Ed Batista

Mind the Gap (On Leading Senior Executives)

A theme in my practice is the CEO who's leading senior executives for the first time. This often occurs with a founder whose company has grown dramatically or has recently raised a significant round of funding. While some of their early-stage leaders will make the leap, others will need to be levelled in order to bring in senior executives whose talents and capabilities will better support sustained growth and successful operations at scale. [1]

In many cases these executives know more about their function than the CEO, they have more experience than the CEO, and they may well be better at their jobs than the CEO. It's not uncommon for these CEOs to ask themselves, "How do I add value here?" It's possible for a less-experienced CEO to get in the way of their senior leaders--but more typically I see the opposite problem. The CEO gives their executives a great deal of space, only to find several months or quarters later that they backed off too far, and some important objectives were neglected and fell into the gap.

So if you're a CEO in this position, how should you think about leading senior executives? How do you add value here? In my experience there are three areas where CEOs inadvertently create gaps--and there are steps you can take to minimize them or prevent them from developing in the first place. (And although in this essay I focus on CEOs and their executive team, many of the issues I address are relevant to any senior leader and their direct reports.)

1. Accountability

Senior executives require a great deal of autonomy, and this may entail a shift in perspective as CEO, particularly if you're used to working with direct reports who are less experienced, more deferential, and more dependent on you for tactical direction. The great management thinker Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker" [2], and later discussed what they require from leaders:

Knowledge workers are not subordinates; they are "associates." For, once beyond the apprentice stage, knowledge workers must know more about their job than their boss does--or else they are no good at all. In fact, that they know more about their job than anybody else in the organization is part of the definition of knowledge workers... To be sure, these associates are "subordinates" in that they depend on the "boss" when it comes to being hired or fired, promoted, appraised and so on. But in his or her own job the superior can perform only if these so-called subordinates take responsibility for educating him or her... Increasingly "employees" have to be managed as "partners"--and it is the definition of a partnership that all partners are equal. It is also the definition of a partnership that partners cannot be ordered. They have to be persuaded. [3]

Most of your employees are already knowledge workers, of course, but Drucker's definition clarifies just what senior executives will expect from you as CEO: Acknowledgment of their expertise. A sense of partnership. Persuasion, not orders. And yet note that it's easy to create a gap when putting these ideas into practice in your working relationships with with executives.

When Drucker began formulating these concepts in the mid-20th century, he and other innovative thinkers like Douglas McGregor [4] were exploring alternatives to the authoritarian, command-and-control style of management that prevailed at the time. McGregor's "Theory Y"--which "emphasizes the average person’s intrinsic interest in his [sic] work, his desire to be self-directing and to seek responsibility, and his capacity to be creative in solving business problems"--stood in stark contrast to the then-dominant "Theory X," which "assumes that people dislike work and must be coerced, controlled, and directed toward organizational goals." [5]

And although the "Theory X" approach persists in some industries and certain parts of the world, in environments like my clients' organizations--and very likely in yours--the pendulum has swung far in the opposite direction. Today organizations that employ knowledge workers have absorbed the ideas of Drucker and McGregor to such a great extent that they're taken for granted.

This sea change in management philosophy has generally been for the better, but there have also been some undesirable side-effects. One is the extreme pressure many contemporary leaders feel to avoid being accused of "micromanagement"--a concern that can be heightened with senior executives, who've been hired on the basis of their expertise and expect to have substantial authority in their function.

As a consequence, some CEOs go to such lengths to avoid "micromanaging" senior executives that they essentially provide no management at all. This isn't how these CEOs would describe their actions. Their stated intent is to pursue the guidance prescribed by Drucker and McGregor--they want to "give people room" and "stay out of the weeds." But in effect they're merely hoping that an executive will succeed entirely on their own initiative. Occasionally this works--but when it doesn't, the process of replacing an under-performing leader can be costly and painful. [6]

The key is recognizing that as CEO you must afford senior executives sufficient latitude to make use of their expertise, while also ensuring that they're held accountable for achieving agreed-upon objectives so that you can assess their performance. What helps in this process?

• Clarity: The addition of a senior executive to your leadership team may affect everyone's responsibilities (including yours), so ensure that there's sufficient role clarity, not only when crafting their job description, but also on an ongoing basis. It's also necessary to clarify how decisions will be made in this new configuration before the inevitable power struggles become rancorous.
• Feedback: Don't wait for performance reviews--make feedback normal. Given that senior executives are likely to have worked with experienced CEOs in prior roles, be sure to solicit feedback as well as provide it. The setting for these conversations should be consistent one-on-ones--get them on the calendar, don't cancel them, and let your executives set the agenda. While you may need to improve your ability to deliver critical feedback, if expectations aren't met merely expressing disappointment can be a useful starting point.
• Empathy: As I've written before, "One of the reasons many leaders believe they can either hold people accountable or empathize with them is a misunderstanding of what is meant by 'accountability.' We often assume it entails a combative stance in an antagonistic interaction, with the goal of enforcing compliance--but that's not holding someone accountable, that's bullying them." The goal is to create a high-accountability, high-empathy culture in which "a shared sense of mission, strong feelings of ownership and responsibility, and relationships built on mutual trust and respect contribute to superior organizational results."

 

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2. Motivation

Senior executives with a sustained record of success bring a host of assets with them. They know how to do the job, they understand the industry, and they have a network of former employees who will be inclined to follow them into their new role. This makes them appealing candidates for an organization that's striving to improve performance at scale, but it also affords them a wide range of options and increases their opportunity cost.

As a consequence, they often have particular needs that must be met, not only to induce them to accept an offer, but also to ensure their continued motivation--and to fend off demotivation. The work of psychologist Frederick Herzberg on motivation is relevant here. Herzberg's thesis is that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction aren't endpoints on a single spectrum, but are two distinct scales. His research suggests that certain aspects of a job (called "intrinsic motivators") have greater potential to generate satisfaction, while other aspects (called "hygiene factors" or "extrinsic motivators") are more likely to generate dissatisfaction if they're perceived as inadequate or problematic:

The factors involved in producing job satisfaction (and motivation) are separate and distinct from the factors that lead to job dissatisfaction... These two feelings are not opposites of each other. The opposite of job satisfaction is not job dissatisfaction but, rather, no job satisfaction; and similarly, the opposite of job dissatisfaction is not job satisfaction, but no job dissatisfaction...

Two different needs of human beings are involved here. One set of needs can be thought of as stemming from humankind's animal nature--the built-in drive to avoid pain from the environment, plus all the learned drives that become conditioned to the basic biological needs. For example, hunger, a basic biological drive, makes it necessary to earn money, and then money becomes a specific drive. The other set of needs relates to that unique human characteristic, the ability to achieve and, through achievement, to experience psychological growth...

The growth or motivator factors that are intrinsic to the job are: achievement, recognition for achievement, the work itself, responsibility, and growth or advancement. The dissatisfaction-avoidance or hygiene factors that are extrinsic to the job include: company policy and administration, supervision, interpersonal relationships, working conditions, salary, status, and security. [7]

These findings offer some useful guidance to help you understand and influence your executives' motivation. Where do gaps typically emerge and what can you do to help close them?

• Intrinsic motivators: CEOs create a gap here by imagining that senior executives are immune to the appeal of these factors. Everyone's needs differ--see below--but even highly experienced leaders can derive substantial satisfaction from a sense of achievement, recognition for those achievements, and opportunities for growth and advancement. It takes some creative thinking to design these factors into a more senior role, but a strategic People leader can help--and some well-timed celebrations can go a long way.
• Extrinsic motivators: Senior executives command hefty compensation packages, but it's a mistake to assume that someone will remain satisfied with their comp, no matter how far you may have initially stretched to accommodate their requirements. Again, individual needs will differ, but the psychological process of hedonic adaptation means that we inevitably take improvements for granted--this is why salary and status are "hygiene factors" in Herzberg's framework. Even the most substantial increases eventually lose their ability to motivate, and the resulting gap between reality and expectations can be a major source of dissatisfaction. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you simply defer to executives' wishes to keep them happy--that quickly becomes unsustainable. So be prepared to negotiate with them not only upon extending an offer, but also at regular intervals thereafter.
• Individual variation: It's essential to have clarity on what each of your executives values most and the extent to which their needs are being met today. There are many reasons why a CEO shouldn't have too many direct reports, but this is among the most important. If you're managing too many executives, it's easy to lose touch with what motivates them as individuals and their respective levels of fulfillment and satisfaction. You may have to close that gap by shrinking or formalizing your executive team.

 

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3. Team Dynamics

The arrival of senior executives has a powerful effect on the leadership team as a whole. In most cases a new executive is replacing an early-stage leader who's no longer a member of the team, and even if the transition was made with the prior leader's assent the reconstituted team will need time to gel. (This may take even longer if the prior leader was terminated or unwillingly levelled.) In this process, senior executives can be disruptive presences, both for better and for worse. They can role model higher standards of professionalism, offer new approaches to problem-solving, and inspire colleagues to improve their own performance.

But this heightened sense of competition can also have a shadow side. Senior executives may be the first to hold VP or C-level titles, which can raise expectations for title advancement among other members of the team--some merited, others not. Although compensation details are held in confidence in most organizations, it's common for some of this information to leak or to be inferred, potentially causing resentment among longer-tenured leaders who earn less than the newer executives. Senior executives are usually driven people with high expectations for their peers' performance, which can cause impatience and friction if their colleagues aren't operating at the same level. And early-stage leaders who feel anxious about their ability to keep pace with the organization's growth may not feel inspired but threatened, resulting in turf wars and conflicts over scope.

