Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo.
In this episode, I want to go over an article that I saw on
Harvard Business Review. It's called five well intentioned behaviors that can hurt your Team.
Well, we'll put a link to this article in the podcast description.
And I liked it a lot because, you know, people become better over
the years at kind of figuring out who the toxic leaders are, and they're
they're identifiable. You can kind of avoid them. You can if you have
the right leadership in place, you can kind of coach them up or out.
But I think that there are a lot of leaders out there who are
the exact opposite of that. They're not toxic at all. They're really well
intentioned and and I would say good leaders, but they they want to do
well, they mean well, and they still can cause problems on a team
because of the way they decide to get involved or execute or help. And
I think this is exactly what this article is about, is if you can
kind of recognize some of these behaviors in yourself, then you might be the
one this article is talking about. Yeah, I definitely think there's a lot
of dialogue with leaders around with typically say like overuse of a skill or overuse
of a thing. Sure, it's kind of like it's a strength of yours
or most of the time it's extremely effective or impactful in a positive way,
but it can lead to kind of some negative consequences if it's overused. But
I think it's something that is really important that is discussed that we talk about.
This article I think does a really nice job of highlighting some of what
I think are some of the bigger ones that can happen quite often and really
can over time lead to hurting the culture and to slowing down the ability of
your team to be effective. And some of these things, I mean,
it's they're interesting because they're kind of like some of them are like snowball things.
We're like a little bit here and there, not really a problem,
you know, a little bit. Over time, it can be annoying.
But then if it becomes a part of just what's expected, once people start
to realize that that this is something that just is here, it's not going
to be addressed, it's not to be handled, or it's always done this
way, and it becomes a part of the culture, then it really creates
a bigger issue and problem because then it's ingrained versus just maybe a thing that
a leader is either overusing or has well intentions have been doing incorrectly. When
it becomes a part of how the team operates, then it really causes major
issues. Yeah, that's spot on. The first the first element or behavior
that a leader could be doing that is well intentioned, but they can go
off the rails or they can actually hurt the team is sinking seeking constant agreement.
And I've seen this in two different ways. I've seen this with leaders
who will reschedule a meeting over and over and over again because the entire team
can't be there and you know one person's missing, as opposed to just moving
forward and getting that person up to speed later. I've also seen it in
a in a you know, in conflict conflict resolution, where you have two
people who are at odds and neither is inherently right or wrong. There's a
lot of gray, there's a lot of subjectivity, and yet you're trying to
make them both leaving a situation happy. As the leader, You're hoping that
if you do your job right as a leader, then both of these people
will leave the situation happy. And at the end of the day, it's
not your job to ensure that both people are leaving the situation happy. It's
your job to ensure that both the policies of an organization as well as your
own personal value system of what's right and wrong are being followed. And if
that means that one of your employees leaves the situation unhappy, what your job
as a leader is to make sure they understand why the decision was made this
way and align it with your values and align it with what the organizational rules
are. And if they're still unhappy with that, that's honestly on them.
It's not your job to get them to agree with you. It's your job
to make sure they understand why it happened. It's on them to kind of
make peace with it in their own mind. And if you're a leader,
you need to be able to let that part of it go. Yeah,
when I hear that, I immediately think of like that doesn't understand that conflict
and healthy debate is absolutely needed in high performing teams. Yes, got to
have the space is for people to disagree on a strategy, to talk through
it, to have different perspectives to push back on one another and then to
learn together and then at the end of it, to be able to find
a common ground, be able to commit to another and move forward. But
if you do not allow there to be that conflict, if you're constantly looking
for agreement, if you're like, why can't you why can't you just figure
it out, like like we're all in the same boat here, why can't
we just make this happen? Like, if you're doing that type of thing
and now not allowing the space for them, for people to have those types
of again healthy debates and disagreements, then it can be really damaging to a
team long term because then what they learn is to just say, like we'll
just we'll go along to get along, right, and then there's no more
pushback, and there's no more better ideas, and there's no more refinement of
a strategy, and there's no more pushing, you know, to to really
exceed you know, whatever it is that you're measuring, because everybody's just like,
well, let's just we'll just do the easy thing, and then the
easy thing will typically get you mediocre results at best. Yeah, you're completely
right about that. I think when when I see this, Uh, it's
the idea of It's not about not fighting, it's about making sure people are
fighting fair. And so when when you see fighting amongst your team, and
when I say fighting, I mean this disagreement, arguments, debate that kind
of fighting as long as what's being and I used air quotes for the word
attacked, as long as what's being attacked is the idea and not the person.
