Book Short: Vulnerability Applied to Leadership
Book Short: Vulnerability Applied to Leadership
Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty (book, Kindle), is Patrick Lencion’s latest fable-on-the-go book, and it’s as good a read as all of his books (see list of the ones I’ve read and reviewed at the end of the post).
The book talks about the power of vulnerability as a character trait for those who provide service to clients in that they are rewarded with levels of client loyalty and intimacy. Besides cringing as I remembered my own personal experience as an overpaid and underqualified 21 year old analyst at how ridiculous some aspects of the management consulting industry are…the book really made me think. The challenge to the conventional wisdom of “never letting ‘em see you sweat” (we *think* vulnerability will hurt success, we *confuse* competence with ego, etc.) is powerful. And although vulnerability is often uncomfortable, I believe Lencioni is 100% right – and more than he thinks.
First, the basic premise of the book is that consultants have three fears they need to overcome to achieve nirvana – those fears and the mitigation tactics are:
- Fear of losing the business: mitigate by always consulting instead of selling, giving away the business, telling the kind truth, and directly addressing elephants in the room
- Fear of being embarrassed: mitigate by asking dumb questions, making dumb suggestions, and celebrating your mistakes
- Fear of feeling inferior: mitigate by taking a bullet for the client, making everything about the client, honoring the client’s work, and doing your share of the dirty work
But to my point about Lencioni being more right than he thinks…I’d like to extend the premise around vulnerability as a key to success beyond the world of consulting and client service into the world of leadership. Think about some of the language above applied to leading an organization or a team:
- Telling the kind truth and directly addressing elephants in the room: If you’re not going to do this, who is? There is no place at the top of an organization or team for conflict avoidance
- Asking dumb questions: How else do you learn what’s going on in your organization? How else can you get people talking instead of listening?
- Making dumb suggestions: I’d refer to this more as “bringing an outside/higher level perspective to the dialog.” You never know when one of your seemingly dumb suggestions will connect the dots for your team in a way that they haven’t done yet on their own (e.g., the suggestions might not be so dumb after all)
- Celebrating your mistakes: We’re all human. And as a leader, some of your people may build you up in their mind beyond what’s real and reasonable. Set a good example by noting when you’re wrong, noting your learnings, and not making the same mistake twice
- Taking a bullet for your team, making everything about your team and honoring your team’s work: Management 101. Give credit out liberally. Take the blame for team failings.
- Doing your share of the dirty work: An underreported quality of good leaders. Change the big heavy bottle on the water cooler. Wipe down the coffee machine. Order the pizza or push the beer cart around yourself. Again, we’re all human, leaders aren’t above doing their share to keep the community of the organization safe, fun, clean, well fed, etc.
There’s a really powerful message here. I hope this review at least scratches the surface of it.
The full book series roundup as far as OnlyOnce has gotten so far is:
- The Three Signs of a Miserable Job (post, book)
- The Five Temptations of a CEO (post, book)
- The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, book)
- Death by Meeting (post, book)
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (post, book, Field Guide)
- Silos, Politics and Turf Wars (post, book)
- Getting Naked (post, book)
Peter Principle, Applied to Management
Peter Principle, Applied to Management
My Management by Chameleon Post from a couple weeks ago generated more comments than usual, and an entertaining email thread among my friends and former staff from MovieFone. One comment that came off-blog is worth summarizing and addressing:
There are those of us who should not manage, whose personalities don’t work in a management context, and there is nothing wrong with not managing. Also, there promotion to management by merit has always been a curiosity to me. If I am good at my job, why does it mean that I would be good at managing people who do my job? In other words, a good ‘line worker’ doth not a good manager make. I’d prefer to see people adept at being team leads be hired in, to manage, then promotion of someone ill-fitted for such a position be appointed from within. This latter happens far to often, to the detriment of many teams and companies.
For those of you not familiar with the Peter Principle, the Wikipedia definition is useful, but the short of it is that “people are promoted to their level of incompetence, when they stop getting promoted…so in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties.”
Back when I worked in management consulting, I always used to wonder how it was that all the senior people spent all their time selling business. They hadn’t been trained to sell business. And a lot of the people great at executing complex analysis and client cases hated selling. Or look at the challenge the other way around: should a company take its best sales people and turn them into sales managers?
We’ve had numerous examples over the years at Return Path of people who are great at their jobs but make terrible, or at least less great, managers. The problem with promoting someone into a management role mistakenly isn’t only that you’re taking one of your best producers off “the line.” The problem is that those roles are coveted because they almost always come with higher comp and more status; and if a promotion backfires, it generally (though not always) dooms the employment relationship. People don’t like admitting failure, people don’t like “moving backward,” and comp is almost always an issue.
What can be done about this? We have tried over the years to create a culture where being a senior individual contributor can be just as challenging, fun, rewarding, impactful, and well compensated as being a manager, including getting promotions of a different sort. But there are limits to this. One obvious one is at the highest levels of an organization, there can only be one or two people like this (at most) by definition. A CEO can only have so many direct reports. But another limit is societal. Most OTHER companies define success as span of control. You get a funny look if you apply for a job with 15 years of experience and a $100k+ salary yet have never managed anyone before. After all, the conventional wisdom mistakenly goes, how can you have a big impact on the business if all you do is your own work?
The fact is that management is a different skill. It needs to be learned, studied, practiced, and reviewed as much as any other line of work. In most ways, it’s even more critical to have competent and superstar managers, since they impact others all day long. Obviously, people can be grown or trained into being managers, but the principle of my commenter – and “Peter” – is spot on: just because you are good at one job doesn’t mean you should be promoted to the next one.
I’m not sure there’s a good answer to this challenge, but I welcome any thoughts on it here.
Self-Discipline: Broken Windows Applied to You
Self-Discipline: Broken Windows Applied to You
Just as my last post about New Shoes was touching a bit of a nerve around, as one friend put it, "mental housecleaning," my colleague Angela pointed me to a great post on a blog I've never seen before ("advice at the intersection of work and life" — I just subscribed), called How to Have More Self-Discipline. Man, is that article targeted at me, especially about working out.
I think the author is right — more discipline around the edges does impact happiness. But it also impacts productivity. Not just because working out gives you more energy. Because having your act together in small ways makes you feel like you have your act together in all ways. As the author notes (without this specific analogy), it's a little like the "broken windows" theory of policing. You crack down on graffiti and broken windows, you stop more violent crime, in part because the same people commit small and large crimes, in part because you create a more orderly society in visible, if sometimes a bit small and symbolic, ways.
I agree that the best example in the "non work" world is fitness. But what about the "work world"? What's relevant around self-discipline for professionals? Consider these examples:
– A clean inbox at the end of the day. Yes, it's the David Allen theory of workplace productivity which I espouse, but it does actually work. A clean mind is free to think, dream, solve problems. The quickest path to keeping it clean is not having a pile of little things to deal with in front of it, taking up space
– Showing up on time. It may sound dumb, but people who are chronically late to meetings are constantly behind. The day is spent rushing around, cutting conversations short — in other words, unhappy and not as productive. The discipline of ending meetings on time with enough buffer to travel or even just prepare for the next meeting so you can start it on time (and not waste the time of the other people in the meeting) is important. Have too many meetings that you can't be at all of them on time? Say no to some — or make them shorter to force efficiency. There's nothing wrong with a 10-minute meeting
– Dressing for success. We live in a casual world, especially in our industry. I admit, once in a while I wear jeans or a Hawaiian shirt to work — even shorts if it's a particularly hot and humid day. (And even in New York, not just in Boulder.) But no matter what you wear, you can make sure you look neat and professional, not sloppy. Skip the ripped jeans or faded/frayed/rock concert t-shirt. Tuck in the shirt if it's that kind of shirt, and wear a belt. The discipline of "dressing up" carries productivity a long way. Want to really test this out at the edges? Try wearing a suit or tie one day to work. You feel different, and you sound different
– Doing your expenses. Honestly, I've never seen an area where more smart and conscientious people fall apart than producing a simple expense report. Come up with a system for it — do one every week, every trip on the plane home, every time you have an expense — and just take the 5 minutes and finish it off. Sure, expenses are a pain, but they only really become a pain and a millstone around your brain when you let them sit for months because you "don't have time" to fill them out, then you get accounting all pissed off at you, and the project's size, complexity, and distance from the actual event all mount
– Follow rules of grammar and punctuation. Writing, whether for external or internal consumption, is still writing. I'm not sure when everyone became ee cummings and decided that it's ok to forget the basic rules of English grammar and punctuation. Make sure your emails and even your IMs, at least when they're for business, follow the rules. You look smarter when you do. Maybe — maybe — with Twitter or SMS you can excuse some of this and go with abbreviations. But I wouldn't normally consider a lot of those formal business communications
I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. A little self-discipline goes a long way at work (and in life)!
links for 2005-12-06
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Brad talks about comp for outside Board members
links for 2005-09-22
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Great blog posting from Rob Walling on hiring like crazy
links for 2005-10-11
links for 2005-10-20
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Get your mind out of the gutter! These are very useful and oddly hard to find graphics for doing checklists in presentations (thanks to my colleague George Bilbrey for this link).
links for 2005-10-22
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From our client, Business & Legal Reports, a HILARIOUS read in the strange-but-true category. This is essential reading for any manager who has ever mediated an employee dispute. Tthanks to Tami Forman for citing this one!
links for 2005-10-23
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Return Path’s newly unveiled web site is now a blog, with an online resource center for email marketers and postings by its executive team
links for 2005-11-16
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Jeff Jarvis on Why We’re Glad We’re New Media…good stats on all the troubles facing “old media” nowadays (box office, newspapers, music, radio, books)
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Fred Wilson on how VCs relate to entrepreneurs vs. their limited partners. They should think of entrepreneurs as their customers, and think of LPs as shareholders.
links for 2005-11-26
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Charlie O’Donnell from Union Square Ventures has a great post about LinkedIn, its limitations, and some things it could do to be MUCH cooler and more useful.