Rajiv had just come from a one-on-one meeting with his boss, where he learned he’d been promoted to EVP of operations. The plan was to merge two functional areas of the organization, which would substantially increase the number of Rajiv’s direct reports, including a group whose responsibilities weren’t in his current realm of expertise. Rajiv had been working toward an executive-level role for years, and he and I had both assumed that when this day arrived, it would be one of celebration. But rather than being excited and happy, the first thought that popped into Rajiv’s head was, how am I going to be able to do all of this?
Rajiv was a talented and self-aware leader. He excelled at operations, and although he was approachable and genuinely cared about his colleagues, he knew his Achilles heel was his hesitation when it came to people. Relative to his peers, Rajiv was slower to make moves or give feedback when team members were lower performing. He was also hesitant to delegate and always got a little more involved than he needed to be. In short, he was a leader who consistently fell into the I’ll Just Do It Myself Pitfall—and he knew it.
Now with this new, elevated role, Rajiv knew he could no longer do things the way he had been. He’d have to learn to play at a higher level to avoid getting trapped in the weeds. And with the new responsibility of overseeing a group that worked in an area he did not know, he’d have to quickly become comfortable with not being the expert and rely more on asking others for support, which did not come naturally to him.
My work with Rajiv and other leaders assuming larger roles or taking on exciting new challenges has shown me the importance of the third P, people, in supporting our effectiveness, presence, and satisfaction over time.
People—and here we’re talking not just about your direct reports or team, but your entire network of support—can bring the capacity, energy, and support needed to meet a deadline, realize a big goal, or build a company with great success and scale. People are a direct contributing factor to our Leader A days when we feel like we’re working toward a shared vision, or when the people we count on are present. On the flip side, people can be a contributing factor to Leader B days, especially when a key role on our team is vacant or when we feel drained by our interactions with others. The third P—people—impacts both our capacity and bandwidth as a leader as well as our capacity for how much we can hold and handle.
For this third P, it’s critical to bring a Leader A mindset, which allows us to get comfortable with the idea of depending on others and considering how everyone can rise together. This requires that we are willing to let go, be vulnerable, ask for help, not have all the answers, see the unique value and contributions our colleagues bring, and not jump in each time anxiety or control gets the better of us. In fact, as one CEO said to me, “The goal is to make yourself not necessary.” This doesn’t mean you’re stepping back—it means you’re stepping up as a leader, which requires a greater focus on your team and their long-term success. At the same time, we must be able to maintain healthy boundaries and rules of engagement so that people do not drain us of energy, recognizing what’s not ours to own, tactically or emotionally. When you’re in a Leader A mindset, you care for yourself and for others. As Bill Gates said back in 2008 at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, “There are two great forces of human nature—self-interest and caring for others.”1
In this chapter, we will look at the third P of people through two different vantage points. The first is through the lens of the interdependence required to raise your game and raise the game of others. We’ll start by examining the current strength of your team and then I’ll show you how to optimize what I call the leverage + empower + inspire equation. We’ll then take a deeper and more personal look at your current strategic network of support and see if you have the right people in place—and if you find that you don’t, I’ll offer some tips on how to find them. Next we’ll look at the emotional autonomy and independence we must have to ensure that we’re caring for ourselves. We’ll end the chapter by examining the health of our boundaries and rules of engagement with others.
Think about a team you work with today. It may be a traditional “top-down” structure wherein you have a direct line of authority over your team members (affectionately called “the lieutenant table” by some of the leaders I work with), or it may be a project team where there is a “dotted” line and you have more of an indirect influence over the team members.
The first step is to take a good hard look at your team today. No one’s starting point is the same, but there are three important questions to ask yourself:
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Consider the vision and goals you are working toward and whether the folks on your team have the capabilities needed. This can be very difficult for some leaders, especially if you’ve worked with members of your team for a long time and they’re no longer the best fit for the job. Such was the case for Rajiv, for whom taking an objective look at his team created tension and angst. He was very comfortable with the folks he’d worked with for years—there were long-standing relationships and loyalties in place. However, as he and I discussed which 20 percent of the job was creating 80 percent of the energy drain he was feeling, he realized that a key direct report wasn’t meeting the mark in their growing business. Rajiv had been picking up the slack for this person, falling into two pitfalls: I’ll Just Do More and I’ll Just Do It Myself. Covering for this underperforming employee meant Rajiv was having more Leader B than Leader A days. And in his new, larger role, he simply wasn’t going to be able to compensate for his colleague.