In parallel with these developments there's usually an evolution in the team's culture--again, for better and at times for worse. Some early-stage leadership teams include members who compensate for a lack of experience or limited capabilities with a deep devotion to the mission and a commitment to company values--and when their contributions no longer make up for their deficits, these leaders are often the first to be replaced by senior executives. The resulting group is comprised of higher-performing individuals, but the members may feel less connected and function less like a team.

And many early-stage teams are "ethical pirates," in LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman's term. [8] Without acting immorally, they eagerly break rules and ignore established procedures in order to get the job done--this yields innovation, but may not scale (and if it does scale, it can create incentives for unethical behavior.) Senior executives are often hired because they bring with them a set of established procedures that will presumably be more effective at scale. But this can trigger a culture clash between early-stage leaders who view senior executives as stifling bureaucrats, while the latter view the former as undisciplined amateurs.

To return to the question above that I've heard many CEOs ask as they're assembling a team of senior executives--"How do I add value here?"--this is the context in which you can add a tremendous amount of value by addressing the gaps that can all too readily emerge on your leadership team:

• Evolving norms: The arrival of senior executives is both the result and the cause of larger changes in the organization, and this will be reflected in new team norms--the informal practices that members feel obligated to follow, deriving from shared beliefs about productive behavior. In the absence of a process that identifies desirable norms, makes them explicit, and reinforces them consistently, groups often experience a gap between their stated intentions and their actual behavior, because rules aren't norms. More specifically, note the importance of norms related to emotional awareness and regulation, which affect a team's sense of trust, identity and efficacy.
• Cultural integration: Team norms are just one manifestation of organizational culture, and senior executives usually bring with them a set of cultural practices that early-stage leaders will perceive as different or even alien. This may be one of the reasons that a senior executive was hired in the first place, but even in that case it's essential to close the gap between cultures through a process of integration. New executives must conform to the old culture just enough to gain credibility as change agents. Returning to Hoffman's management metaphor, "startup pirates" must be induced to "join the navy."
• Functional rivalries: At times senior executives have the ability to put the interests of the entire organization ahead of their personal preferences. But even the most collaborative will on occasion prioritize the needs of their direct reports and their function, and they may view other functions as rivals, if not antagonists. A degree of cross-functional rivalry is healthy, but when the gap between functions grows too wide it's counter-productive and wasteful. The key is fostering a collective identity that transcends individual functions and encompasses the entire organization.

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Fine Art of Levelling

[2] The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker, 1967)

[3] "Management's New Paradigms" (1998) in Management Challenges for the 21st Century, pages 17-22 (Peter Drucker, 2001)

[4] For more on Douglas McGregor, see Leadership and Motivation: The Essays of Douglas McGregor (1966)

[5] Beyond Theory Y (John Morse and Jay Lorsch, Harvard Business Review, 1970)

[6] For more on managing terminations:

• On Firing a Senior Team Member
• Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

[7] One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? (Frederick Herzberg, Harvard Business Review, originally published 1968, republished 2003)

[8] Uber Needs to Transition from "Pirate" to "Navy" (Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn, 2017)

 

For Further Reading

1. Accountability

• Role Clarity and Role Confusion
• Leadership, Decision-Making and Emotion Management
• Power Stuggles Among Nice People
• Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.
• The Judicious Imposition of Structure (Part 2: Meeting Hygiene & One-on-Ones)
• How to Deliver Critical Feedback
• Leadership Word of the Day: DISAPPOINTMENT
• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

2. Motivation

• The Truly Strategic People Leader
• CEOs and Celebrations
• Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" by "Getting Better"
• Negotiating with Your Own Side
• The Judicious Imposition of Structure (Part 1: The Executive Team)

3. Team Dynamics

• Rules Aren't Norms (On Better Meeting Hygiene)
• Group Dynamics: Norms and Emotion
• Conform to the Culture Just Enough
• Pirates in the Navy
• Startup Leadership: A Greater Us

Photo by Ged Carroll.

Compasses and Weathervanes (30 Questions for Leaders)

Compasses point true north and help us stay on our chosen path, no matter what's happening around us. They're not disrupted by environmental changes--but they can't tell us anything about those changes, and sometimes that's important information. Weathervanes are buffeted by the wind, turning to and fro and occasionally spinning in circles. They can't guide us to a destination, but they can tell us a lot about how difficult the trip might be, what we might encounter along the way, and if we should be traveling at all.

The compass is a popular metaphor for leadership--we value its steadfastness and reliability, and we want our leaders to exhibit those same qualities. The weathervane sometimes symbolizes bad leadership--we're skeptical of leaders who are too easily swayed and seem to lack conviction. But the most effective leaders integrate aspects of both: They have a clearly defined perspective, a set of values they strive to uphold, and the courage to make hard choices and unpopular decisions. But they're also aware of prevailing sentiments in their environment, open to alternative points of view, and able to adapt when necessary.

So the question isn't "What kind of leader should I be?" but rather "What kind of leadership is called for at this moment--and am I capable of summoning it?"

Perspective

1. What are the most important issues I face as a leader?
2. What are the most important issues we face as an organization?
3. What do I think should be done?
4. How well do my colleagues understand my point of view?
5. When I've been misunderstood, how have I contributed to the misunderstanding?

Values

6. What do I stand for as a leader?
7. How clearly have I articulated these values to others?
8. How accurately could my colleagues describe my values if necessary?
9. How do my values guide my behavior and influence my decisions?
10. The last time a value became a disadvantage, what sacrifices did I make to uphold it?

Courage

11. How do I determine "the right thing to do" in a given situation?
12. What role does the opinion of others play in this process?
13. What happens when I encounter resistance from a powerful figure?
14. What happens when I encounter resistance from a crowd?
15. The last time I had to stand alone, what did I do?

Awareness

16. How do I learn what people around me are thinking and feeling?
17. How often do I update this data?
18. How often am I surprised by what I learn?
19. Do people volunteer their views to me, or do I have to solicit them?
20. If I have to solicit someone's views, how might I be making them reluctant to volunteer?

Openness

21. How often do I hear points of view that differ from my own?
22. How direct and candid are people when they disagree with me?
23. How do I respond to them when that happens?
24. How would the people who disagree with me characterize these interactions?
25. When did someone last disagree with me in public?

Adaptability

26. How do I know when a change is needed?
27. How do I know when a change is overdue?
28. When I've resisted an overdue change, how did I justify the delay?
29. When did I last I change my mind in public?
30. When did I last I admit that I was wrong in public?

 

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For Further Reading

Importance vs. Urgency

Developing Your Professional Vision

Courage Isn't Confidence

What Do Great Leaders Do?

How Leaders Overcome Adversity

Why Change Is Hard

Photos: Compass by Piqsels. Weathervane by Geograph.

Andy Grove on the Right Kind of Fear

While I firmly believe in the value of psychological safety as a factor that contributes to high performance, I've also observed an unhelpful tendency in recent years to prioritize that quality above all else. [1] Anything that leads someone to feel distress is viewed as "unsafe" and thus unacceptable. But former Intel CEO Andy Grove believed that a particular kind of fear can actually play a productive role in organizational life--the fear of losing:

The quality guru W. Edwards Deming advocated stamping out fear in corporations. I have trouble with the simplemindedness of this dictum. The most important role of managers is to create an environment in which people are passionately dedicated to winning in the marketplace. Fear plays a major role in creating and maintaining such passion. Fear of competition, fear of bankruptcy, fear of being wrong and fear of losing can all be powerful motivators.

How do we cultivate fear of losing in our employees? We can only do that if we feel it ourselves. If we fear that someday, any day, some development somewhere in our environment will change the rules of the game, our associates will sense and share that dread. They will be on the lookout...

Simply put, fear can be the opposite of complacency. Complacency often afflicts precisely those who have been most successful. It is often found in companies that have honed the sort of skills that are perfect for their environment. But when their environment changes, these companies may be the slowest to respond properly. A good dose of fear of losing may help sharpen their survival instincts. [2]

However, this doesn't mean that all fear is productive. Grove made a sharp distinction between the healthy fear that dispels complacency and a very different kind of fear that is toxic to an organization's effectiveness--the fear of speaking up:

If you are a middle manager you face an additional fear: the fear that when you bring bad tidings you will be punished, the fear that your management will not want to hear the bad news from the periphery. Fear that might keep you from voicing your real thoughts is poison. Almost nothing could be more detrimental to the well-being of a company.

If you are a senior manager, keep in mind that the key role of Cassandras is to call your attention to strategic inflection points, and under no circumstances should you ever "shoot the messenger," nor should you allow any manager who works for your do to so.

I can't stress this issue strongly enough. It takes many years of consistent conduct to eliminate fear of punishment as an inhibitor of strategic discussion. It takes only one incident to introduce it. News of this incident will spread through the organization like wildfire and shut everyone up.

Once an environment of fear takes over, it will lead to paralysis throughout the organization and cut off the flow of bad news from the periphery. [3]

The figure of Cassandra provides a fitting analogy. A priestess in Greek mythology, she was the younger sister of Hector, the great warrior of Troy. The god Apollo gave Cassandra the ability to see the future, but after she rejected his advances he put a curse on her so that her true prophecies would always be disbelieved. When the Greeks left a massive wooden horse at the gates of Troy as a supposed peace offering, Cassandra warned her compatriots to destroy it, but they ignored her as they conducted a victory feast: "We stationed the monster fraught with doom on the hallowed heights of Troy. Even now Cassandra revealed the future, opening lips the gods had ruled no Trojan would believe." [4]

Cassandra tried to attack the horse with axe and fire, but she was stopped so that the feast wouldn't be disrupted. [5] That evening, of course, Greeks concealed in the horse slipped out and opened the city gates to their countrymen, leading to Troy's destruction. A healthy fear of losing and respect for a truth-teller certainly would have sharpened the Trojans' survival instincts. Their complacency and their resistance to bad news sealed their fate.

