The Question
We were deep into a conversation about the current challenges of living in a post pandemic time period when my friend asked me an amazing question: “Why do people in leadership positions believe being important is better than being loved?”
I stopped drinking my cup of coffee, stared out the window for a moment, and then replied, “That is an amazing question, and a powerful insight. I have no idea how to answer it, but I am going to spend a lot of time thinking about that question and my answer. Thank-you for asking me such a good question.”
During the following weeks, I began a journey of reflection and inquiry around this question. I read and reread many resources. I pondered the question over many cups of coffee. It was worth every minute of my time and attention.
The First Choice
Now, there is a quick answer to this question. In Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Motive: Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities (Wiley, 2020), he wrote, “At the most fundamental level, there are only two motives that drive people to become a leader. First, they want to serve others, to do whatever is necessary to bring about something good for the people they serve…. The second basic reason why people choose to be a leader - the all-too-common but invalid one - is that they want to be rewarded. They see leadership as the prize of years of hard work and are drawn by its trappings: attention, status, power, money.” He defines the former as Responsibility-Centered Leadership and the later as Reward-Centered Leadership.
Clearly from the above description, some one, who believes being important is better than being loved, is a reward-centered leader. As Lencioni continues, “When leaders are motivated by personal reward. they will avoid the unpleasant situations and activities that leadership requires.” However, the price of this choice for the organization as a whole is not a good one. Lencioni explains that reward-centered leaders operate under the assumption that “their role should be convenient and enjoyable. So they delegate, abdicate, or ignore situations that only the leader can address, leaving a painful and destructive vacuum.” He also notes that responsibility-centered leaders “almost always exceed expectations. Players who are reward-centered almost always fail to live up to theirs.” In short, one form of leadership is “about doing the job” while the other is about “having the job.”
Recognizing the differences between these two forms of leadership and the difference between being important and being loved, let us dive more deeply into this important question, “Why do people in leadership positions believe being important is better than being loved?”, and let us seek a greater depth and more holistic perspective about this important subject.
Clarify Expectations
“I have a problem, Geery,” he stated as we started our coaching session. “One of my direct reports is ego driven and self-centered. And, as a result, he is driving his direct reports and their teams crazy. I have no idea how to deal with this problem. Where should I start?”
I thought for a moment and said, “This problem is happening in many places right now in this post pandemic time period. I am hearing about it from multiple executives. I would start at the beginning and ask him a simple, yet powerful question: ‘Do you know what is expected of you?’ Then, I would listen very carefully to his answer because it will give you a lot of information about how they think and how they focus.”
A long time ago, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their book, First, Break All The Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (Simon & Schuster, 1999), wrote that there are four key management activities: select a person, set expectations, motivate the person, and develop the person. As they explain, “If you want to turn talent into performance, you have to position each person so that you are paying her to do what she is naturally wired to do. You have to cast her in the right role.” As part of this work, a manager needs to “carve out unique expectations that highlight and perfect each person’s unique style.”
My experience when dealing with problems of this nature is that few people are actually very clear about what is expected of them. Most respond with statements about “getting stuff done.” And as a result of getting things done, they believe they are important and results driven.
The answer to the question, “Do you know what is expected of you?”, gives you a window into the framework they hold about what is leadership. Often, when I have been in the room when this question is asked, I listen to see if the person answering the question understands the difference between strategic expectations and operational expectations. Nine times out of ten they also do not understand this, or the difference between strategy and operational excellence.
Next, I listen carefully to see if they can state what are the performance expectations related to their leadership position. Most people define these expectations in a binary fashion, i.e. things get done vs things not getting done. What I am always curious to see if they will define any professional behavior expectations, decision-making expectations, and communication expectations, especially in the areas of creating clarity and cascading information in a timely and accurate manner.
I believe we as leaders get so busy in our own circle of influence and problems that we assume, or, worst yet, forget to clarify expectations. Then, we are stunned when the outcome from our lack of action is that someone defaults to a course of action and thinking that generates numerous problems with multiple people and teams. While we may not change someone from being self-centered to selfless, we can clarify our expectations and the core behaviors that go with them.
Treat People With Care And Respect
“To lead effectively, you must love the people you are leading,” writes Lolly Daskal, Founder and CEO of Lead From Within. As she explains, this is not a romantic love, but more about caring for people and treating them with respect. I agree 100% with her perspective. I also know that for many leaders it is hard for them to treat people with care and respect, because they feel that they are not treated with care and respect.
Marcus Buckingham in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success (Free Press, 2005), writes that “All great managers speed up the reaction between each employee’s talents and the company’s goals…. a great manager [is] deeply preoccupied with the challenge of making you as successful as possible.” He continues, “To do their job, they must start with your feelings. They must convince you that, in their eyes, your success is paramount.” Again, I agree 100% with this observation.
The difficulty is that in order to treat people with care and respect, and to speed up the interaction of an employee’s talents and the company’s goals plus convince them at a feeling level that their success is paramount, I, as an employee, need to have a great manager who is doing this for me. In essence, in order for me to be a great leader or manager, I must have a great leader or manager, who is working with me. And that is the problem. Very few, if any are experiencing this level of engagement from their manager, supervisor or leader, and thus as a result, they can not adequately deliver what they have not experienced.
Furthermore, James Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner in their book, A Leader’s Legacy (Jossey-Bass, 2006) build on this by noting the following: “We will work harder and more effectively for the people we like. And we will like them in direct proportion to how they makes us feel.” On a side note, Kouzes and Posner point out something important related to this subject: “If you have people working for you in leadership roles who truly don’t care if other people don’t like them, then fire them. They may not like you, but everyone else will.”
So, given this information, the question becomes the following: “How do I help people treat other people with care and respect?” While there are a variety of pathways to an answer, I believe there is one pathway that offers the opportunity for solid and in-depth discussion between all involved, namely ask people the following question: “Am I giving you what you need and expect at this time period?” Recognizing that we have already clarified our expectations as a leader with others, now we can give them the opportunity to talk with us about what they need and expect. In essence, we are making sure that communication is a bi-directional flow of sharing at the facts and the feelings level.
Treating people with care and respect is a choice. It reflects an understanding that the foundation for confidence, clarity, and competence comes from feeling connected and cared for over time. With this in place, the outcomes are self-governed and self-directed in a healthy manner. We do not need to default to command and control over people but instead can choose collaboration and connection with people. Over time, it is the later that becomes a force multiplier at the operational level and a strategic advantage within a dynamic market place.
Discover What You Love
“What if we made the purpose of work to help people discover what they love?” write Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in their book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019). It is a question we do not ask ourselves as leaders, especially if we believe being important as a leader is better than being loved as a leader.
Upon reflection and having spent a career working with leaders, those individuals in leadership positions who love what they are doing at work, are also the same people who are loved by those who work with them. We forget sometimes, note Buckingham and Goodall, that “love-in-work matters.” As Buckingham and Goodall explain, “… the strongest force pushing back against the lies and the force that we all seek to harness in our lives, is the power of our own individuality - that the true power of human nature is that each human’s nature is unique, and that expressing this through our work is an act, ultimately, of love.”
I think the leaders who grasp this insight choose love over importance, because they recognize the power of their own individuality, not their own ego. And because they also recognize the power of individuality in others, they understand that the convergence of the two can be transformative in the way the work gets done and the quality of the outcomes that come from this work.
Ultimately, the best leaders want people to have a work experience where their employees feel that their work matters, and where they feel like they are making a difference. When love-in-work happens for leaders and followers, leaders respect and appreciate the people they work with, and, at the exact same time, employees and co-workers respect and appreciate the people in leadership and management positions. So, the question, “What if we made the purpose of work to help people discover what they love?”, is relevant and important if we seek quality outcomes done by highly engaged people.
Reestablish The Standard
People, who choose being important over being loved, find meaning in work by being the center of everything. These individuals believe they have succeeded as a leader, because of their superior skills and talents, and for the contributions they have made. From my experience, they have an overwhelming desire to offer their perspective in every discussion and in every decision.
“What’s wrong is that they have no idea how their behavior is coming across to people who matter,” notes Marshall Goldsmith in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful (Hyperion, 2007). In particular, what others experience by the choices of these individuals is a level of cognitive dissonance, namely a disconnect between what they experience when working with this person, and with what they believe to be supposedly true about the core values and the culture of the company. This misalignment between what we say is the culture of the company and the reality of one’s experience, due to the choices of working with a self-centered leader, need to be addressed. In particular, the person, who supervises a self-centered leader, needs to clearly establish the standards about how we work together and how we treat people.
On the other hand, people, who choose being loved by being caring and respectful, focus on creating and cascading meaning and belonging rather than having the focus been on themself, and on always being right. These leaders create the conditions for others to be successful, not just for them as the leader to be the ultimate source of success. One can see this being reflected in all of the small choices they make to support people. They do not invest time or energy into grand, dramatic gestures or wild proclamations. Instead they help people find meaning in the daily work they do.
Nevertheless, we must understand something important about these choices. “Never confuse action with movement,” writes Ernest Hemingway. Action can be done immediately and has the potential to start the process of change. But it is movement, i.e. something done over time, that creates enough momentum to sustain it. When we seek to help people move from being self-centered to responsibility centered, referencing the earlier mentioned work of Patrick Lencioni, we are not looking just at actions. We are wanting to see a standard of personal and professional conduct that generates movement and momentum over time.
As Kevin Cashman wrote years ago, “Leaders get what they exhibit and what they tolerate.” If we want people in leadership positions to role model caring and respect more than ego and self-importance, then we need their supervisors to know the difference between these two paradigms and to know the right behaviors that match the right choice. Furthermore, we need leaders who know what to do when they encounter people who believe that being important is better than being loved. With the right choices being role modeled and tolerated, we can, over time, create a different and healthier form of leadership and ultimately a healthier organizational culture.
Honor The Fragile Bond
What certain leaders seem to know intuitively and others never really get is that there is a fragile bond between leaders and followers. Those who focus on being important and those who see leadership as a reward just don’t get it. Those who see leadership as a responsibility and then choose to support, care, and respect people understand this bond and the need to nurture it over time. By being concerned for the welfare of others and this fragile bond, these leaders create something that is powerful and empowering.
When a leader makes the choice to be respectful and caring, they comprehend what Goethe was saying when he wrote: "We are shaped and guided by what we love.” They recognize that when we are guided by what we love in a conscious and healthy manner, we create the opportunity for others to join with us. They are drawn to a common ground of mutual respect, caring, and trust. Over time, this commitment transforms from a fragile bond to a strong and resilient bond, able to withstand challenges internal and external.
In the end, “Leadership is a choice, not a rank,” writes Simon Sinek. It is not about the position we hold within an organization as much as the actions and choices we make on a daily basis. When we live the question, “What can I do today to make a positive difference in the lives of those I work with and in the lives of those we serve?”, then we will discover the true power of love and comprehend the powerful and empowering possibilities within it.
© Geery Howe 2023
No comments:
Post a Comment