You might find in looking at the team more closely that the fundamental team design and structure are off. Perhaps people need to be layered differently or reorganized. Or, like Rajiv, perhaps you realize there are team members who don’t have the capabilities or aren’t performing at a level the organization now needs.
In these cases, remember it’s not fair to anyone to let a person languish in a role that is no longer suited for them. Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, really shifted my view of this when I heard him speak about compassionate leadership. “The most important lesson I’ve learned in the role of CEO,” he said, “is to not leave the pitcher in the game too long.… The least compassionate thing you can do when someone is not equipped to be doing what they’re doing is to leave them in that role.”2 When you’re the team leader, it’s your job to be that coach walking out to the pitcher’s mound and make the right call for the business and the person—even when it’s a very difficult decision. When you’re in a challenging situation like this one, ask yourself these questions:
Leadership does require that we sometimes give tough performance reviews, help a low performer get back on track, or occasionally, let someone go. With compassionate leadership and Weiner’s counsel in mind, remember to make the tough “what” decisions and preserve your integrity and the other person’s dignity in “how” you execute those decisions. When I ask leaders to reflect on the one thing they would have done differently from the previous year, the answer I most often hear is they wished they’d made a tough people decision sooner or faster—they wished they’d trusted their instincts that someone was wrong for the job or just not going to get there rather than letting it drag out.
For some leaders the idea of succession planning may feel uncomfortable. Especially if, like Rajiv, you’re just starting a new role and are motivated to add more value, you may be wondering why on earth I’m advising you to contemplate who is going to take on your position one day. But in order to keep growing and evolving your own purpose (chapter 2), you must have people who can eventually step into your shoes so that you and your organization are able to tackle future opportunities. You ultimately want to set in place a virtuous cycle so as you continue to grow and free yourself to take on new things → you are helping your people free up and take on news things → and then they can help others grow and take on new things. Many leaders underestimate how far in advance they need to start looking at this and don’t always get it right.
Raising your game while raising the game of others also means that you continually look at what I call the leverage + empower + inspire equation. This is a critical equation to keep your eye on as you continue to grow as a leader, especially at key junctures such as when you shift from being a “leader of tasks” to a “leader of a team” to a “leader of leaders.” At each of these junctures, you must redefine all three parts of the equation, which serve a different function but together form a powerful synergy.
Leverage: Get Clear on Who Owns What. The leverage part of the equation is about increasing your bandwidth and capacity. It requires that you rethink your level of involvement and ensure that everyone on the team is truly playing to their highest and best in their respective roles. You simply cannot be involved in all that you were in a previous role or when your organization was smaller. Ideally, you are providing your boss leverage, your team is providing you leverage, their teams are providing them leverage, and so on.
One tool that can be especially helpful here is the Who Owns What table. It’s built on the same concepts of passion and contribution from chapter 2 on purpose.
– In column two, for each initiative or duty, what is your highest contribution?
– In column three, for each initiative or duty, what is your highest passion?
TABLE 4-1 |
||||||||||
The Who Owns What table |
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Your role/function |
What part of this is your highest contribution? |
What part of this are you most passionate about? |
What part of this can you get more leverage? |
Who is the best person(s) to do that? |
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Key initiatives |
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Normal responsibilities |
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The most optimal situation is that someone else’s Quadrant I (their highest contribution and passion) is now your Quadrant IV (your lower contribution and passion). That is the ultimate win-win.
This is a great exercise to do at the start of each fiscal year. For example, last January I spent a half day with a leader working through the Who Owns What table against his team’s functional plan. By the end of the exercise, for almost every major initiative or duty he was responsible for, we had identified the places where he could gain additional support from others to accomplish the functions’ objectives. Imagine the relief and encouragement he felt once he’d identified the tasks that would allow his team to develop and buy himself more bandwidth and time.