Note that Grove's position on fear is entirely consistent with that of Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, whose research makes a compelling case for the competitive advantages to be derived from psychological safety. [6] They both emphasize the role that safety plays in encouraging people to speak up. As Grove noted, "Constructively debating tough issues and getting somewhere is only possible when people can speak their minds without fear of punishment." [7] Edmondson made the very same point nearly two decades later in a 2018 interview:

What makes a workplace psychologically safe or not?

Individuals feel they can speak up, express their concerns, and be heard. This is not to say that people are "nice." A psychologically safe workplace is one where people are not full of fear, and not trying to cover their tracks to avoid being embarrassed or punished.

What I am advocating is candor. Being open. And sometimes that might mean being direct to a fault, knowing that you have a right and a responsibility to ask hard questions about the work: "Is this the right decision? Are we collecting the right data? Do we know the impact this might have on others?" [8]

So if you're a senior leader seeking to help your organization perform at the highest possible level, how can you inspire "the right kind of fear" while avoiding "the wrong kind"? There's no simple solution or quick fix, but there are steps you can take over time:

1. Reward (and Model) Candor

A foundational leadership principle is that when you see behavior you want more of, acknowledge it and express appreciation for it. To minimize the fear of speaking up, whenever anyone shares information that might be viewed as "bad tidings," recognize that it may have felt risky for them to do so, and thank them. [9] The lower their position in the hierarchy, the greater the risk, which your appreciation should take into account.

This doesn't mean that you should have infinite patience for someone who's always negative. Relentless pessimism isn't the same thing as candor. But neither is unremitting optimism, and some leaders tend to reward people who only bring good news--which means they won't hear bad news until it's too late to do anything about it.

A related principle is modeling the behavior you want others to adopt. Here this entails being candid with critical feedback, even--and perhaps especially--when you're concerned about how the other person will respond. This gets easier when you provide feedback on a consistent basis, rather than waiting for review cycles [10] and when you learn how to deliver critical feedback that the other person might experience as motivational rather than demoralizing or threatening. [11]

2. Foster (and Model) Accountability

A healthy fear of losing is only possible when losing comes with consequences. In this context it's vitally important to create incentives to be open about mistakes and setbacks in order to learn from them. [12] Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, attributes much of the firm's success to a rigorous commitment to accountability:

Having a process that ensures problems are brought to the surface, and their root causes diagnosed, assures that continual improvements occur. For that reason I insisted that an issue log be adopted throughout Bridgewater. My rule was simple: If something went badly, you had to put it in the log, characterize its severity, and make clear who was responsible for it. If a mistake happened and you logged it, you would be OK. If you didn't log it, you would be in deep trouble. [13]

This doesn't mean that you should have infinite tolerance for ineptitude and underperformance. While accountability starts with candid feedback, in some circumstances it becomes necessary to remove someone from their role. But while it's essential to avoid creating an environment in which people are constantly anxious about losing their job, having coached many leaders though this difficult process I know that when a termination is handled well it can have a galvanizing effect on the organization while also being in the best interests of the person being fired. [14]

Here it's critical that you hold yourself to the same standard. When a leader screws up, the rest of the organization often colludes in the process of quietly ignoring it in order to shield the leader from embarrassment. [15] This not only prevents the leader from learning, but also gives everyone else a convenient excuse to do the same. If, instead, you admit and publicly acknowledge your mistakes, you invite others to follow your example. [16]

3. Promote a Team Identity

Despite the potential benefit of a healthy fear of losing, it's all too easy for efforts to foster accountability to trigger an excess of fear, resulting in finger-pointing and blame, as Stanford professor Jeff Pfeffer has noted:

The downside of the emphasis on individual accountability is illustrated by Jody Hoffer Gittell's research on Southwest and American Airlines during the mid-1990s. American Airlines then-CEO, Robert Crandall, insisted that delays come to his attention and that the delays get assigned to individual and departments, so they would be accountable for their results and, moreover, would compete with one another to avoid creating problems...

The result of this approach was to create a culture of fear and infighting as people and units tried to pin the blame on others. Little learning occurred and on-time performance continued to lag. At Southwest Airlines, the view was that delays were everyone's problem and when they occurred, people needed to work together to learn as much as possible...

Gittell's research showed that the Southwest system produced more learning and more teamwork, resulting in better system performance, than the American Airlines approach with its emphasis on assigning individual or departmental accountability and blame. [17]

The key is ensuring that people identify with the organization as a whole and believe that they succeed or fail together. This is more difficult in certain environments, of course--if people don't truly work interdependently then a sense of team spirit may never be sufficient to overcome the incentive to escape scrutiny and avoid blame. [18] Even when people do work interdependently, they may identify more strongly with their close colleagues than with the organization, a situation described by George Halvorson, the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente:

Humans are social creatures; we fall readily into group loyalties. We instinctively divide the world into "us" and "them" and treat others very differently according to which category they’re in... Many workplaces default to a version of kinship based on function. A group’s shared identity reflects a common characteristic of its members—everyone’s an engineer, or everyone’s a radiologist. Doing similar work under the same conditions is enough to make an "us." [19]

A degree of sub-group identity is by no means a bad thing, and at times cross-functional rivalries spur fruitful competition. But they should always be subsumed within a larger organizational identity--a "greater us" [20]--which you as the leader must personally embody. [21]

4. Regulate Your Emotions

Finally, in all of these efforts it's essential to regulate your emotions, which is one of the most common--and most challenging--themes in my practice. To be clear, note that regulate does not mean suppress. We can suppress emotions for short periods of time, but not for long, and in some circumstances the effort actually heightens the feeling we're seeking to minimize. [22] But the goal isn't to pretend you're not having any feelings at all--it's to express your feelings in such a way they help you achieve your goals, rather than serve as obstacles.

The work of emotion regulation is never easy, but it's particularly difficult when dealing with fear, perhaps the most primal and powerful emotion. [23] A hallmark of ineffective leaders is their inability to grasp the difference between "the right kind of fear" and all other kinds. Such leaders generate fear indiscriminately and imagine that they're cultivating a healthy fear of losing, but fail to recognize the negative impact on those around them: self-censorship, excessive caution, risk-aversion. Ultimately the organization pays a price as talented people leave or choose to remain under duress (and then only as long as financial incentives are sufficient to be motivating.)

The alternative is to be deliberate, thoughtful and intentional in leveraging the power of emotions, both positive and negative, when taking any of the steps noted above: acknowledging bad news, providing feedback, learning from failure, holding others accountable, holding yourself accountable, creating a sense of camaraderie.

In addition, let's recognize that even the fear of losing is counter-productive when taken to extremes, and sometimes that affects a leader internally. I've worked with many leaders who felt overwhelmed by the prospect of failure or even just the sense that they were falling short of expectations (their own or those of others) or falling "behind" in some type of competition (real or imagined). The purpose of emotion regulation isn't merely to assuage other peoples' fears, but also one's own.

Cultivating the capacity for emotion regulation is the work of a lifetime, and you'll probably never feel that you've "mastered" it, if only because it's necessary for our survival that emotions not be subject to willful control. [24] But my work with leaders makes it clear that you can improve your ability to inspire a healthy fear of losing without inadvertently triggering a poisonous fear of speaking up:

• The Tyranny of Feelings
• Force Isn't Power
• Leadership Word of the Day: DISAPPOINTED
• Talking About Feelings
• How Leaders Create Safety (and Danger)
• Attitude and Behavior
• The Value of a Good Fight
• On Speaking Up and Shutting Up
• Leadership as a Performing Art
• How to Fight a Fire (Self-Coaching in a Crisis)

 

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Footnotes

[1] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[2] Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company, pages 117-118 (Andy Grove, 1999)

[3] Ibid, pages 118-119.

[4] The Aeneid, page 83 (Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, 2008)

[5] The Fall of Troy, Book XII (Quintus Smyrnaeus, translated by A.S. Way, 1913)

[6] For more on Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety, see the following:

• How Fearless Organizations Succeed (strategy+business, 2018; excerpted from Edmondson's book below)
• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (2018)
• Building a psychologically safe workplace [11:26 video] (TEDxHGSE, 2014)

[7] Grove, page 117.

[8] Make Your Employees Feel Psychologically Safe (Martha Lagace interviewing Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2018)

[9] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[10] Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.

[11] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[12] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

[13] Principles: Life and Work, page 62 (Ray Dalio, 2017)

[14] Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

[15] Overcoming Organizational Defense: Facilitating Organizational Learning, page 25 (Chris Argyris, 1990)

[16] I know from personal experience that publicly acknowledging my mistakes in a leadership role is simultaneously mortifying, liberating, and profoundly useful to those around me:

• Lessons in Falling Down
• Committing a Microaggression While Teaching a Class on Microaggressions
• How Am I Doing? aka T-Group Feedback

[17] Changing Mental Models: HR's Most Important Task (Jeffrey Pfeffer, Chapter 19 in The Future of Human Resource Management, Mike Losey, Dave Ulrich and Sue Meisinger, editors, 2005)

[18] What Kind of Team Are We?

