I’ve been thinking a lot lately about motivation and what makes a good leader. This usually happens when I’m stuck in traffic, and I’m left wondering what’s motivating me to continue driving into the office. Money? Yeah, that’s one reason, but not the only reason, nor even a major one. Co-workers? Yeah, I work with some pretty cool, smart, funny people, and I don’t want to let them down by not doing my job.
Really, though, what motivates me most is a boss who trusts me, treats me like an adult, and knows when to get out of the way and let me do my job the way I know how it should be done. So when I saw an article online today titled “Why Your Organization Suffers From Leadership Dysfunction” by Mike Myatt, I immediately had to read it.
Too often, though, bosses lead by fear. They either fear employees screwing something up, or they fear their own inability to lead. In essence, they become risk managers and not leaders. Myatt wrote:
Leadership has become synonymous with babysitting in many organizations, which does nothing more than signal a lack of trust in the workforce. I can think of no time in modern history where employees feel less valued and trusted. Remember, a leaders job is not to place people in a box, but to free them from boxes.
That phrase, “free them from boxes,” reminded me of a point I read in another article titled “When Your Character Leads the Charge, Everyone Owns the Goal,” by Don Shapiro. In the article, he poses seven questions “you can ask yourself to learn more about your own character and how it may affect your leadership effectiveness.” My favorite is No. 4 on the list.
Do you encourage people to become leaders themselves and support them when they spread their leadership wings?
You can only support someone if you trust them and trust yourself that you coached them correctly. Shapiro’s question reminded me of another article I recently read titled “Want Productive Employees? Treat Them Like Adults” by Tony Schwartz. He wrote:
Distrust begets distrust in return. It kills motivation rather than sparking it. Treat employees like children and you increase the odds they’ll act like children. You reap what you sow — for better and for worse.
Which takes us back to Myatt’s article and his ideas about why there is rampant dysfunctional leadership. He wrote:
Many corporations just desire leaders to go along and get along more than they desire them to lead.
That’s not a sustainable model, though. We need leaders who encourage experimentation, who turn away from conformity, who trust their employees enough that autonomy is part of a job function and not a reward. Because if we don’t get those types of leaders, Myatt warns:
Until organizations reject those playing leadership and embrace those willing to challenge the status quo, offer new thought, encourage dissenting opinion, and who desire to serve instead of seeking to be served, we’ll continue to see organizations struggle unnecessarily.
Yeah, that’s what I think about when I’m driving to work. Now, if I could work from home, I’d probably just go straight from my bed to my computer, start working, and not think about any of this.
Do you consider yourself a good leader? Why? Or do you work for a good leader? Why is that person good? Please let me know in the comments.
(Image via Flickr: opensource.com/Creative Commons)
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Jason, thank you for referencing my blog about the seven questions to define one’s leadership character. Mike Myatt and I are both members of the Lead Change Group which believes that leadership is about who you are, not your position or power. That’s what we call Character-Based Leadership (which is also the name of the new book by the Lead Change Group). Right now, there is a tug of war occurring inside organizations between trust and control. To me, trust is the currency of leadership. Your goal as a leader is to get your people to trust you so they will enthusiastically join you in the pursuit of a goal. One of the reasons for the dysfunction that Mike talks about is that moving people from a control mentality to a character-based leadership mentality requires time and effort. Unfortunately, they haven’t taken the time to calculate the R.O.I. on doing this so they fall back on that old standard control model.
I’ve done some research on restaurant chains because I used to be in that business. It turns out there is a direct connection between employee retention, customer satisfaction, word of mouth advertising, sales growth and profits. Employee retention is a factor of leadership. Those managers who lead from character and have the trust of their employees, retain those employees longer and those employees are much more productive and motivated. From that, all the other results flow. I believe this same result could be discovered in every industry since it’s people who have to deliver service and quality. Once top management understands the connection between leadership and the bottom line, we will see a much greater emphasis on leadership.
Hi Don,
Thank you for your comment. I agree that employee retention is a factor of leadership, and that it stems from trust. I once read somewhere that the No. 1 reason people leave a job is because of their managers. I suspect the core reason is that lack of trust.
And I’m going to check out the Lead Change Group. I’ve never heard of it. It sounds like something right up my alley.
It’s more than a suspicion Jason. Trust is the key to how people perceive a leader and how they feel about the place they work. Everything that happens in the workplace ultimately grows out of the existence or lack of trust for those with titles and the organization overall. When we lead from character, the people we work with learn to trust us. That trust allows them to listen to us and willingly join us in pursuing a goal.
I just started working with a utility that has put a major emphasis on improving it’s customer service and satisfaction. The key leadership over all customer service activities are firmly committed to moving in this direction and have clearly let their people know they want them to take actions on their own that they feel will result in making customers feel good. The problem they are having is that most of these employees have been at the utility for a long time and were conditioned by previous managers to follow the rules (which they know by heart) and not take any chances. So what’s holding back their customer service initiatives is employees not completely trusting that management will have their back if they decide to do something for a customer that may be outside of the rule book. This is a great leadership team and I know they are doing everything possible to earn that trust. Over time, they will succeed. It’s a question of trust that is their number one challenge. Before employees will go beyond the call of duty, make that extra effort to satisfy the customer, they have to trust that managers aren’t going to yell at them or fire them because they took initiative on their own.
Please check out the Lead Change Group at http://www.leadchangegroup.com as well as their Twitter hashtag #LeadChange. You can also learn more about the book the group just released “The Character-Based Leader” that I co-wrote along with 20 other members and also edited at this press release I sent out: http://www.prweb.com/releases/character/leadership/prweb10189424.htm
Hope you join revolution!