Increasing leverage for yourself and your team isn’t easy. It means getting more comfortable with being able to let go of things you used to do—in some cases, even things you really enjoy doing or you are good at or faster at than others—but may no longer be your highest and best use and could provide someone else on your team the opportunity to grow.
And be careful of going too far. If your sole intention is leverage, you run the risk of others feeling used or taken for granted. If you treat others simply as an extra set of hands for your sole benefit, you end up siphoning off the parts of the job you don’t want to do while taking credit, or enjoying the high-visibility parts of the job alone.
The last watch-out? Some leaders may be good at leveraging, but when it’s done without sharing context or without transparent decision making, or done without thinking of the other person’s development, there is lost opportunity to help build the capability and business judgment of others. Therefore, leverage must come with the second dimension of our leverage + empower + inspire equation, empower.
Empower: Help Yourself and Others Spread Their Wings. The empower part of the leverage + empower + inspire equation focuses on building team capability and motivation. It requires that we think about how to offer freedom, autonomy, and authenticity to those we work with while setting them up for success as we offer more rope and opportunity. This requires looking at empowerment from two different perspectives. The first is from your own perspective, and the second is from the perspective of the team member you’re trying to empower.
One of my favorite tools is the classic “T-shaped management” tool, which we can adapt for empowerment. In the original, the concept illustrated the dual responsibility of the executive who shares knowledge freely across the organization (the horizontal axis), while remaining committed to business performance (the vertical axis).3 I’ve reframed the image in the following way:
As you look at empowerment from your own perspective and consider what you will let go of and when you will let it go, you can ask yourself the following questions:
The other perspective you must take as a leader is putting yourself in the shoes of the team member you are trying to empower. The irony is that the best empowerment comes with being clear on the boundaries within which your team member or direct report has freedom to act. As you prepare to empower your team more, you can ask yourself the following questions:
THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP AND SUPPORT OF AN EA
Not all leaders have executive assistants, and I understand that for many organizations, this additional support is simply not possible. But for those who do or for professionals who are considering enlisting the help of an EA, the support can be invaluable.
In my coaching of executives, I often spend a lot of time learning about this special relationship between leaders and their assistants. In some cases, I spend considerable time with the assistant to help optimize the relationship.
Below is a checklist of the type of things I ask or look for. (You’ll see that many of the ideas come from chapter 3 on process that can be taken on by an effective EA.)
Calendar:
Keeping day on track:
Travel and expenses:
Documents, systems, trackers:
Personal (where negotiated):
I’ve seen EAs become extensions of their leaders: skilled EAs capably represent their leaders in all contexts, interacting with the leaders’ key constituencies in a way that extends the goodwill of their leaders and moves their agendas forward.a
When I have spoken to EAs who had great relationships with the leaders they supported, they shared that these folks took the extra steps to share context, explain who the key stakeholders were, and involve the EA as a critical member of the team. The leaders who gave their best received the best support in return.
a. Melba J. Duncan, “The Case for Executive Assistants,” Harvard Business Review, May 2011, 88–91.
I want to acknowledge that this is all so much easier said than done. I know when I’m stressed by an urgent deliverable or when I’m feeling uncertain about something, my coping mechanism is the I’ll Just Do It Myself Pitfall. Anxiety running high, I decide I’ll just figure this out on my own and go for it. Controlling the situation gives me a temporary sense of relief, and sometimes it moves a task forward, but very often, bull-rushing a situation is the last thing the team needs from me. I am still learning to remember to pause, step back, and ask myself if this is something I truly need to insert myself into. Sometimes the answer may very well be yes. But if I conducted an audit of all the times I’ve succumbed to the I’ll Just Do It Myself Pitfall, the truth is that probably more than 50 percent of the time I didn’t need to get as involved in the way that I did.
You can end up doing yourself and your team a disservice when you step in and turn a task into a fire drill. It can leave a team feeling demotivated or give the impression you don’t have confidence in them. The Leader A mindset, by contrast, is one of curiosity and confidence: your job is to help the team build the capability and the motivation to get there themselves. You want a team that functions interdependently while honoring each person’s strengths and contributions.