[19] Getting to "Us" (George Halvorson, Harvard Business Review, 2014)

[20] Startup Leadership: A Greater Us

[21] Leader as Avatar

[22] For more on the impact of suppressing emotions:

• Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive and social consequences (James Gross, Psychophysiology, 2002)
• Consequences of Repression of Emotion: Physical Health, Mental Health and General Well Being (Jainish Patel and Prittesh Patel, International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, 2019)

[23] The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (Joseph LeDoux, 1998)

[24] White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control, page 123 (Daniel Wegner, 2nd edition, 1994)

Photo by Giuseppe Milo.

Flawless Teamwork

The image above is a clip from a video shot at the 2013 Australian Grand Prix. [1] The Ferrari team had two drivers in the race that day, Fernando Alonso, who finished second, and Felipe Massa, who finished fourth, although I haven't been able to determine who was driving this car. [2]

But the driver is the least interesting person in the scene to me. I'm much more interested in the 23 members of the pit crew, who do their jobs flawlessly, functioning as a single unit. I'm mesmerized by their synchronous movement, and I'm in awe of the training and dedication it must take to achieve that level of teamwork.

I imagine the competition for each of these jobs is incredibly fierce. And yet these roles are essentially anonymous--if I can't even determine who's driving, I'll never learn the names of the pit crew. What a striking example of setting one's ego aside in order to participate on a high-performing team.

I'm not suggesting this should be the model for every team at all times--organizational life isn't a Formula One race. But Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, who first brought this video to my attention [3], points to a case study showing how surgical teams reviewed pit crews to improve their coordination in the operating room. [4]

So this clip prompts some questions worth asking when considering whether a team is achieving its full potential:

• What kind of team we are?
• Are the right people here?
• Does everyone know their role?
• How do we make decisions?
• Have we built a sense of cohesiveness?
• Do we know what effectiveness looks like?
• What happens when we disagree?

 

And while I find the loop above useful to observe each member at work and get a sense for the team's overall choreography, it's also worth listening to a version with the volume up to get the full F1 experience:

(Also, the eagle-eyed Jim Bonsell has pointed out the #3 on the Ferrari's nose, which indicates that the driver is Fernando Alonso. Alonso not only placed second in that day's race, he also finished the 2013 F1 season in second, and he's finished first or second in seven other F1 seasons. Pretty good teamwork!)

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Footnotes

[1] Scott Bellchambers, Ferrari F1 Pit Stop Perfection (YouTube, 2013)

[2] 2013 Australian Grand Prix, Melbourne, March 17, 2013

[3] Ethan Mollick @emollick: "A great example of borrowing innovation from one field for another. Doctors at a struggling children's hospital sent videos of their post-surgical hand-offs to Ferrari's F1 pit crew (see the GIF!) to improve. They reworked the process & reduced associated errors rates by 66%." (October 15, 2020)

[4] Ferrari’s Formula One Handovers and Handovers from Surgery to Intensive Care. (American Society for Quality, excerpted from chapter 10 of "Benchmarking for Hospitals: Achieving Best-in-Class Performance Without Having to Reinvent the Wheel," by Victor Sower, Jo Ann Duffy, and Gerald Kohers, 2008)

How Far Apart Are We? (Degrees of Disagreement)

Most of my clients are CEOs whose C-level executives have deep domain expertise, and most of the rest are operating leaders at other levels who highly value their employees' input. So it's rare for one of them to make a decision overruling a direct report, but that's an inevitable aspect of management. [1]

When this occurs it's important for the leader to anticipate how their employee will respond and assess we might call the degree of disagreement. So if you're a leader about to veto an employee's preferences, reject their recommendation, or overturn a prior decision of theirs, consider where they're likely to land along this spectrum:

• Understanding: Has a different point of view, but appreciates your perspective, with no loss of trust.
• Disappointed: Wishes the outcome were different, but no lasting hard feelings, with no loss of trust.
• Unhappy: Believes that you're making a serious error, with a loss of trust in your judgment.
• Betrayed: Believes that you misled them, with a loss of trust in your intentions. [2]

Note that the same spectrum applies to decisions related to hiring, firing, promotions and layoffs. If you're poised to make a decision that will affect someone's employment or modify their role, consider how they might feel about your working relationship:

• Understanding: Eager to continue working with you or to work with you again in the future.
• Disappointed: Willing to continue working with you or to work with you again in the future.
• Unhappy: Reluctant to continue working with you or to work with you again in the future.
• Betrayed: Will no longer work with you, and may advise others not to work with you.

The goal is to increase the likelihood of understanding and minimize the risk of betrayal (and in the latter case, what matters is your employee's belief that they were misled, not whether you actually misled them.) There's no guaranteed means of arriving at understanding, nor can that be your only priority. If you're like my clients, you must regularly make decisions that are in the best interests of your organization but will leave people feeling disappointed, unhappy, and, on occasion, betrayed.

The key is evoking empathy, which can be difficult under the best of circumstances. As I've written before, we typically fail to "empathize up" with people in positions of authority or influence over us:

It’s essential to remember that the people we’re leading will find it very difficult to empathize with us. They will be unlikely to understand our perspective and our emotions unless we make the effort to be explicit about them. They will make snap judgments about us and readily misinterpret our behavior unless we go out of our way to share our rationale and explain our intentions. They will be reticent to communicate any of these views unless we initiate a dialogue in which we’re active participants, not just questioners. [2]

So how might you make it more likely to achieve understanding, even--and especially--when stakes are high and there are strong feelings on all sides? There's no magical solution, but there are some steps you can take, in the moment and over time, that will help you handle these rare but inevitable situations with as much grace as possible:

Identity and question your underlying assumptions regarding this decision (including whether you need to make it): 

• Leadership, Decision-Making and Emotion Management
• Authority and Control in Organizational Life
• Racing Up the Ladder of Inference
• Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

Prepare for a difficult conversation and choose the right medium for the dialogue:

• Setting the Table (Difficult Conversations)
• Learning to Yield (Navigating Difficult Conversations)
• Intent vs. Impact (When Communication Goes Awry)
• The Communication Funnel

Cultivate your ability to speak directly and empathetically, as well as your capacity for emotion regulation:

• Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)
• Force Isn't Power
• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)
• The Tyranny of Feelings

Invest in your working relationships and their capacity to acknowledge, address and resolve difficult issues:

• Better Working Relationships
• Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.
• Talking About Feelings
• Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

 

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Footnotes

[1] Two Sides of Trust

[2] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

Photo by Sharyn Morrow.

Should You Apologize? (It Depends)

Mike Ditka is not sorry. [1]

Most of my clients are CEOs, and most of the rest are senior leaders with a similar profile that puts them in the public eye. They give interviews and speak at conferences. A number have a large social media presence. And when something goes wrong or attracts adverse attention at their company, they're often responsible for addressing the issue, which means that they may be expected to offer an apology.

If you're in the same position, there are many circumstances in which the ability to make a compelling apology will serve you and your organization well, and an inability to apologize effectively will magnify and escalate otherwise avoidable problems. Psychologist Karina Schumann notes the benefits of apologizing and the nature of meaningful apologies:

Research on conflict management suggests that an apology is one of the most powerful tools that transgressors can use to resolve an offense...especially high-quality apologies that are comprehensive (i.e., include many apology elements, such as an acceptance of responsibility and offer of repair) and non-defensive (i.e., do not include self-protective strategies, such as justifications or victim blaming). [2]

This is consistent with an observation from my practice, where conflicts are often truly resolved only after the higher-status person expresses vulnerability in some form. [3] Effective apologies typically convey a degree of vulnerability, which in most circumstances evokes an empathic response, which is the key to forgiveness.

But is apologizing always helpful? Absolutely not, and work by political scientist Richard Hanania should give you pause before you issue a pro forma apology:

There are reasons to believe that apologizing makes public figures appear weak and risk averse, which may make them less attractive as people and lead members of the public to want to punish them... Overall, the evidence suggests that when a prominent figure apologizes for a controversial statement, the public is either unaffected or becomes more likely to desire that the individual be punished. [4]

Further, a study by ethicist and corporate governance expert Daryl Koehn and professor of management Maria Goranova on the impact of "corporate apologies" on the share prices of public companies revealed not only that such statements generally have a negligible effect, but also that investors actually react negatively to more emotional apologies. The authors conclude that, "What in theory might seem likely to restore trust may in practice damage the firm’s standing in the eyes of shareholders." [5]

I'm not suggesting that you adopt the philosophy of 19th-century English educator and theologian Benjamin Jowett, who praised the advice of a friend: "Never retract. Never explain. Never apologise. Get it done and let them howl." [6] This approach may have a visceral appeal, but it clearly has its limitations. Psychologist Schumann has found that one of the main reasons people resist apologizing is because it threatens their self-image, a challenge that's compounded for people with low self-esteem. [7] This aligns with work by legal scholar Brent White, who notes that the ability to apologize is a sign of high self-esteem and emotional maturity:

Individuals with high inner-directed self-esteem can more easily acknowledge their flaws because they believe fundamentally that they are reasonable and decent people. When such people apologize, they are merely admitting, in their minds, that they made a mistake, which does not threaten their identity. [8]

If you find yourself automatically resisting every opportunity to apologize, a la Dr. Jowett, you run the risk of allowing feelings to prevent you from choosing the right course of action. But while emotions should inform our behavior, they shouldn't dictate behavior, and a theme in my work with leaders is the importance of emotion regulation and the means by which we can be more effective at managing our feelings. [9] Also, note that additional research cited by Schumann found that people "overestimate the aversiveness of apologizing, anticipating that it will feel more humiliating and stressful to apologize than it actually feels." [10]

But you may well face the opposite problem and feel pressure to apologize for any perceived transgression, no matter how trivial. The penitent leader has become a familiar figure in contemporary culture, and as Keuhn and Goranova note, "Since the late 1990s, the number of apologies being offered by CEOs of large companies has exploded." [11] This raises the problem highlighted by Hanania and echoed by Keuhn and Goranova: Some apologies not only fail to evoke the intended response, but are actually counter-productive. Here, too, emotion regulation has an important role to play--if you always feel compelled to apologize, yet again, your feelings may well lead you down the wrong path.

