Last year, leadership development consultancy Zenger/Folkman collected upwards of 50,000 360-degree evaluations conducted over five years on more than 4,000 individual employees.
They looked specifically at the leadership behaviors that distinguished "good" performers (those rated at the 40th to the 70th percentile) from the "best" performers (those rated at the 90th percentile and above).
Results showed that the best performers were rated a whopping 43 percentage points more productive than average performers.
Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, CEO and president of Zenger/Folkman, outline their findings in The Harvard Business Review. As it turns out, there are nine key skills that separate the cream of the crop from everyone else.
The following list is ranked in reverse order of which had the most impact on evaluations.