Inspire: Move Beyond Just “Hub and Spoke.” The inspire part of the leverage + empower + inspire equation takes the individual people you lead and helps them to feel part of a larger collective, vision, or mission. When I’ve done 360 reviews for folks, I’ve always been struck by those whose team members or employees describe being “willing to run through a brick wall” for the leader and the organization. When I probed more deeply, I found that the leader had not only leveraged and empowered the team but also had that final secret ingredient of being someone who inspired the team to connect their work to a meaningful goal.
This kind of leadership requires that you do more than just lead by “hub and spoke,” where team members are connected to the larger whole mostly through their one-on-ones with you but don’t necessarily feel connected to each other or the bigger picture. By leading point to point, you risk creating silos or creating perceptions of inner circles and favorites. Even worse, it can also become a time and energy sink if you’re having five separate conversations when you could bring five people together for one decision.
Intentionally bring people together and build the esprit de corps of the group. For your organization, function, team, project, or initiative, ask yourself these questions:
One analogy I love when I think of leaders who are great at the inspire part of the leverage + empower + inspire equation is that of a crew team: all individuals working toward the same destination in perfect rhythm and harmony.
Legendary sportswriter Paul Gallico, who rowed for Columbia, beautifully described the bonding process a squad undergoes when it moves from a group of individuals to a single, unified crew. “We became one with the boat and our fellow oarsmen and felt ourselves as giants, since one’s own power applied to the shell was multiplied by eight.” According to Gallico, these moments bring “an ineffable delight” to the rowers, “a great exultation.”4
This “great exultation” is known to oarsmen as swing. Swing is almost indescribable. It’s the moment when eight individuals blend together and experience a feeling of transcendence as they glide effortlessly over the water as one. Writer Michael Socolow, who also rowed for Columbia, describes swing as “unity made manifest. It’s surrender to process rather than demanding results.”5 When a crew is in a state of swing, individual ego and agenda falls away, and team members become a single unit whose effectiveness is far greater than the sum of its parts.
BRING THE LEVERAGE + EMPOWER + INSPIRE EQUATION HOME
You can also use many of the concepts discussed so far to take a scan of your home and determine where you could gain more time, energy, and bandwidth. One colleague, a business owner and single mom, explained how she managed a big move with her two school-aged children to a new city:
I must tell you that I’ve really leaned on the “what’s my highest and best use?” question at home! The move was more overwhelming than I anticipated—I really believed I could avoid any bumps in the road with superior organization. What I didn’t factor in was all the things you can’t anticipate, like unexpected repairs and my babysitter getting sick.
Point being, when I had one hundred things to do and felt like I had to do at least twenty of them simultaneously, I’d ask myself that question. Is it really my highest and best use to be unpacking this box of stuffed animals? Putting books on shelves? Mowing the lawn? And so on. Most of the time it was not, and these small tasks were things the kids could easily handle.
So I delegated anything I could to them. They learned all kinds of new things, gained confidence, and felt “important and adult.” I was then free to work and tend to the big stuff, which left me much less stressed and therefore a better mom.
The parallels with effective business teams are easy to see. Individual team members must be highly skilled, self-reliant, and capable, but able to function as part of a synchronized group focused on the same goal. Peter Dean, writing for Wharton Magazine, observes that in rowing, “no member is the star of the team.” Each one must (1) adapt to the strengths and shortcomings of the other, (2) empathize with the other’s point of view, adjusting quickly to what’s needed in the moment, (3) be open to every other member and willing to get past personal feelings of disappointment, and (4) give themselves up for the benefit of the entire crew, rowing as an extension of the teammate.6 You could hardly ask for a better description of an effective team in the workplace!
As you grow as a professional, you will have more responsibilities and pressures. It’s increasingly difficult to get it all done on your own—or even with the team that reports to you.
To guard against the old adage “It gets lonelier at the top,” be proactive in seeking support beyond your immediate team. This isn’t the same kind of networking that you do when you’re searching for jobs. These are the connections that help you be highly effective, present, and satisfied and that feed your Leader A.
To build that kind of network requires that you get more comfortable asking for help, find very specific types of support, and uphold your end of the relationship by being a good citizen and good support to others as well.
