Two Leadership Traps: How To Avoid Them. How To Get Out Of them
(Part 1)
PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in
newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to
the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource
box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is
appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com
Word count: 684
Summary: Most people fail in their careers because of leadership
deficiencies. A key reason for their failure is they continually
and unknowingly keep falling into two leadership traps. The
author describes the traps and how to get out of them.
Two Leadership Traps: How To Avoid Them. How To Get Out Of them
(Part 1) by Brent Filson
You've heard of the Peter Principle: "People are promoted to
their level of ultimate incompetence". But what the Peter
Principle doesn't tell you is the nature of the incompetence.
For the most part, it's leadership incompetence.
A human resources director told me, "Brent, we hire people for
their skills and knowledge, but we fire them or fail to promote
them or promote them for their leadership abilities -- or lack
thereof."
In other words, throughout their careers, people are promoted to
take charge of bigger and bigger groups -- until they take over
a group that's too big for their leadership abilities.
One main reason they come up short in abilities is they are
constantly and unconsciously falling into two leadership traps.
I'll describe the traps, how to get out of them, and how not to
get into them in the first place.
The traps can be particularly deadly because they are in many
cases self-set -- and even self-triggered. What's worse: the
vast majority of leaders who get into them don't have a clue
they're caught. It's one thing to be in a trap and know you're
in it: You try to get out. But it's a problem of another
magnitude to be in a trap and not know you're in it. In that
case, you'll stay there.
THE FIRST TRAP: "I need ..."
A marketing leader in a major global company was stumbling. His
team was failing to achieve the targeted results. He told me,
"The good news is they do what I tell them. The bad news is they
do what I tell them -- ONLY what I tell them. Other than firing
the worst of the bunch or transferring others out of the team, I
can't figure out what to do. And if I don't do it soon, I'll be
the one fired or transferred!"
I asked if I could sit in on a team meeting to scope out the
situation. "Be my guest," he said. "But I don't see what good
it'll do. The problem isn't in the meetings. Everybody agrees
what needs to get done when they're in the meetings. The problem
is the results after the meetings."
The meeting had been going only for only a couple of minutes
when I saw what was wrong. Afterwards, alone in his office, I
told him: "They're not the problem. YOU'RE the problem. You've
fallen into two leadership traps."
He looked at me incredulously. "What traps?"
I explained that leaders often fall into traps that prevent them
from getting the full measure of results they're capable of. And
the deadliest traps are often the ones of their own making.
The first trap is the "I need . . . " trap.
Leaders fall into this trap when they say, "I need you to hit
the marketing targets, I need you to get more productive, I need
you to (fill in the blank)". I NEED ... I NEED ... I NEED ....
Why is this a trap? The answer: the Leader's Fallacy. The
Leader's Fallacy is the mistaken belief by leaders that their
own needs are automatically reciprocated by the needs of the
people they lead. It's a fallacy because automatic reciprocity
doesn't exist. But so many leaders go blithely along driven by
the Fallacy and so fall into the "I need . . . " trap.
For instance, the marketing leader thought he was motivating
people to get great results. However, during the meeting, he was
constantly repeating, "I need ... ". So, in reality, he was
ordering people to get average results. Of course, leaders don't
order people to get average results. But average results are
usually the outcome of order leadership.
The order is the lowest form of motivation. The order leader's
focus of my-way-or-the-highway can't get great results from
people on a consistent basis simply because people usually can't
be ordered to undertake extraordinary endeavors. They must
choose to do so. When he said, "The bad news is they ONLY do
what I tell them.", he was unknowingly afflicting them. They
were simply responding to an order then going into a kind of
suspended animation (masked by busy work) until the next order
came along.
In Part 2, I'll describe how to get out of this trap.
2005