympathy for the common man aren’t meant for the corner office. Such persons would be useless making repetitive decisions about whom to fire and whom to give raises and how much to spend on marketing to children. Human resources executives have known this for a long time, especially those who sat through management courses in business school. As they probably learned, psychologist and management guru David McClelland divided workers’ personalities into three categories: those who need power, those who need to achieve, and those who want to be liked. He developed his own test and found that those with a high need to achieve and a high need for affiliation—in other words, really great people—made excellent customer service reps. Those who thirst for power—and couldn’t care less about what people think of them—end up running things.

If you wonder if you might be among these special individuals--there's even a "test" you can get take at home to gauge your own predisposition for the right--some might say "wrong"--personality qualities.  You can take it in three minutes and score it yourself!  Who knows, maybe you've got a new "calling" you weren't aware of!

Being normal may not necessarily be a good thing!

A second book I read a little while ago was A first-rate madness, uncovering the links between leadership and mental illness, by Nassir Ghaemi [Penguin Books, 2011].  Dr. Ghaemi--a psychiatrist--writes:

Most of us make a basic and reasonable assumption about sanity:  we think it produces good results, and we believe insanity is a problem.  This book argues that in at least one vitally important circumstance insanity produces good results and sanity is a problem.  In times of crisis, we are better off being lead by mentally ill leaders than by mentally normal ones.

My personal sense is--shaded, I admit, by a professional background the field of mental health--that both of these authors make a useful contribution to our understanding of what it takes to be a good corporate [in the broadest sense of the word] leader.  It dovetails with the conclusions by David McClelland about how some people a cut-out for different roles--and such traits are pretty specific in what they prepare someone to do well.  

I'm not sure how it strikes your sensibilities, for it's a weird idea to most people--that a less than ideal personality profile, a deviant bent equips an individual to best do the things that being a leader many times calls for.  

I can tell you this:  It sure as heck explains why some of my previous bosses were the way they were!   
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