It takes a fair amount of inner confidence and strength to admit that we need the advice or support of others. The New York Times article “Why Is Asking for Help So Difficult?” states that we don’t ask because no one likes to seem weak, needy, or incompetent. Additionally, no one likes shifting the balance of power in a relationship where we feel like we are the one indebted to another person.7
Wayne Baker, author and faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, offers five concrete tips for getting better at asking for help:
We’re all better off when we’re able to be vulnerable enough to acknowledge our need for help and ask for it.
Next, it’s important to think strategically about the specific kind of support you need and who can fit the bill. The following isn’t an exhaustive list but rather an illustration of the type of roles that others can play in your life if you look for them and allow them in under the tent.
Other experts: While you might be an expert in your own right, it’s critical to seek out those who bring different experiences, understanding, and pattern recognition to the issues you’re facing. This can include peers or even direct reports who have certain functional expertise that’s critical for the year ahead, or external folks who have successfully navigated similar situations.
As you seek out the help of other experts, hold confidence in your own expertise while also adopting a beginner’s mind. Beginner’s mind is a term that comes from Zen Buddhism and refers to someone with an openness to learning, even at an advanced level. It’s all about having an open attitude and stance.
In 2013 when Chip Conley was tapped to help develop Airbnb into the world’s leading hospitality brand, he’d already spent more than twenty years as the founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second-largest boutique hotel brand in the United States, and was a New York Times best-selling author of titles such as Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. But at Airbnb he found himself in unfamiliar territory: twice the age of the average employee and two decades older than CEO Brian Chesky, Conley had never worked in tech and had never even used Uber or Google Docs. Conley recognized he had a choice: walk away from his new job, or embrace beginner’s mind in order to adapt and change. He decided to stay.9
Conley found a ready ally in Chesky, who was also a proponent of beginner’s mind, and who, like Conley, saw a growth opportunity for both of them. Conley needed to learn the landscape and lingo of tech, while Chesky needed to learn from Conley’s management experience and emotional intelligence. They bonded over their belief that anyone of any age can have a growth mindset, and Airbnb benefited from their “mutual mentorship.” During the four years Conley worked full-time for the company, Airbnb expanded exponentially and garnered guest satisfaction reviews that surpassed the hotel industry’s.10
A beginner’s mind helps us to innovate and connect the dots during those moments when we engage and listen with openness. Watch out for trying to protect an idealized image of the expert who has all the answers. Trying to emphasize your expertise or even getting defensive about your need for help is exhausting, and it can preclude the very thing you need, which is support and new learning. True confidence is about knowing what you bring to the table while still having the humility to be blown away by another person’s expertise and willing to entertain an insight or perspective that shapes your future thinking. As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki stated so well, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”11
Sausage makers: As you become more senior, there is a premium on being clear, concise, and articulate. For some of us, it takes processing out loud to get to that kind of clarity and conviction. This kind of rough, unedited processing isn’t meant for public consumption—hence the term sausage making, as no one really cares to see how sausage is made! If you’re someone who needs to talk things out to get to clarity, know with whom you can talk through big decisions, difficult conversations, or presentations. This kind of sounding board will help you frame key messages or communications.
Don’t go to those who lack the patience to be a sounding board, or even worse, don’t go to the people who weigh in on your performance evaluations. Without an understanding of what you need, they may unintentionally peg you as someone who is not articulate, who isn’t fact-based or logical, or who wastes their time. If you must make sausage with anyone who holds a position to evaluate you, be sure to preface it by saying, “I’d love to brainstorm something with you,” or “This thought isn’t fully formed yet, but I wonder if I could get your gut reaction before I have the team substantiate it with additional data.”
Accountability buddies: For our most important goals or objectives, it can be helpful to have someone other than your boss or the board holding you accountable. This is someone who knows what you want to achieve and helps you get there by checking in on milestones. These people can help you keep your eye on the big rocks. I learned the term accountability buddy from one of the CEOs I coached who shared that the sole reason he was hiring me was to help ensure he stayed focused on the strategic vision, key priorities, and collective wins for his organization.
Once someone agrees to be your accountability buddy, come up with a check-in system that makes the most sense for what you’re trying to achieve and for both of your schedules. Also decide on the format for your meetings. Quarterly check-ins may be fine for long-term strategic goals, but I’ve had clients who met with their accountability partner on a monthly basis, and some who’ve done weekly check-ins when they had a tight deadline or wanted to make quicker progress.