There's no simple solution to determining whether an apology is merited or will serve you well, of course, but a concept that comes up frequently in my practice may help you navigate these situations more easily: Empathy is not agreement. As I've written before,

We act as though empathizing with someone entails endorsing their perspective and their feelings, but this need not be the case. Understanding someone’s perspective and their emotions while suspending our judgments about both does not necessarily imply that we agree with that perspective or believe that the resulting emotions are justified. It simply means that we comprehend their perspective and emotions, and we are able to envision ourselves experiencing that perspective and those emotions under similar circumstances. Just as we can empathize with someone without sympathizing, we can empathize with someone while disagreeing with them and considering their perspective inaccurate and their emotions unwarranted. [12]

I'm reminded of a relevant example from corporate history: Intel's Pentium launch in 1994. [13] The Pentium microprocessor contained an obscure design flaw that Intel had determined posed no risk to end users. But eventually the company responded to public outcry and pressure from partners such as IBM, offering to replace all of the defective chips and writing off $475 million in replacement parts and junked material ($900 million in 2022 dollars). CEO Andy Grove never agreed with users' concerns--he remained convinced that the design flaw was utterly trivial--but he empathized with consumers who had come to feel that "Intel Inside" was a sign of quality and that the company's actions were inconsistent with that brand promise. Even when announcing that Intel would replace all Pentium chips, Grove didn't apologize for the design flaw, but for appearing "arrogant and uncaring." [14] Intel's share price was essentially flat in 1994, but the following year it began a staggering 5-year bull run (before returning to earth in the first dot-com crash), making it clear that Grove struck the right balance, neither alienating consumers and investors, nor allowing himself to be perceived as weak.

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Legend of Mike Ditka's Bird (NFL Films)

"And you know what? If I had to do it over again, I'd do it over again. Screw 'em." ~Mike Ditka, 2015

[2] The Psychology of Offering an Apology: Understanding the Barriers to Apologizing and How to Overcome Them (Karina Schumann, Association for Psychological Science, 2018)

[3] Resolving a Protracted Conflict

[4] Does Apologizing Work? An Empirical Test of the Conventional Wisdom (Richard Hanania, Behavioral Public Policy, 2015). Thanks to Ethan Mollick for the reference to this paper.

[5] Do Investors See Value in Ethically Sound CEO Apologies? Investigating Stock Market Reaction to CEO Apologies (Daryl Koehn and Maria Goranova, Journal of Business Ethics, 2018)

[6] "Never retract, never explain, never apologise." (Garson O'Toole, LinguistList, 2010). Jowett's friend was probably politician and educator James Kay-Shuttleworth. This saying is often attributed to people such as suffragist Nellie McClung, politician Agnes Macphail, Winston Churchill, or Gertrude Stein, but it seems likely that it originated with Jowett and Kay-Shuttleworth (who predate these others) in some form.

[7] Schumann, 2018.

[8] Saving Face: The Benefits of Not Saying I'm Sorry (Brent White, Law and Contemporary Problems, 2009)

[9] For more on emotion regulation, see the following:

• The Tyranny of Feelings
• Attitude and Behavior
• You Make Me Feel... (On Language and Responsibility)
• Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[10] Schumann, 2018.

[11] Keuhn and Goranova, 2018.

[12] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

[13] Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company, pages 12-19 (Andy Grove, 1999)

[14] Intel Surrenders Over Flawed Pentium Chip (Associated Press, Deseret News, December 20, 1994): "Since the uproar over the defects in its showcase product first surfaced a month ago, the company had required that owners show why they needed a replacement. This infuriated many customers, made Intel the butt of jokes and raised basic questions about Intel's sensitivity to the market. 'To some people, this seemed arrogant and uncaring. We apologize for that,' Andrew Grove, Intel's president and chief executive officer, said in a conference call with industry analysts. 'What we view as an extremely minor technical problem has taken on a life of its own,' Grove said. Intel has placed the chance of hitting the flaw as one in 27,000 years. 'We were motivated by a belief that replacement is simply unnecessary for most people. We still feel that way, but we are changing our policy because we want there to be no doubt that we stand behind this product.'"

Power Struggles Among Nice People

Most of my clients are CEOs of growing companies, most of the rest are C-level executives in similar settings, and a number of others are leaders in investment or professional services firms. In order to be effective in these roles they must be able to influence others, wield authority, and maintain status. At the same time my clients are conscientious people who care about the well-being of their employees and colleagues, aspire to make a positive difference in the world, and are striving to do their best.

As a result of these factors, a theme in my practice is what I describe as "power struggles among nice people." And yet a challenge is that many of us imagine that people who engage in power struggles aren't very nice, and that nice people shouldn't struggle for power. This leaves us with a stark choice: Be an asshole and win, or be a decent person and lose--but it doesn't have to be that way.

1. The Ubiquity of Power Struggles

We often think of a power struggle as a rancorous, zero-sum battle between bitter enemies, but that's just one version, and it's relatively rare. Far more common are the everyday efforts noted above: influencing others, wielding authority, maintaining status. Consider how often we engage in these activities every single day, and how infrequently we employ formal decision-making frameworks or conflict-resolution tools in the process. From this perspective we can define a power struggle in much less charged terms: any situation in which the parties must assert themselves to overcome resistance and achieve their preferred outcome.

There are no cartoon villains and few outsized expressions of force in these everyday power struggles. As I've noted before, force and power are not the same thing--force is "strength or energy as an attribute of action," while power as "the ability to produce an effect." [1] Most power struggles are rather mundane affairs, and in this sense we might think of them as the "dark matter" of organizational life--they affect almost everything but escape observation unless we're paying close attention. [2]

Why are power struggles so common? There's certainly a connection with our origins as a species. Primates rely on social structures to obtain resources and to defeat or evade threats, and humans possess the singular advantage of being able to cooperate in larger groups than our evolutionary rivals. [3] This has allowed us to dominate the planet, but as a consequence we face much greater competition from within the group, and we've had to develop a complex set of social skills to assert our preferences while minimizing intra-group conflict. [4] A similar pattern of constant, non-violent power struggles can be observed in the chimpanzee, which, notably, is the only other species of great ape whose social groups include multiple males that co-exist in a shifting dominance hierarchy. [5]

But we may wonder why humans continue to rely on informal displays of power to accomplish these goals. Why don't we utilize the other decision-making frameworks and conflict-resolution tools that we've developed more frequently? Because power struggles are often more effective than those alternatives.

2. The Desirability of Power Struggles

When defined as "zero-sum battles between bitter rivals," power struggles are obviously undesirable. Such efforts waste time and resources, cause needless division, and serve as distractions from more productive activities. But when we recognize a broader definition, it becomes apparent that power struggles are more efficient or less costly than the alternatives, which generally fall into one of three categories: voting, consensus, and hierarchy.

Voting is possible only under a highly specific set of circumstances: Decision-making authority can be fairly apportioned by vote, whether by person, ownership share, or some other method. All parties agree that a decision must be made at a certain point in time, after which further efforts to influence the outcome will be counter-productive. And the most powerful parties can be trusted to abide by the outcome when a vote doesn't go their way. We can easily see why voting is used so rarely in organizational life--although it's worth noting that votes are preceded by campaigns to win support in which expressions of power may figure heavily.

Consensus also comes with necessary preconditions: All parties must reach agreement in order to move forward, and even the least powerful figure has the authority to withhold approval. Complicating matters is the contemporary preference for the appearance of egalitarianism, which often results in a half-hearted attempt at obtaining consensus that inevitably stalls, at which point the most powerful party pulls rank and dispenses with the charade, resulting in a full-blown power struggle. But even in an authentic attempt to reach consensus, the discussions and debates that comprise the process are themselves a type of power struggle.

While there are companies, industries, and even parts of the world where hierarchy remains a primary means of decision-making and conflict resolution, that's not the case in my clients' organizations. To a large extent this is the result of two related trends in management over the past century: the increasing importance of the "knowledge worker" [6] and the move away from centralized command-and-control structures. [7] My clients and almost all of their employees and colleagues are knowledge workers of one sort or another, and in this context the leader who merely issues directives will eventually pay a price. Knowledge workers put a high value on latitude and autonomy, and they have a low tolerance for being repeatedly overruled.

But while leaders might refrain from relying explicitly on hierarchy to avoid alienating their employees, this isn't to suggest that hierarchy is absent or irrelevant. Hierarchical distinctions are a constant presence even in the flattest organizations [8], and parties engaged in a power struggle may exploit any such advantages in their efforts to prevail. But the subtle use of a hierarchical distinction while conducting a power struggle is very different than a dictatorial command. In these settings, most directives imposed via hierarchy can be viewed as the outcomes of failed power struggles, in which the leader had hoped to avoid "giving an order." [9]

So we see that alternative means of decision-making and conflict-resolution come with constraints that render them impractical in many circumstances, and that even when such means are employed the process typically involves a series of power struggles. Given these conditions, we might imagine that anyone who aspires to succeed as a leader would be ready to engage in power struggles on a regular basis--and yet that's not always the case. Many leaders in my practice report feeling surprised when power struggles occur, resentful of the obligation to participate in them, and depleted by the demands of the process. Why is this? What prevents these leaders from being better prepared for and more effective at engaging in this fundamental feature of organizational life?