That's where it becomes healthy. If you want to if you want to
poke holes in somebody's idea, then great, but don't poke holes in them.
And you know if you that that's the unhealthy part of it. When
it when it devolves into that space, then you get you know, you
get animalsity in a team that that needs to be fixed or there's some deeper
issues there. But there's nothing wrong with picking apart ideas and poking holes in
them and refining them and working as a team to get better as long as
you have the psychological safety on a team. So again, it's not about
not fighting, it's about fighting fair. The next thing that the article talks
about is the concept of overprotecting the team. When I see this happen,
I see it keeping on we're talking about well intentioned leaders here. You know,
a well intentioned leader is someone who tries to give credit away from themselves
and towards the team whenever something is done right, and to own the failure
themselves as a leader, as opposed to blaming the team. In general,
that's a good idea to do, but when it comes to overprotecting your team,
it means taking on things as your fault or your responsibility that genuinely weren't
yours. You know, we can fail as a team together. We can
have the wrong strategy and fail, and as a leader, you want to
own that and then you go over it in debrief with your team. But
you own that as a leader. When one of your team members or a
group of your team members actually fails without your involvement, if they do something
they should have been doing, it's not your responsibility or your job to own
that failure of them. It's your responsibility to hold them accountable for it in
a way that is objective and fair and that allows them to understand why these
things are happening the way they're happening, what the consequences are. Overprotecting your
team just leads to them feeling like they can get away with the exact same
thing over and over and over again, and and you never know when the
next time they do it, we'll have farther reaching consequences then maybe the first
time when it could have been kind of nipping the button. Yeah, And
I think too, as the leader of a team, like you have the
responsibility to kind of role model what the team you know, not only does
from an outcome standpoint, but from like how you learn, how you move,
how you get better together, how you accept feedback, how you have
the humility to know there's things that you can always learn, Like you kind
of become that representative in a lot of ways. And if you're constantly defending
the team, which are also doing, is kind of putting a target on
them, you know, Like I feel the part of it is like you're
not helping the team if you're like, no, they're they're perfect, they
do no wrong, they know exactly what they're doing, They're doing all the
right work. Like no, Like you know you can absolutely accept, you
know, when things are not going the way they should go, or when
an outcome is not where it needs to be, and talk about the work
that you're doing or the work that you need to commit to to get better.
You know, having a conversation not too long ago about just you know,
my team and things that we're working on, and it was like,
you know, there's there's a point where, you know, two things can
be true at the same time. One of them can be that there's things
that we can get better at. But then the other thing can be that
you know that I have a stance to be able to stand here and defend
maybe some of the things, like you know, like that those two things
can happen at the same exact time. I can definitely defend my team and
definitely say like, well, here is the way that we're going, while
also saying but there's opportunity here that we can get better at, or we
can focus on, or we can refocus Like we have to own that we
have to get better collectively. But I also think that you have to be
comfortable with your team in sharing the larger picture of what's going on in an
organization and sharing the things that you may have perspective on because you maybe running
different circles as a leader, like keeping your team up to speed on what's
going on and how they are collectively performing in that larger landscape. I think
is really important as well to make sure that it's like, yeah, like
we can feel really proud of the work that we're doing, but we also
have to have an element of humility that we have things that we need to
get better at. Right, that's perfect. The next thing the article talks
about is this idea of getting results without learning. You know, we just
talked about this a little bit in the in Our Culture Acronymic series when we're
talking about recognizing behaviors, and you know, this is what I think about
when I think about getting results without learning. It's it's almost inherent for leaders
to want to learn from a from an outcome that was less than what was
desired. The results come back, the scorecards don't look like they should.