Mirrors: As you take on more senior roles, you might find there are fewer people who are willing to give it to you straight, call you out, or hold you accountable to the purpose and vision you’ve set. It’s always important to have someone who can identify your blind spots and reflect back to you what they see, like a mirror. Who’s the “straight talker” in your life whose insights you can trust? This could be a person in your organization you’ve known for many years or a person not at all connected to your industry, who has no personal stake in your organization.
Helicopters: While some people are detail-oriented and excel at focusing on the granular level, helicopters are those who provide an aerial view, help you see the world differently, or help you to connect your daily work to the bigger picture or a longer-term horizon. These are folks who help to strengthen your thinking on an issue by offering you benchmarks, pointing out trade-offs to consider, or raising the organizational or market conditions at play. They help you see the future impact and implications on different groups by widening perspective—a key characteristic of Leader A mode. Look for the people who think big—or at least think differently than you do. A different perspective can move you forward or trigger a breakthrough when you’re stuck in a rut.
Cheerleaders: Who doesn’t need a cheerleader from time to time? When we’re working hard, an “attaboy” or “attagirl” can go a long way to keep energy and motivation alive. Know who you can turn to when you need acknowledgment, a pep talk, or a pat on the back. If you don’t instinctively know who this person is, ask yourself: Who can I count on to notice and affirm that I am adding value? Who can share a victory lap with me? Who is genuinely happy for me when I hit a major deliverable, have a presentation go well, or have a great aha moment?
It’s heartbreaking when I see a client seeking acknowledgment or reassurance from people who fundamentally lack the patience, capacity, or even the capability to do this. Precious energy is wasted in counterproductive efforts to get acknowledgment from that one boss or one colleague who absolutely is not wired to give it to you. Focus instead on the people in your life who naturally support, love, or acknowledge your efforts in meaningful ways.
Safe harbors: In a similar vein, rather than focus energy on people who are negative, toxic, or self-absorbed, learn to channel your efforts into those who fundamentally respect you and have the emotional intelligence required to be a safe harbor. Psychological safety is an important dimension of both individual and team performance. Research from Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has shown that we optimize performance and learning in groups when both accountability and safety are present.12 With whom can you let your guard down and share your ideas, thoughts, and observations without judgment or retribution? As your ideas percolate, who will listen and consider the possibilities without raining on your parade or trying to one-up you? That’s your safe harbor.
As you consider these seven roles, remember that it’s not necessary to find people to match all of them. You may have a couple of people who are able to fulfill multiple roles—or you may find that your situation requires only one or two of them. But as you look for the best folks to bring under the tent, consider colleagues, friends, contacts, or family members. If you can’t find someone in your own circle, you might find that bringing in the additional support of an executive coach, a therapist, or a wellness trainer is just what you need.
EXERCISE
Assess Your Current Strategic Network of Support
TABLE 4-2 |
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Assess your current strategic network of support |
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Role |
Who’s playing this role in my life now? |
Who could play it? |
Who could I play this role for at work or in my personal life? |
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Expert |
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Sausage maker |
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Accountability buddy |
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Mirror |
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Helicopter |
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Cheerleader |
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Safe harbor |
As you assemble your network of support, be careful not to adopt a “take” mentality. Wharton professor Adam Grant has explored the roles of “givers” and “takers” in his research. Givers contribute to others with no expectation of receiving anything in return. Takers, meanwhile, try to get others to serve their needs while guarding their own expertise and time.13 We’ve all been on the receiving end of people who made audacious requests or who call us only when they need something, or who may give but with a quid pro quo mentality. We’ve all rolled our eyes at the people who are suddenly nice and charming when they need something or believe there is some commercial gain or benefit in it for them.
In contrast, the best supportive relationships evince a healthy give-and-take of information, social access and connections, and personal time and energy.14 In the New York Times Magazine article “What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” researchers found that a feeling of “psychological safety” was the most important component for ensuring that a team was successful and worked well together. Amy Edmondson’s work that I mentioned was a critical underpinning to what the Google research found. High-performance teams are characterized by interpersonal trust, mutual respect, conversational turn-taking, and empathy.15 In relationships like these we see that powerful virtuous cycle of growth at work, where we’re aligned to core fundamental values of generosity, service, and nonjudgment. Sometimes our relationships and our desire to support others outweigh time efficiency or productivity because it’s just the right thing to do.