3. The Problem with Nice People

As noted above, my clients can be characterized as "high-achieving nice people," and in my experience many nice people are uncomfortable with displays of power and put a premium on maintaining interpersonal harmony, which puts them at a disadvantage when they're obligated to assert themselves and overcome resistance in order to obtain a desired outcome. Further, if they continue to emphasize personal achievement over cultivating power and influence, they eventually limit their professional success.

To understand why, we turn to the work of the eminent 20th-century psychologist David McClelland, one of the leading scholars on human motivation, who theorized that people are driven primarily by three distinct needs [10]:

• The need for achievement, or "doing something better for its own sake, or to show [that one] is more capable of doing something." [11]
• The need for power, or concern "about having 'impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large.'" [12]
• The need for affiliation, "or the need to be with people" and a concern with "establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or persons." [13]

McClelland also studied people's capacity for "activity inhibition," or impulse control, and his research showed that the most successful senior leaders display 1) a relatively high need for power, 2) a relatively low need for affiliation, and 3) a high degree of impulse control, a distinctive pattern that he called "leadership motive syndrome." McClelland found that people who possessed this combination of traits were most likely to obtain senior leadership positions, ultimately outpacing those who merely had a high need for achievement. [14]

The latter group's focus on improved performance and desire for personal feedback helped them succeed at the outset of their careers, but limited their effectiveness at scale when results must be obtained not merely through individual effort but through the ability to lead others, and when feedback cycles are long and unpredictable. [15] In addition, McClelland noted that people with a high need for affiliation often have shortcomings as leaders as they strive to avoid conflict and prioritize warm relationships. [16]

These conclusions pose some significant challenges for "nice high-achievers":

• Nice people underestimate the importance of power and influence in long-term success at senior levels.
• They overestimate the importance of personal achievement and being liked.
• A consequent reluctance to engage in everyday power struggles prevents them from learning how to display power and exert influence effectively.

But a deeper understanding of this research makes clear that "nice people" aren't doomed to underachieve--and even possess several key advantages.

4. The Opportunity for Nice People

Let's highlight the relative dimension of McClelland's "leadership motive syndrome." It's not the case that effective senior leaders must possess the greatest possible need for power, or that a high need for affiliation is an inherent barrier to a senior role. The point is simply that their need for power must be relatively higher than their need for affiliation--in other words, senior leaders can't allow a desire to be liked or a preference for harmony to prevent them from displaying power or exerting influence when necessary.

Further, note the importance of impulse control in the most effective senior leaders. An alternative pattern of traits identified by McClelland was 1) a high need for power, 2) a low need for affiliation, and 3) a low degree of impulse control, which he called "conquistador syndrome." [17] Leaders who exhibit this pattern may enjoy some success, but their self-aggrandizing displays of power limit their effectiveness at senior levels, as McClelland and his colleague David Burnham concluded in a summary of their research:

The top manager of a company must possess a high need for power--that is, a concern for influencing people. However, this need must be disciplined and controlled so that it is directed toward the benefit of the institution as a whole and not toward the manager's personal aggrandizement... We discovered one more fact in studying the better managers... They were more mature. Mature people can be most simply described as less egotistic. Somehow their positive self-image is not at stake in their jobs. They are less defensive, more willing to seek advice from experts, and have a longer-range view. [18]

Put differently, the most successful senior leaders have a substantial capacity for emotion regulation. [19] They don't allow fleeting feelings to translate into counter-productive behavior. As McClelland noted, people with a high need for power think about "carrying out a number of impulsive aggressive acts...but they did not in fact do them more often" than people with a low need for power. [20] And nice people typically share that capacity for emotion regulation (even if it's often put to use in efforts to generate warmth and evoke positive feelings in others.)

Finally, observations from my practice suggest that nice people are likely to rank high on two dimensions of "emotional style" identified by neuroscientist Richard Davidson that are relevant here: 1) context-sensitivity, or the ability to grasp what will be perceived as appropriate in a given situation and tailor one's behavior accordingly, and 2) social intuition, or the ability to assess others' mental and emotional states on the basis of body language, tone of voice, and similar data. [21]

In sum, while nice people may have to overcome some self-imposed obstacles in order to engage in everyday power struggles, they're also likely to possess several characteristics that will enable them to be more effective in the process. So if you identify with this description--if you're a "nice high-achiever"--where do you go from here?

5. Putting It Into Practice

A note on social identity, including, but not limited to, gender and orientation, race and ethnicity, education and class background: I'm keenly aware that in many settings the behaviors that convey power and influence are historically associated with people who already hold power and influence. I realize that if you don't match that description in your organizational context you may well face additional obstacles when your efforts to exert power and influence run counter to the expectations imposed upon you as a result of your social identity. That said, I'm equally aware that merely conforming to those expectations is a likely path to frustration and underachievement. When we're not in a position to change the surrounding culture, one of the key steps is determining how to conform just enough to that culture to avoid being rejected by it while also ensuring that the culture doesn't dictate our behavior to our disadvantage--which is a challenge I've addressed with many "nice high-achievers" in my practice over the years. [22]

Our needs for achievement, power and affiliation are informed by a range of sources, from our family environments as children to our education and professional training to the culture at large. But if we determine that our current needs are resulting in behaviors that make it more difficult to achieve our goals, we can change our approach with a degree of self-awareness, deliberate effort, and practice over time. (McClelland noted the efficacy of management training workshops in helping leaders modify their styles and deliver improved results. [23])

It's also evident to me from my years as a coach and experiential educator that we can (and must) distinguish between our personal preferences and what is being asked of us in a given situation, and that effective leaders consistently get out of their comfort zone to experiment with new behaviors, even (and especially) when such efforts feel awkward or inauthentic. If you identify as a "nice high-achiever," I suspect that being more assertive to overcome resistance and obtain your desired outcome will feel uncomfortable--and I'm absolutely certain that you needn't allow such feelings to stand in your way. I'm hopeful that this reading provides a useful starting point in that process--and it's just a starting point. What's next?

Consider your beliefs about power and influence and how they affect your approach to everyday power struggles:

• Self-Awareness, Empowerment and Choice [PDF] (Patricia Day Williams, Chapter 7.10 in Reading Book for Human Relations Training, edited by Alfred Cooke, Michael Brazzel, Argentine Saunders Craig and Barbara Greig, 1999)
• Interpersonal Power
• Corn Mazes and Mental Models

Learn more about the means by which power and influence are displayed and the behaviors that convey power and influence:

• Force Isn't Power
• Weather Systems (Power, Charisma and Leadership)
• The Value of a Good Fight
• Power Play (Jeffrey Pfeffer, Harvard Business Review, 2010)
• Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't (Jeffrey Pfeffer, 2010)
• Political Skill at Work: How to Influence, Motivate and Win Support (Gerald Ferris, Sherry Davidson and Pamela Perrewé, 2005 / 2nd edition, 2020)
• Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2001)
• The Language of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2008)
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, 1984 / 3rd edition, 2021)
• Why It Pays to Be a Jerk (Jerry Useem, The Atlantic, 2015)

Actively experiment with alternative approaches, especially any that feel uncomfortable or inauthentic:

• Attitude and Behavior
• Conscious Competence In Practice
• Why Change Is Hard
• Comfort with Discomfort
• Leadership and Authenticity
• The Tyranny of Feelings

Get regular feedback and integrate it into your ongoing efforts:

• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful
• Learning How to Learn

 

Dedicated to Jeffrey Pfeffer.

I didn't take Jeff's class "Paths to Power" when I was an MBA student at Stanford, but I discovered his work on power as a coach and it deeply informed not only my work with clients, but also my teaching when I later joined the Stanford faculty and became a junior colleague to Jeff. It's my understanding that I'm the only faculty member who ever taught Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy Feely") and included Jeff's work on my syllabus, in part because I believe the course's T-groups are one of the best settings in which we can learn about power.

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Footnotes

[1] Force Isn't Power

[2] What Is Dark Matter? (Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com, 2019)

[3] Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates (Robin Dunbar, Journal of Human Evolution, 1992)

[4] Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, page 32 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)

[5] Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes pages 104-105 (Franz de Waal, 2007). My understanding of De Waal's work suggests that while chimpanzee power struggles can turn violent and occasionally prove fatal, the vast majority involve dominance displays and the re-shuffling of hierarchical relationships rather than the elimination of rivals.

[6] The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Peter Drucker, 1966): "Today...the large knowledge organization is the central reality. Modern society is a society of large organized institutions. In every one of them...the center of gravity has shifted to the knowledge worker... The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail. He can only be helped." (pages 3-4)

[7] Beyond Theory Y (John Morse and Jay Lorsch, Harvard Business Review, 1970): "With highly uncertain tasks that require more extensive problem solving...organizations that are less formalized and emphasize self-control and member participation in decision making are more effective."

[8] Organizational Preferences and Their Consequences (Deborah Gruenfeld and Larissa Tiedens, Chapter 33 in the Handbook of Social Psychology, 2010): "The production of hierarchy is a central and omnipresent component of organizing."

[9] Leaders sometimes express a desire to operate in a more hierarchical environment where they could just "issue orders, like in the military." But I once asked a Navy SEAL officer how often he had given an order overriding a subordinate's dissent. "Twice," he said, "in thirteen years." Here, too, I'm reminded of a comment from Frans de Waal's research on chimpanzees, cited above, in which he notes that high-ranking members of a group seldom show their teeth in aggressive displays, presumably because they don't need to. (page 21)

[10] For an extensive discussion of each of these needs, see Human Motivation, Chapters 7-9 (David McClelland, 1987). Having developed his "motivational needs theory" around these three drives in the 1960s and '70s, later in his career McClelland suggested that a fourth such drive is the "avoidance motive," characterized by a fear of failure and a need to minimize anxiety and reduce distress (and discussed in Human Motivation, Chapter 10.) However, while McClelland's research on leadership identifies a relationship among the first three needs, he doesn't integrate the avoidance motive in the same way, nor is it included in most discussions of his theory, so I've omitted it here as well.

[11] Ibid, page 229.

[12] Ibid, page 271. (McClelland cites a definition made by his colleague and former student David Winter: The Power Motive, 1973.)

[13] Ibid, page 347. (McClelland cites a definition made by his longtime collaborator John Atkinson with Roger Heyns and Joseph Veroff: The effect of experimental arousal of the affiliation motive on thematic apperception, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1954.)

[14] Ibid, page 313:

"By way of contrast, those with high n Achievement peaked in their careers [earlier]. The nonlinear trend is significant. The explanation seems to lie in the fact that individuals high in n Achievement are used to doing things by themselves and for themselves... They are able to advance in the company as long as their job involves the individual contributions they make. However, at higher levels the focus on the job shifts to influencing others. The greater success of those with the leadership motive syndrome at this level can be explained on the grounds that they are interested in influencing others (the high n Power score), they are not unduly concerned about whether they are liked or not (the low n Affiliation score), and they are self controlled (the high Activity Inhibition score)."

[15] Ibid, page 254.

[16] Ibid, pages 354-355.

[17] Ibid, page 312.

[18] Power Is the Great Motivator (David McClelland and David Burnham, Harvard Business Review, originally written 1976, revised 1995, republished 2003.)

[19] The Tyranny of Feelings

[20] Human Motivation, page 281.

[21] The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

[22] Conform to the Culture Just Enough

[23] "Power Is the Great Motivator" (McClelland and Burnham)

Photo by KAZ Vorpal.

Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.

I first expressed this idea in 2015 during a webinar I conducted for the Harvard Business Review [1], and apparently it continues to resonate with people. [2] The slide above from my webinar is based on a passage in the HBR article that preceded it:

We should strive to create a culture in which feedback conversations are less stressful for all members of the organization. Among other steps, this involves giving and receiving feedback more frequently so that it becomes a normal aspect of organizational life, making it OK to both postpone feedback conversations until a better time, and ensuring that senior leaders walk the talk by offering and inviting direct feedback on a regular basis. [3]

One reason why this concept struck a chord is our continued reliance on traditional performance reviews, despite a growing body of research suggesting that such practices not only fail to have the desired effect, but may even be counter-productive. [4]

I don't think reviews are going to disappear, in part because they serve a number of purposes other than motivating learning and growth, such as creating a predictable calendar for discussions about compensation and career progression, or documenting poor performance as prelude to a termination. In this regard they are similar to interviews, which are deeply flawed as predictors of a successful hire and yet will undoubtedly continue to play a role in the hiring process. [5]

But the persistence of performance reviews need not prevent you from "making feedback normal" in your organization. What might that look like in practice? It's a topic I've explored numerous times over the years:

Make feedback less stressful:

• When delivering feedback, be mindful of subtle steps that might inadvertently trigger a sense of threat in the recipient.
• When receiving feedback, note that how your perceive or frame the experience will affect your stress level.
• Over time, build stronger relationships with the people who'll provide and receive feedback in your organization.

Build a feedback-rich culture as a leader:

• Foster an increased sense of safety and trust.
• Balance critical feedback with heartfelt appreciation.
• Seek out opportunities to give--and receive--feedback in public.
• Ask for feedback from your employees.

Build a feedback-rich culture from the middle:

• Cultivate support among senior leadership.
• Make a case that better feedback supports better business results.
• Ask for feedback from leadership.

Deliver more effective critical feedback:

• Clarify your motivation and intentions.
• Acknowledge and question your need for control.
• Be behaviorally--and emotionally--specific.
• Ask how you're contributing to the problem.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Making Feedback Less Stressful (Harvard Business Review Webinar)

• HBR webinar (1-hour video)
• HBR's summary of my remarks (8-page PDF)
• Webinar slide deck

[2] "Make feedback normal. Not a performance review." on Twitter.

[3] Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful (Originally published at Harvard Business Review)

[4] David Rock and his colleagues at the NeuroLeadership Institute have been making thoughtful critiques of traditional performance review practices for nearly a decade:

• Give Your Performance Management System a Review (David Rock, Harvard Business Review, 2013)
• Kill Your Performance Ratings (David Rock, Josh David and Beth Jones, strategy+business, 2014)
• Why More and More Companies Are Ditching Performance Ratings (David Rock and Beth Jones, Harvard Business Review, 2015)
• Why Performance Management Needs to Become Feedback Management (David Rock, Your Brain at Work, 2019)

[5] Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews

 

For Further Reading

Coaching and Feedback Tools for Leaders

 

Your 360 Report Is Ready

You're a senior leader who's initiated or agreed to participate in a 360-degree feedback assessment, with input from your direct reports and other colleagues, including (if applicable) peers, Board members, investors and other stakeholders. A coach or consultant has conducted a series of interviews with your feedback providers and distilled and edited their responses, or perhaps the qualitative feedback was entered directly by your providers and will be shared with you unedited.

If your 360 also included a quantitative component, your providers rated your capabilities on a number of items on a multi-point scale, and your feedback will be compared with others' to illustrate perceived strengths and weaknesses. Your ratings will probably be compared with those for all the leaders in your company who participated in the process, but the 360 provider may also have a larger data set derived from other organizations to provide a baseline.

You've just learned that your 360 report is ready, and you're about to review it for the first time. What can you expect? I no longer conduct 360 assessments, but I have in the past, and today I often work with clients to help them make sense of their reports. Here are four themes that characterize the 360 reports I've observed over the years:

1. It will be full of negative feedback and criticism.

It's typical for 360 reviews to be conducted in organizations where feedback is relatively infrequent, occurring at lengthy intervals in the context of formal processes, rather than on an as-needed basis in normal conversations. Anonymous 360s are often proposed as a way to navigate around a reluctance to share feedback more freely or discomfort with face-to-face dialogue. As a result, negative feedback is stored up instead of being discharged, which gives it more force and intensity when it finally finds expression in a 360. Further, in a 360 a number of separate incidents and situations are often distilled into a single comment, which can take the form of global criticism, rather than thoughtful critique, to use a distinction derived from the work of psychologist John Gottman: "[Criticism] is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint. The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an ad hominem attack: it is an attack on [the other person] at the core." [1]

2. It will have positive feedback as well, which you will discount or ignore.

One of the most reliable patterns in human psychology is the strength and duration of negative emotions and the relatively weak, fleeting nature of positive emotions. [2] This clearly benefits us as a species--evolution has selected for this response because it focuses our attention on potential threats and keeps us safe from harm--but at the individual level it also imposes a cost. We have to work much harder to acknowledge or even notice forms of appreciation and encouragement. As a consequence of this dynamic, every single time I've reviewed a 360 report with an executive they've rushed through all of the positive feedback it contains, or ignored it entirely, and focused almost exclusively on the negative.

3. If you have peers who provided feedback, they'll be the most negative.

This is a function of hierarchy and the role it plays in our working relationships. Even in relatively flat organizations, we consistently establish hierarchies--research psychologists Deborah Gruenfeld and Larissa Tiedens have noted that "the production of hierarchy is a central and omnipresent component of organizing." [3] We typically make a greater effort to regulate our behavior when interacting with someone who's more senior or junior to us in a hierarchy, and when a conflict occurs across a hierarchical boundary, the shared knowledge that the senior figure may choose to resolve the dispute by exerting their authority usually limits the extent of the struggle. In contrast, we're less regulated with people who occupy the same level in a hierarchy, and we often lack clarity on how to settle conflicts with peers, resulting in more rivalries and rancor. A predictable consequence of these factors is that 360 feedback from peers is more critical than feedback from superiors or subordinates. Executives are often surprised by this and may even feel betrayed because they view some of their peers as friends--and yet this, too, is a result of the relaxed boundaries and broader range of emotional expression that we allow ourselves with peers.

4. The feedback will focus on your agency to the exclusion of other factors.

In other words, you'll be portrayed as responsible for all of the problems cited in the report. (This will be more pronounced if you're the CEO, but it will be a theme in your report no matter what your title.) This is the result of another aspect of human psychology, a cognitive bias known as the "fundamental attribution error" which leads us to ascribe greater causality to individuals than to situational factors. [4] But this bias is heightened by the construct of the 360 itself, in which you're positioned as the player on the field and your feedback providers are positioned as "objective observers." What this framing fails to take into account is that the "observers" are also players, whose actions have shaped and influenced your own--but don't expect your feedback providers to take responsibility for their contributions, because being asked to provide feedback to someone else rarely prompts self-reflection.

So you've read your 360 report. Now what? What should you do with it?

Digest It

Most people initially have a negative response to their 360 report. This can be confusing, because in contemporary business culture we're so often told, "Feedback is a gift." And yet in my experience much feedback is stressful and unwelcome--some gift! The key is recognizing that all feedback, including your 360 report, is data. [5] And as you would with any data, you have to separate the noise from the signal. This is the essence of my commentary above--there's plenty of noise in your report, but there's also some very valuable signal. The task is to identify and focus on the latter without being overwhelmed by the former.

Specifically, be sure to thoroughly review and fully acknowledge the positive feedback in your report--it may be even more useful to you than the negative feedback, as the great management thinker Peter Drucker noted:

Waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. Concentration should be on areas of high competence and high skill. It takes far more energy and far more work to improve from incompetence to low mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. [6]

Acknowledge It

Reviewing your report may feel like the end of the process, but it's really just the beginning. Once you've digested it, the next step will be to talk about it. This may seem paradoxical--didn't you go through the trouble of an anonymous 360 to avoid having these awkward conversations? That may have been the original plan, but organizations make a huge mistake when they imagine that leaders will read their 360 reports and magically transform themselves without any messy dialogue. The real value of a 360 report is in providing a shared data set and a common starting point for a series of conversations, and while these conversations won't necessarily be easy, they can be made less stressful. [7]

In many cases this process begins with the person who interviewed your feedback providers. They'll be able to clarify any ambiguous remarks and provide additional color. But there are limits to what you can accomplish here, especially if you feel inclined to argue with them about what you perceive as flaws or shortcomings in the report. Once they've answered your questions and provided some further context, stop. Don't argue with them. Go talk to the people whose perspective matters most--your feedback providers and other stakeholders:

• One-on-one: At the very least, I highly recommend meeting individually with each of your feedback providers to discuss your report. This will require a significant investment of time, but it will be the best way to separate the signal from the noise, because it will be easier for both parties to speak candidly. These conversations may still feel risky, but that's actually a reason to have them. [8]
• In a small group: Also consider meeting jointly with a subset of your feedback providers, typically your direct reports. This may also feel risky, even daunting, but it will be a unique opportunity to model how to respond to feedback, which will make it easier when you have critical feedback for them. [9] It will also create an opening for the other members of the group to consider their contributions to the problems identified in your 360.
• In larger settings: Finally, it may be advisable to share some remarks with a larger group that includes people who didn't provide feedback but still have a stake in your performance in some way. If you're a CEO or a functional leader this could be at an all-hands or an offsite, which is one of the most effective ways to build a feedback-rich culture. [10]

Respond to It

In whatever settings you choose to acknowledge the feedback you've received in your 360, it will be necessary to also respond to it by indicating what will happen--and what will not happen--as a result. Once again, positive feedback is often overlooked here, so be sure to articulate what you'll continue to do (or do even more of) in response. It's harder to determine how to respond to the negative feedback, but you don't need to agree with it or treat it like a set of obligatory duties. That's a sure path to overwhelm and resentment. But it's essential to avoid responding defensively or to reject it out of hand. Instead, recognize that every piece of negative feedback contains a request for change and that all change carries a cost. With that as a guideline, you can distinguish among the following:

• Easy changes you're happy to make: Your 360 report undoubtedly includes negative feedback on certain behaviors or aspects of your management style that you're not attached to and can modify without undue effort. Remind people that we all have blind spots, and they don't need to wait for a 360 review to give you similar feedback in the future.
• Hard changes you're willing to attempt: Your report probably also includes negative feedback on behaviors or aspects of your style that feel more deeply rooted or will be more difficult to change. Invite people to partner with you in this process, by offering help, support and understanding, and possibly by taking some responsibility for their contributions to the issue.
• Changes that will be too difficult or costly to undertake: By no means should you feel compelled to accede to all of the negative feedback in your report. Some of the changes people are asking for will either impose an intolerable burden on you or will prevent you from accomplishing your goals as a leader. But bear in mind that they're requesting these changes because these behaviors or aspects of your style are imposing a cost on them. You need not grant their request or agree with their point of view, but you can empathize with it. [11]

 

This is a companion piece to The Problem with Anonymous Feedback.

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Footnotes

[1] The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling (Ellie Lisitsa, The Gottman Institute, 2013)

[2] Bad Is Stronger Than Good (Roy Bauermeister, Catrin Finkenauer, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Kathleen D. Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001)

[3] Organizational Preferences and Their Consequences (Deborah Gruenfeld and Larissa Tiedens, Chapter 33 in the Handbook of Social Psychology, 2010)

[4] The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process (Lee Ross, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1977)

[5] Feedback Is Not a Gift

[6] "Managing Oneself," Chapter 6 in Management Challenges for the 21st Century (Peter Drucker, 2001)

[7] Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful

[8] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[9] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[10] Building a Feedback-Rich Culture

[11] Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

Image by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Take Five (Stop Meeting Back-to-Back-to-Back!)

Most of my clients who worked remotely during the pandemic have resumed a range of in-person activities, from occasional days in the office to executive offsites to full-company retreats. And yet almost all of them expect to continue working remotely, at least in part. In some cases this is because they or their employees have relocated, or because they've hired in new geographies, making a full-time return to an office logistically infeasible. But in addition, unless they're involved in the production or transport of physical goods or the delivery of in-person services, they've recognized that the nature of their work has changed, as I noted last year:

Rather than viewing remote work during the pandemic as a temporary response to a crisis, my clients generally see it as a learning experience that enabled their organizations to become more flexible on a permanent basis. The benefits of this flexibility include responsiveness to employees' preferences, the ability to attract and retain talent in a wider range of geographical locations, and even increased productivity in some circumstances. [1]

But even as my clients begin this next chapter in which remote work will be a normal part of their daily or weekly routine, a surprising number of them are persisting with a practice that I view as one of the most toxic by-products of the hastily arranged transition to remote work at the start of the pandemic: Back-to-back-to-back meetings, without a single break in between, sometimes for hours on end.

Not only does the lack of a break between meetings exacerbate mental and physical fatigue, it also prevents effective context-shifting. In the blink of an eye, people go from a detail-oriented tactical agenda to a high-level strategic discussion, or they're thrust out of a large group setting into an intimate one-on-one, or vice versa. (It's grimly fitting that the service so many of us are using to facilitate these abrupt jumps is called Zoom.)

These problems are only made worse by the complexity of the current environment. War, climate change, political polarization and the persistent effects of the pandemic are taking a toll on even the most resilient people and organizations. My clients and their employees are finding themselves in unexpectedly emotional conversations with colleagues and that's unlikely to end any time soon. [2] In this context it's more important than ever to take a moment to reset, compose ourselves, and prepare for the next event on our calendars.

The solution, as with so many issues in my practice, is simple but not easy: End every event at least five minutes before the next one begins. This may seem patently obvious, but as with many potentially productive behaviors, it's very easy to create a set of aspirational rules and very difficult to change actual norms, as I've discussed previously:

You've probably worked as a group to identify some "ground rules" to improve the quality of your meetings--that's a common exercise and one I've conducted myself. But despite these efforts, your meetings haven't really improved. One reason why is the difference between "rules"--which are what we intend to do, or what we're supposed to do, and "norms," which are what we actually do... To repeat: Norms are informal social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave. [3]

So what are the keys to putting this simple guideline into place? As I describe in the piece cited above, there are four necessary conditions for the establishment of a productive norm:

1. A set of shared beliefs regarding productive behavior.

This is the easy part--the group simply needs to agree on a guideline that every event will end at least five minutes before the next one begins. But note that this won't be enough to change behavior, because rules aren't norms. Behavioral change only occurs when all of these conditions have been met.

2. Sufficient mutual esteem among group members so that its withdrawal would be felt as a loss by any individual.

Here's where it starts to get harder--the members of the group need to care about each other. This is why it's so important to invest in relationship-building and cultivate a sense of social cohesion, in ways that range from making small talk to in-person experiences such as offsites and retreats. So the leader has a special responsibility to promote these activities, because a group's mutual esteem can't be summoned at will--it can only be created over time.

3. A willingness by members to openly acknowledge a norm violation by a peer.

The degree of difficulty continues to increase--group members must be willing to speak up instead of silently colluding when the guideline is violated (as it inevitably will be). When the leader violates the guideline (also inevitable), other members must speak up and the leader must be receptive to their input. But when other members violate the guideline, speaking up can't be the sole responsibility of the leader--members must be willing to call out their peers.

4. A willingness by members to withhold esteem from a peer as a consequence of a norm violation.

Finally, group members must be willing to hold each other accountable, and the easiest way to accomplish this is by withholding esteem, as noted by legal scholar Richard McAdams:

Withholding esteem is, under certain conditions, a costless means of inflicting costs on others. These costs are often extremely small... But...dynamic forces can cause the weak desire for esteem to produce powerful norms, sometimes because individuals struggle to avoid deviance, sometimes because they compete to be heroic. [4]

The withholding of esteem need not be harsh or rancorous, and it's actually most effective when conveyed with a light touch or even a sense of humor. But yet again, peers can't leave this task to the leader--on occasion the leader may have to enforce a rule, but that doesn't make it a norm.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Four Buckets (On Co-Located Work)

[2] The prescient historian Peter Turchin didn't predict the pandemic, but in a 2010 essay in Nature he noted that we were entering an era of sustained instability and discord and tumult:

The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe... Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. Very long 'secular cycles' interact with shorter-term processes. In the United States, 50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020.

[3] Rules Aren't Norms (On Better Meeting Hygiene)

[4] "The Origin, Development, and Regulation of Norms," page 342 (Richard McAdams, Michigan Law Review, 1997)

 

For Further Reading

Dysfunction Isn't Heroism

Better Conditions for Working Remotely

 

Photo by PeakPx.