You're you know, you're struggling to fix something. You you want to learn
why that's happening. But I think a lot of leaders don't necessarily take the
same amount of time to learn from positive outcomes. And so when when you
have results, whatever the results are, whether they're positive, negative, or
neutral, you want to learn why they are, why they happened. If
you failed, you want to learn why you failed. So that you can
do that again. If you were very successful, you want to learn why
you were very successful so you can replicate it. And if they were neutral,
you want to see what behaviors actually tie into those results in a causal
relationship, and which behaviors really had no bearing on the results, so that
you can kind of fine tune your approach going forward. So you know,
whatever the results are, there needs to be a learning from it, whether
it's positive or negative. And if you recognize your team's results without any learning
from it, if you hype up, hey, look at this scorecard,
look at this result, not look at what these people did, look at
how they executed, look at what their behaviors were. If you don't have
the learnings go alongside it, all you do is recognize the results. And
what you do is you start a culture of feeling like of your team feeling
like that's all that matters to you is what that number is on paper,
and then they will start focusing on that number rather than on what the behaviors
are that are necessary to maintain it or replicate it. Yeah, I think
this is one of those ones where, again, if you're you know,
in the context of a good leader who may be causing you know, some
some potential issues you know, culturally, as far as like behaviors that you
have, getting the result and then just walking away and be like, hey,
we got it, great job. You know, It's kind of like
I'm going to assume that how you did it was the right way, and
I'm going to assume that whatever you learned in doing this, you're gonna be
able to apply in the future when it comes to the next thing that you
have to go and focus on, and that could be really tough. I'm
really big on asking specific questions when somebody says, okay, well, like
talk to me about your approach to this, talk to me about how you
get this work done, and then they tell me how they do it,
and I say, okay, great, So now I'm the leader that you're
teaching how to do this or I'm the employee that you're coaching on how to
get better. What does that sound like? Like, tell me exactly,
like I'm I'm the employee that has this opportunity to tell me how you have
that conversation. And when you start to ask for the level of specificity in
questions like that, you learn a lot. You learn are like are they
doing the work? Are they is it easy for them to pull specific examples
of how they're getting their work done? Are they learning as they go?
Because then once you start to unpack, they say, great, so like
what was the what was the learner was? What was the pivotal moment?
What was the thing that helped you to change and get the get the result
that you were looking for? If you start to ask specific questions, you
know, a deeper layer than just the outcome, and people struggle with answering
the question or it is they there's like, ah, you know, we've
just implemented these great strategies. No, we're just doing the company plan.
Well, okay, tell me how, Like how are you implementing the company
play? Because I think a lot of people what is the company plan?
Right exactly? You know what I mean? Like like walk me through that.
When you start to see that they don't have the specificity, they don't
have the examples, then you start to realize there's an element here where they're
just chasing the number and they got the number and they left it alone,
and there's there's no learning there, there's no skill that's there, there's nothing
that's coming out of that that you're able to apply to the next thing.
And that's really what you're trying to teach from a leadership standpoint. Right,
they got the result in spite of their failures and not because because of it.
How how high could they fly if they really did know the plan and
they did they were able to execute. You know, sometimes it's just happenstance
why you get a good result, and you know why. That is the
next one in this article. It talks about being too involved or not at
all. You know, I've said for a long time, one man's micromanager
is another man's abandonment. You know, like this is this is defined by
your by each individual person on your team. Some people want as little involvement
from you as a leader as possible, and if they've earned that by their
performance and their results, then your responsibility to give that to them. And
some people want support and encouragement and more check ins and more involvement from you
as a leader, even if you know in your heart that they have the
ability to do this without you. Whatever that looks like between you and each
person on your team needs to be worked out with you and that person on
your team. You know, you if you are inherently a micromanager. You
might actually have some people on your team who really like that, and they
they perform well in an environment like that. You will undoubtedly have people who
don't like that. And then if you're inherently more of a hands off person
you want to kind of trust that might be coming from a really great place,
but you'll have people who feel like they are not supported by you at
all as a leader. This is really important to get the balance right because
it's not about being too involved, it's not about being not enough involved.
It's about either Either of these are well intentioned behaviors that can lead to,
you know, poor performance and poor engagement in your team. Yeah, I
love that. The only thing that I would add to that is being conscious
of what are the parameters of both, like what are the parameters where someone
does earn the ability to have more of that space and trust, like for
yourself, you know, and the same thing of like what are the parameters
of where you need to spend the time in the follow up and kind of
making sure that things are going down the right path and then communicating that to
everyone involved. Like that's the other piece of this is saying like Hey,
you know, I want to make sure that you have accessibility to me.
I want to make sure that I'm here for when you need me. Based
upon body of work that I see and the behaviors that you have and the
outcomes that you have. I'm gonna give you the space, you know,
But that does not mean that I want to be absent. That does not
mean that you cannot reach out to me. That does not mean that I
want it. From time to time check in and follow up with you.
But you're gonna see less of me because you're doing this level of work and
these things are going on. And the same thing on the other side,
which is like, hey, you know, I see that we have some
opportunity here with some inconsistency here the things that we're working out. I'm gonna
stay close. I'm gonna make sure that you know. I'm gonna valid it.
It may feel like I'm micromanaging, and to be honest, I am
a little bit because I need to make sure that we're getting down this path
right. But as you show me that these things can be completed, as
you show me that there's you know, the skill that's being built, and
there's consistency and outcomes. I'm going to make sure that I give you some
more of that space, so like, you know, we'll continue to have
these conversations. But I think telling people that upfront also allows them to understand
your intentions and allows them to kind of realize they can choose their own adventure.
Yeah, that's that's that's spot on. The last one the article talks
about is the idea of being everyone's friend. You know, I the first
time that I had a leader who I tried to be their friend because that's
what I like to do. I feel like I get along best with leaders
when I have like a personal relationship with them. And I tried to be
this person's friend, and it was very clear that they didn't want to be
my friend. They wanted to be my leader. And that was that was
almost hurtful at the beginning, Like it was very standoffish to me. I
had a hard time kind of warming up to them. But the reason I
was able to warm up to them over time was because I watched them interact
with people and I watch their values at play and come to life, and
I was able to kind of, you know, my kind of go to
would be, hey, let's see how this person interacts with me on a
personal level to be able to judge how effective they are as a leader,
which is great from my own standpoint of whether I can trust them, but
it actually doesn't tell me what kind of a leader they are. It might
even hurt their performance as a leader. But if I can watch them as
a leader and I can see their values you know, come to life,
and watch the consistency of how they execute on those values, then I I
don't need them to be my friend. I need to be able to rely
on their leadership and how they will execute if I ever need them to come,
you know, on my behalf and be able to show those values.
So it was a tough one for me the first time this happened, but
very quickly or over you know, maybe a thirty to sixty day period,
I was able to realize that, you know what, the best leaders that
I've had, I don't actually want them to be my friend. I think
I do at the beginning, but what I really want is for them to
be a good leader. And when you are trying to be a good leader,
really stop yourself from trying to do that. From a standpoint of,
hey, I want to get this person to like me because I want to
be their friend. It's more I want this person to like me because they
can trust in the consistency that I have of my leadership and my values.
Yeah, I completely agree and with that it brings us to This episode is
one minute Hack, but first a few works from our sponsors. All right,
for this episode one minute Hack, here's what I want you to do
again. We're going to post a link to the article in the podcast description.
Read the entire article because it's really worth reading and go through these things
and look and see if there's anything that you recognizing yourself. Are the things
that you do that you you know as you read this through, you're going,
oh, that sounds like something that I would do. And if that's
the case, that's where you need to put your focus on the things that
you might be doing to it that would inadvertently hurt your team when all you're
doing is trying to help. Most leaders are well intentioned. Most leaders want
to do well by their team, and if they're making these mistakes, they
don't think that their mistakes. They think that it's what their team needs.
But in small doses it might be fine. But if you if this is
your go to. If any of these things is kind of like the knee
jerk, and you know a place where you feel most comfortable in executing,
that's probably the places you need to execute, or that's probably the places you
need to revisit and look and see what you can do to kind of lessen
the impact of that. And bring your team along for the ride too.
As you're going through these talk to your team about what they think. See
if you can validate your own feelings around this with people. You might get
your team going, oh, thank goodness, you said this. We've been
thinking this for years. If you're sure hearing that obviously that that's a problem,
or you might think there's a problem when there isn't one. But again,
your team along for the ride, go through these things and see if
it's you know, something you might over index on. Yeah, I think
it's a great Oneman hack. And I think the the ability to really do
that element of self reflection is critical here and thinking about it because again,
we will spend a lot of time usually in our heads around the opportunities and
things that we need to fix, things that we get feedback on, but
also really understanding like what are the things that we do well and that have
we have well intentions of that may not be helping us get down the right
path in the right way because the likelihood of those things kind of being called
out or you know, getting feedback or coached upon or a lot like a
lot less likely when they feel like it's the right thing to do, but
are not actually helping to build a culture that you want to build amongst your
team. Right, And remember, you know, in order for your in
order for you to be promotable, your team has to be able to maintain
what you've put in place in your absence. We just spoke about this on
the on the on the last Thursday episode. Your team needs to be able
to maintain it if you're doing these things. A lot of these things are
the things that will absolutely prevent that from happening. There are things that will
keep your team dependent on you as a leader as opposed to being able to
you know, work in your absence or work as after you've moved on from
the team. So it can it will only help you as well to make
sure you're you know, kind of you figure out the balance on these things
and you get it right absolutely, and with that it brings us to the
end of this episode, this hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris,
and we'll talk to you all next time.