Here are some tips to keep in mind as you build a community of support in a thoughtful and generative way:
A WORD ON YOUR HOME TEAM
When it comes to teams and personal support networks, think beyond work and don’t forget your home team. Teams at home can be defined in many ways and may include your partner, kids, parents, cousins, closest friends, boyfriend/girlfriends, and pets.
Don’t assume those closest to us will give us a pass. Our loved ones tend to be more lenient and more forgiving because they love us, but we can’t make the mistake of always giving them our worst. As I’ve already mentioned, a cue for many leaders that Leader B mode is taking over is when they find themselves lashing out at their loved ones and taking out work stress on them. Therefore, one of the big things I encourage you to consider is that your team at home—those who are most dear to us—also deserves your best.
Ask yourself what kind of support they need. For example, give them the courtesy of communication. Give them a heads-up when new things arise, and involve them in the big decisions about career changes or major projects or dream goals you hope to take on. Consider how these things will affect the whole of your life and your home team.
For many of the folks I work with, we come up with a team name. One leader named his family “Team Quinn” after his last name. Each week, we talked not just about what happened at work but also what was going on with Team Quinn. Once he got behind the concept of Team Quinn, he started to get more involved in family life. He began coaching his son’s basketball team, for example. He had always assumed his wife would give him a pass, but she had been an incredible source of support and help all these years, and now he wanted to spend more intentional time with family. He gave himself more permission to truly enjoy vacations, to work less, and to focus on his home team in a different way.
For some of you, the strategic network of support exercise might yield a different insight entirely. Perhaps you realize that you are that person who plays these roles for others. You are in service of others and always putting others’ needs ahead of your own. If this is you, know that in addition to learning to allow yourself to receive the support of others, there is also opportunity for more Leader A days by building more effective boundaries and shifting your rules of engagement with others—especially in today’s work environment, where collaboration is so prized.
One leader, Derek, felt he was constantly in demand from his team, his peers, and his boss. Someone was always stopping by his office to ask a question or seek advice. As a natural “cheerleader” and “safe harbor” for others, he valued being sought after for counsel. But on the other hand, his schedule was constantly interrupted and his projects were continually derailed—so much so that by the end of a typical day, he felt frustrated and exhausted. Derek regularly fell into the I’ll Just Do It Later Pitfall because other people’s demands and needs kept coming in front of his own top priorities and self-care. It was time for Derek to update his boundaries and rules of engagement. Following are some ways he did so.
When you’re in a situation like Derek’s, and the people around you are not shy to declare, ask for, or put their own needs first, it’s easy to lose sight of your own. Healthy relationships and boundaries come first, with a greater understanding of where your own needs begin and end and where others’ needs begin and end.
For example, try this experiment. Take a sheet of paper and draw a horizontal line across the middle. Now, above the line, write down everything that is a true need or priority that originates solely from you. Then, below the line on the bottom half of the page, write down all the requests, emails you must return, documents you’re working on, or things you have on the list that are in response to someone else’s needs or requests, including those of your team, boss, clients/customers, friends, and so on.
I know it’s not totally black and white given all the interdependencies we have with others, but give it a try for the sake of being able to see where your priorities and needs begin and end and where others’ priorities and needs begin and end. Here are some of the things I hear from clients, like Derek, who try this exercise:
Another good way to start practicing paying attention to your own needs is noticing when you are starting to feel “quietly” frustrated, resentful, angry, or upset about something. When you feel this tension, immediately get curious:
THE COST OF INEFFECTIVE BOUNDARIES
Consider this sobering reality: research from leaders across twenty organizations shows that those considered valued sources of information and those most in demand by others have the lowest career satisfaction over time.
Women often bear the most penalties:
Source: Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant, “Collaborative Overload,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload.
I’m not suggesting that you stop supporting others or stop being in service of others. I’m asking you to give yourself permission to acknowledge your own priorities and to take accountability for them, and to recognize when others have needs and when they—not you—need to take accountability for them. Here are some strategies to try.
