A Debt of Leadership

If you’re in my organization, I owe you effective leadership.

At one point in my career, I was leading a operations in a medium sized company that dealt directly with publishers within the company, as well as outside publishers.

One publication that we dealt with on a daily basis was particularly difficult. “They’re all just *ssholes,” was a pretty common refrain from my management team. The internal customer/supplier relationship was extremely negative, and communications were frequently unpleasant at many levels. 

The General Manager – we’ll call him “Jerry” to protect the guilty – was a jerk. He was untrustworthy, and frequently bad mouthed the company he worked for and the community he lived in, despite having been in his position for years.

It may not be surprising that Jerry’s publication underperformed and was eventually sold. My operation continued our relationship, but now as an outside vendor. Jerry was replaced by the new owners, but the vast majority of the staff stayed the same.

But everything changed. People who had been horrible to deal with only a few months prior were pleasant and cooperative. The entire relationship changed, and so did the financial results.

Everything hinges on leadership. I don’t think that’s too bold a statement, but there’s a lot crammed in to those four words. Everything, really? Yep, everything.

I’ve been studying leadership since my college days, which is more years than I’d like to admit. There’s been so much written about leadership, I may not be sharing anything new, but I’ll break down what my experience tells me are the most important elements. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what good leadership looks like, and a very good idea of what non-leadership looks like.

I say “non-leadership” because the opposite of good leadership is not bad leadership, it’s the lack of leadership.

I break my experience with leadership down into these five points:

1)      Lead from the front. Be an example.

2)      Communicate and practice active listening.

3)      Be honest.

4)      Focus on the success of the team, not the success of the leader.

5)      Work toward the future, for the team and for the individual team members.

Lead from the Front

While working at the plant that was the headquarters of a division of Gannett Co., I had the opportunity to be part of a leadership team headed by the division president. Despite his wide-ranging responsibilities, he attended the weekly operations meetings that were run by the VP of Operations. What made these meetings unique was that they included the night shift, so they were held at 6:00 a.m. every Wednesday.

As Director of Analysis, I had to produce weekly reports showing performance versus goals, to include the production runs that had completed an hour prior to the meeting. I remember running down the hallway with photocopies of charts and graphs under my arm, because I knew the senior managers would not be late.

The fact that a division President and Vice President were willing to be there before the sun came up spoke volumes. They didn’t expect the night shift staff to bend to their schedule.  They leveraged the resources of the company (including me) to help the production team succeed. They showed their respect for the people doing the work by being there for them. Not quarterly or monthly, but every Wednesday.

Another important part of leading from the front is that you cannot delegate leadership. Many years ago I worked for a business owner who, although he knew the importance of leadership, hired people to be leaders rather than taking on the role himself. He ended up very frustrated. Leadership just doesn’t work like that.

Communication and Active Listening

Every organization that I’ve been a part of – even ones in the communication business – could benefit from improved communication. It’s universal.

Communication is one of the main ways that people measure their value in an organization, so a leader needs to prioritize their communication skills.

Today’s business environment has more ways to communicate than ever before, and a leader should communicate through the channel that works best for the recipient.

I had one machine operator on my team who would call me over as I walked by throughout the day and ask questions. Actually, he would wildly wave his hands above his head, because that was “The Signal”. Sometimes the questions were serious: “How does holiday pay work if it falls on my normal day off?” and sometimes they were less so: “If you could be one character from the original A Team, which one would you be?” But I always had time, and that’s how we communicated.

At the same time, I had another operator in a nearly identical role who mainly communicated with me through Zoom messages. That worked too.

An important part of communication as a leader is active listening. Eye contact and visual cues such as nodding in response to points made are parts of active listening.

One of my favorite techniques for active listening is to summarize back to the listener the points they’ve just made. “So what I’m hearing you say is that the job information you’re getting from Customer Service is frequently inaccurate, and if we don’t address it soon you’re going to lose your sh*t and go off on someone. Is that correct?”

Honesty

Leaders often find themselves with confidential information, so by honesty I’m not talking about sharing everything you know. Sticking to the truth – both the good and the bad – shows respect for the people you lead. And don’t try to spin. Everyone hates that. It makes you look unaware or untrustworthy, and both of those are bad.

One company I was at was going through a rough financial patch, and an employee asked me, “Are we doing OK as a company?” It would have been easy to say, “Sure everything’s fine,” but that wouldn’t be honest. I said, “No, not really. But here’s what we’re doing to fix that. . .”

Did I risk that employee getting nervous and looking for another job? Yes. But if she later found out that I hadn’t been honest with her, my ability to lead her would have taken a big hit.

Honesty with a dose of humility is also very helpful. When I make a mistake as a leader, I make sure that the team knows that I own mistake, and I am working to improve. In one instance, I initiated a process change and failed to communicate the change in advance to some of the team members. I felt terrible about it, and I explained the situation to the whole team at our weekly meeting. People who are allowed to make mistakes and honestly own them will innovate, making the whole team stronger.

Focus on the Success of the Team, not the Leader

This one seems like it should be a no-brainer for a leader, but unfortunately, I’ve seen too many times when it wasn’t.

I had a manger who worked for me in an online fulfillment role who would take on the easiest projects that came into his department and hand off the difficult projects to his team. He also had a habit of bragging about the fact that, even as manager, he was the most productive member of his team.

When this situation was brought to my attention, I coached him on how he should be leading his team. When my follow up showed that he hadn’t changed, I ended up having to let him go because his lack of leadership was creating a toxic work environment.

Senior managers have a big responsibility here, because we create the incentives for the managers in our organizations.

Simon Sinek is one my favorite authors, and his book Leaders Eat Last is required reading (or listening) for the leaders on my teams. I’ll paraphrase here, but one of the points he makes in the book is “a leader’s value is measured by how much they are willing to sacrifice for the team.” When we structure incentives for leaders, we need to make sure that this is taken into account.

Work Toward the Future, for the Team and for the Team Members

Stressful work situations can suck people in pretty quickly and demoralize the whole team. The most obvious role of the leader is to help guide the team out of the stressful situation. However, it doesn’t stop there.

A leader needs to be focused on the future, and help guide the team to solutions that prevent the stressful situations in the future.

While I was running a newspaper operation, a key piece of equipment went down during the nightly production, throwing our schedule into chaos. While working through that, I mentioned to the department head that, “tomorrow we need to review all of the preventative maintenance plans to make sure we don’t have any more vulnerabilities like this,” and he just started laughing.

When I asked what was so funny about our preventive maintenance program (which was actually pretty good) he said, “It’s not that. I just think it’s funny that you think there’s going to be a tomorrow!”

Working for the future of the individual team members is a different process, but equally important. Most people assume that career development is their own responsibility, but a leader needs to be a part of that process.

A survey by Right Leadership notes that 82% of employees said they would be more engaged at work if they had regular conversations with their manager about career progression, while only 16% said they were having those conversations.

Talking with your team members about their career progression is another way to demonstrate their value as an individual. And it can’t be just talk. Leaders need to make sure their team members have opportunities to grow the skills they need to advance.

I once had a material handler who applied for a production planning position. She wasn’t qualified and didn’t get the position, but she and I talked about some skills she could work on to be qualified for the next opening. She worked hard to develop her skills, and won the job the next time we had an opening. In fact, she went on to run the department.

Everything hinges on leadership. Full stop.