New Year's Understandings

Now is the time of year when many people begin to set themselves up with New Year's resolutions. Some people swear by these; some people hate them. It doesn't matter what you decide, it matters that you decide.

I've been pondering if New Year's understandings would be better than New Year’s resolutions in the organizations we lead. What if we went into the new year with a few powerful understandings to help guide us on our leadership journey?

Robert Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst, lists 12 things good bosses believe. I am not certain I believe in every one of them but #1 is incredibly powerful: I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me. Imagine if, in the new year, this was top of mind.

Leaders often view this from the other direction—Nobody knows how incredibly difficult it is to do my job. Interestingly, this is likely equally true. But not nearly as powerful. It is lonely at the top and very few people will understand what we face. But power comes in the realization that what we think it is like to work for us is incomplete at best and deeply flawed at worst. This realization leads us to a more curious and humble mindset that can make this year different from all the others.

Transformative leaders irritate people. This is true because change is hard. Some leaders, lacking the courage to be irritating (or even disliked) choose to stop changing things. They decide to simply keep the status quo and kick the can down the road. But transformative leaders use that curious and humble mindset to learn how they can lead change better and more effectively.

As we gain status and power, we lose clarity. The number of people that can reach us shrinks and the number of those that we truly listen to shrinks even further; people lie to leaders and fear speaking truth to power; the echo chamber around us increases as does the distance between us and the wells of the organization. As a result, we have a warped view of what it is like to work with us. What to do?

• Start with trust. We must build trust with our team members so that they know they can speak truth to power without fear. Operate with a “team over task” mindset. If you treat people only as a means to an end you will never have their trust. Invest in them as an individual. Give them the most valuable thing you have: time.

• Seek input, often individually. Stopping by colleague’s or report’s office to ask for honest feedback is time well spent.

• Encourage truth tellers. Many leaders say they are open to feedback but the minute they are criticized employ what my coach called the “triple D”: defend, deny, destroy. The phrase, “I am not defensive” defies logic. We must stay open to feedback and even reward hard assessments that we receive. To see a leader publicly thank a truth teller increases the respect for both.

• Demonstrate curiosity by listening more. Epictetus’ reminder about the ratio implied by having two ears and one mouth is always helpful.

  
  

Perhaps this year can begin with this new understanding. We have a flawed understanding of what it is like to work for us. Let's use a humble and curious mindset to invest in our team as individuals and see what a difference it makes.