Discern when giving is about your values rather than about your fears. As I continued to work with Derek, he and I dug more deeply into the dynamics at his work and discovered the difference between a Leader A and a Leader B day. On Leader A days, Derek gave or supported someone else in a way that left him feeling like he had truly made a difference or contributed to someone else meaningfully. The “give” was authentic and sincere, and it tied to his core values of good citizenship, generosity, and using his gifts, talents, and natural emotional intelligence wisely.
As Derek reflected on Leader B days, he saw that some of the motivation behind his giving or responding to others was to avoid conflict or preclude guilt. He realized the people most getting his attention were often the loudest, pushiest, or whiniest, or those who backed him up on his heels. On those Leader B days, he felt manipulated or fearful of someone else’s retribution, disappointment, or disapproval.
Add EO to your EQ. Emotional ownership (EO) is the ability to take responsibility and accountability for your own emotions. Emotional quotient (EQ) is the ability to tune into others. Maybe, like Derek, you have great EQ—and in fact, your antennae for others’ feelings may be so powerful that you absorb too much, beyond what is yours. You may be unnecessarily taking on more stress or accountability for that other person than the situation warrants.
When your EQ is high, you may be able to sense others’ emotions, needs, or desires (maybe even before they are able to articulate them!), but part of the work is learning to notice them without reacting, giving in, or rescuing (we’ll cover more on this in chapter 5 on presence). When you feel the urge to say yes to another person or take on something for them, but you know you are doing it out of fear or habit rather than your values, hit the pause button. Say to yourself before acting: “This is their emergency, not mine.” You can also use the power of visualization: imagine pulling your antennae back into yourself when they start to feel frayed. Give yourself a break from always sensing what’s going on for others.
When I work with people on building healthier boundaries, I caution them not to swing the pendulum too far the other way. This can lead to a disruption and inconsistency of presence—especially if your demeanor is naturally approachable and open.
Boundaries are not about putting on a suit of armor and assuming a defensive posture in trying to protect your time, energy, or emotions like a solider stationed at the top of a fortress keeping enemies at bay. They’re also not about opening your door so wide that everyone and anything can get in. They’re about finding that middle ground that honors and protects your needs while remaining judiciously available to others. Figure 4-2 provides a visual of the continuum of boundaries; the goal is to aim for the middle ground of “Healthy Boundaries.”
Seek more information and assess. Hear out another person’s need and then assess the situation: Is that a need you can meet authentically? There are no hard-and-fast rules. Because there is always nuance in situations, rather than a default yes or a default no, don’t give an answer right away. If the request comes via email, ask to set up a time to hear out the person or send some questions to clarify what’s really being asked. Solicit the information you need so you can make an astute decision for your organization, your family, or yourself. Now go back to chapter 2 and look at the categories of your yesses and nos. Seek information to determine if this is a strategic yes, if this is a partial yes, or if it was never your yes to begin with.
Acknowledge the request or person. While you might be turning down or renegotiating the request itself, it doesn’t mean you have to turn down the person. Remember, these interactions with others are still points of connection, and important relationships should always be handled with care and respect. Make your goodwill transparent, and use your EQ to acknowledge what you sense may be going on for the other person:
Respond accordingly. How you ultimately respond then becomes a function of how you assessed the situation or request. Below are a range of possible responses:
Understand that your relationships with other people are a dance and that as you grow and take on new things, you will outgrow certain people or relationships. As you change the rules of engagement, there could be backlash or discomforts. That is why I encourage you not to swing the pendulum too far and to always act in alignment to your character and values, with what’s best for the business and strategic for the situation at hand.
Having an underperforming team, a lack of key head count, or conflict with others at work are some of the quickest, and perhaps most painful, ways to fall into Leader B mode. When one member of a team suffers or slips into a pitfall, the entire team is adversely affected. However, the converse is true, and a team that enjoys psychological safety and works well together is far more effective and satisfied than the sum of its parts, leading to more Leader A days for everyone.
Our work lives will always be intertwined with and dependent on many different people, and many different types of people. Especially as your impact expands, you’ll need to lean more on the support of your people in order to meet your personal goals and the goals of the organization. When people are all working together at their highest and best, the resulting synergy can lead to incredible results and long-term effectiveness and satisfaction for everyone involved.
What to Remember: