To the top with benevolent leadership.

There are many paths to the top in a career. Yet there is one thing common to nearly every person who has achieved extraordinary success, a pattern of behavior shared by 95 percent of the executives we studied over three years. That is a single-minded focus on making those around you successful. Those able to achieve extraordinary success do not claw their way to the top. More often, others in whom they place their trust carry them there.

To the average career professional within our results-obsessed organizations, nothing could be more counterintuitive. Fifteen years of globalization, hyper-competition, re-engineering and layoff after painful layoff have produced a work force left to believe only in survival of the fittest. The most pervasive misconception is that climbing the career ladder requires competing against, rather than supporting, colleagues. It's a belief that spawns behavior inconsistent with the core values of ethics and integrity.

In 1999, we and our research team began a quest to answer a simple question: What factors separate those individuals achieving extraordinary career success from others, equally talented, who never quite reach their aspirations? We embarked on a massive, three-year study, analyzing more than 1 million professionals, surveying 8,000, and conducting in-person interviews with more than 300.

Benevolent leadership emerged as perhaps the most important, and one of the most captivating, behavior patterns accounting for career success.

Consider Ed Woolard, who began his career at a DuPont plant in Kinston, N.C. From these humble beginnings, he ascended over the next 40 years to ultimately become DuPont's chairman and CEO.

When asked to what he attributed his extraordinarily successful career, Woolard replied: "A good 'B player' can surround himself with a lot of 'A players.' My job was really just to nurture them and make them successful."

We argue that is precisely what made Woolard an 'A player'--creating the conditions to attract and retain the best people by supporting their ideas and encouraging them to do their best.

Woolard's ability to create a positive working environment, inspiring and galvanizing a loyal army of professionals, highlights a vital element in managing one's career: Extraordinary success is achieved by making those around you successful.

Consider the results achieved by Cendian, a chemical logistics outsourcing company, whose CEO, Mark Kaiser, provides a powerful demonstration of benevolent leadership in action. Kaiser has tried to build his entire culture around the principle of success through others--open and honest communication, broad delegation, trust and respect fur employees, and alignment of organizational and individual success. "Creating such a culture makes intuitive sense," says Kaiser, "but it is much more difficult to put it into practice. In the end, it requires much more than leadership by example. It requires rethinking your structure, appraisal and incentive systems, hiring practices--anything that impacts organizational behavior."

As Cendian has found, the payoff can be dramatic. From a standing start, the company has become the leader in its sector in only three years, growing annual revenues to approximately $500 million and retaining every key executive along the way.

The absence of benevolence in the workplace is a discouraging, yet predictable effect of a two-decades-long turbulent work environment. Yet we remain optimistic. For one thing, there seems to be a growing unease among the work force with professionals recklessly seeking advancement at any cost. We also now have compelling data to show an aggressive, self-centric approach to be negatively correlated with long-term success.

Finally, we are confident that the potential foundation for benevolent leadership still exists. It can be identified in those we hire, developed ha those we employ and woven into the fabric of our corporate cultures, allowing individuals to achieve extraordinary success. And if they do achieve such success, so, too, will the organizations they represent.

James M. Citrin and Richard A. Smith of Spencer Stuart, the global executive search firm, are co-authors of The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers.