Spark followers with respect for a leadership turnaround

Extinguishing leadership behaviour is said to demotivate a team – like putting water on a fire. Whether you study leadership or not that can be a painful thing to observe and worse to experience. The ‘fire inside’ individuals weakens, and the energy level among the team members is drained bit by bit. Sadly, it happens a lot especially when managers are not well suited for the job. Which also happens a lot. In most organizations there are heroes who help the team push past the leadership void. And sometimes there are leadership turn arounds where the extinguishing behaviour is discovered and ended.

In large matrixed professional organizations there can be many leadership successes as well as gaps and inconsistencies. Followers increasingly hold their leaders to account including how leaders carry themselves – how they set the tone. Science suggests good followship in a professional setting involves followers asserting themselves. Good leaders get the message but what happens when they don’t? One possibility is that trust for the leader erodes. A feeling of futility among the followers fuels a leadership death spiral and eventually the leader’s messages fall on deaf ears. When a leader is tone deaf to how their team is feeling about their leadership the team finds a new de facto leader for matters not requiring position authority. Follow-to-rule attitudes develop – kind of like work-to-rule but of the heart and mind not the body. As a leader s/he’s “dead to me” becomes more palpable. It stands to reason in this situation that the team’s performance would decline.

Don’t extinguish. Spark the fire inside (Source: https://alchetron.com/Spark-(fire)).

There’s another narrative that could emerge from a leader’s failure to spark their followers – when leaders who aren’t leading well do get the message from the assertive unhappy professionals. The starting point for this better leadership story is a leader head-shake and acceptance of the likelihood that something’s wrong and its time to eat some humble pie. The key ingredient here is respect.

When leaders become disconnected from the team and followers show signs of declining trust maybe its time for some simple respectful listening by the leader. “You’ve stopped speaking up. We need you to speak up or we’ll lose the customer perspective. I’m not sure I’m giving you what you need or supporting you the way you need right now. What do you need from me as a leader?”

There’s no script for these situations – they’re all different but the starting point is the realization that, its (probably) you leader! Take a deep breathe and respect the years of experience on your team, especially in a professional setting where the followers often know much more about the core business than you do as leader. If its not your style as leader, if you’re an introvert in a sea of extraverts for example, then get to work on how you can warm up to your team of professionals. Learn and practice listening with respect. Leaders in tough situations like this had better figure it out fast or risk the death spiral of ‘follow-to-rule’ among your team of professionals. Listen, feed the fire, and make it a leadership turnaround instead of becoming ‘dead to them.’

Reflect yes, but don’t beat yourself up

Dwelling on missed opportunities or mistakes is human nature.  A colleague recently lamented that she had left a great job to find a better one, only to realize that the grass was much greener in her original position.  She repeatedly regretted her decision and in some ways was paralyzed by it.  Researchers have found that obsessing over regrets has a negative impact on mood and sleep, can increase impulsivity, and can be a risk factor for binge eating and misusing alcohol (Taitz, 2019).

Participant memories about negative career experiences were quite clear – even those long ago.  Reflection should be positive.

When asked about career regrets in a study of Canadian technology executives the most common answer was denial of negative reflection, “Oh I don’t dwell on  the past” (Fauteux, 2017).  When pressed during interviews, participants described a range of regrets including assignments not pursued, transfers not accepted, promotions not lobbied for, and other moments in time that could have been (better).  Their memories were quite clear about decisions made long ago.  No doubt you have some career regrets, I do! Its important not to let them get a hold of you.

Psychologists suggest that in order to avoid regret spiral you need to interrupt your negative thought pattern and look to the positive.  Taitz, 2019 describes this as interrupting your obsessing and treating yourself like your ideal mentor would.  Don’t beat yourself up – practice self compassion.  Her science explains once again what we know intuitively but sometimes can’t put into practice – see the sliver lining.  Life long learners who use reflection may know this best – there is positive value in every experience.

Kintsugi is a Japanese art which literally translated means “golden repair.” It is a philosophy of repairing broken things, including imperfections which are considered part of an item’s history.  So, life long learners, take time to reflect, look for the positive in every experience, and repair the broken thing(s) which are part of your career.

 

A Shout Out to Women at Work

There’s no denying that women face more barriers in the workplace than do men.  On International Women’s Day it’s appropriate to pause and think about what that means and what we should do about it.  On balance women are paid less than men for the same work.  They need to do more at work to advance their careers.  They put up with more crap than men – mostly crap that comes from men. Through it all they persevere.

As a society we are slowly marching towards a day when the playing field for men and women will be level.  Sadly, that day, when we reach parity, won’t happen in my lifetime. But it may happen during the lifetime of my grandson, who I hope will grow up to advocate for women – to be a feminist.  I maintain this hope, and I take this position, in part because I had the privilege of listening to the life stories of men and women from across Canada as part of a research project which I undertook a couple of years ago.  I learned that all of us face barriers and enablers to career advancement – mostly barriers.  I also learned, by listening, that women face many more barriers than do men.  We don’t seem to make it any easier for them, but we should. We should give them a push and we should feel no shame in that. We should be proud to do it.  Taking proactive steps to right a social wrong is only a good thing.  Moreover, it’s a smart thing.  All evidence points to the fact that diversity in organizations, including as it relates to gender, leads to better decision making and better overall business results.

As part of my research I met with senior leadership teams from several Canadian organizations and, in group meetings, discussed the under representation of women in senior positions.  I also offered a range of solutions which might help them to change the mix – to increase the representation of women in their organizations.  Most of the leadership teams I met with, like in many organizations around the world, were predominantly male.  Most of them politely acknowledged that the gender gap existed but did not take up the invitation to adopt any of the solutions offered.  Some of them did, but they were by far the exception.  My interpretation of the overall conclusion from these executive team meetings was a message, something like, “that’s interesting, we’re in good shape, thanks for coming out.”  Really?

International Women’s Day is a good time be reminded of the realities of our workplaces and the careers of women.  They face barriers.  We all need to understand that and do something about it.  We should seriously consider measuring gender diversity and setting targets for more balance.  We should figure out how to deliberately change the mix and increase the representation of women, especially in senior positions.  Hopefully this shout out to women at work will contribute to that shift, that positive change, and nudge us in the direction of parity.