Equilibrium (noun) | equi·lib·ri·um):
A state of balance between opposing forces or elements.
Aaron has been the CEO of a real estate development company for nearly 20 years. His commitment to quality and meticulous attention to detail has contributed to the firm’s success and reputation with clients. It has also created a love-hate relationship with his team. His oversight of design is relentless, and he is continually modifying the smallest of details, often creating re-work and long hours for key employees. His standards are so uncompromising that his people feel they are not respected or trusted. Success is at the price of morale and team stability.
Clay is the managing partner of an insurance company. His motto is hire good people and let them run. Although admirable, this approach has also fostered confusion and a lack of accountability. Department manager roles are undefined and often overlap. His vision is often inspirational, but there is almost no clarity for how this vision should be carried out. Clay is frequently unavailable and unresponsive, and when he attends meetings, they tend to drift into tangents. His key people are confused about priorities and often feel neglected.
Two leaders with very different problems. One controls with all the answers, and the other fails to provide the most basic of direction.
There is a running joke among consultants that everything must exist on a continuum. The key to success in workplace dynamics is finding the sweet spot: achieving optimal balance. For instance, in communication, you must find an assertiveness sweet spot between passivity and aggressiveness. In task completion you must find the effectiveness balance between perfectionism and speed. And so on.
In leading people, most managers make the mistake of missing the sweet spot. Most leadership failures occur when a manager falls on the extremes of the continuum:
- Micromanagement – Here we have the boss that overmanages. Tight and constant supervision not only stifles the autonomy of the employee but devours the time and effectiveness of the manager. Micromanagement frequently stems from perfectionism, or the inability to trust and let go.
- Undermanagement – Here we have the absentee or passive boss. A lack of clear expectations and accountability destroys results and disengages the employee. While micromanagement gets all the press, undermanagement can often be more destructive.
This leadership continuum is shown below.
Most employee failures result from being managed too far in either extreme. On the right, we are supervising and directing to the point of suffocating employee development. On the left, the lack of guidance leaves the employee to flounder.
Achieving Leadership Equilibrium
Undermanagement and micromanagement are easier to identify than to fix. If a manager is willing to look inward and do the work, achieving leadership equilibrium can be accomplished in four steps.
- Create self-awareness
- Identify the business goal and nature of the change
- Change behavior in real time
- Sustain new approach with ongoing feedback
Step One: Create Self Awareness
Usually, everyone knows when the boss leads from one of the extremes – everyone except the boss! We all have blind spots. A blind spot exists when we continually fail to see our behavior realistically or the impact it may have. The best indicator that we have a blind sport is that we don’t think we do! Creating self-awareness is uncomfortable. A reality of the workplace is that few people tell the boss the full truth – especially the truth about themselves. This truth must be mined and cultivated. The foundation of self-awareness is asking for and getting honest feedback. When feedback is suppressed, rejected, or punished, it shuts down hard. Effective and aware leaders must be vulnerable and willing to hear the good, bad, and ugly. Leadership expert John Maxwell suggests that leaders ask those people who know them best for an honest assessment and use this feedback to modify their behavior. There are some great feedback tools available today. A properly conducted 360-degree feedback assessment can enable the leader to see themselves as those around them do. Then the change can begin.
Step Two: Identify the business goal and nature of the change
Is becoming an empowering, engaging leader good for your team? Of course. But don’t start by doing it for them. Start by doing it for you. The research is clear: our level of business performance is directly proportional to our level of leadership effectiveness. Identify the performance goals in the organization, and the role our team plays in reaching them. Then, use the feedback from step one to create the ideal leadership approach needed. One size does not fit all. Depending on the capability of our people and the difficulty of the goals, we will need to calibrate our management approach accordingly. Using the continuum above as a guide, determine the right mix of directive behavior and team autonomy. Then, create a written, personal leadership change plan.
Step Three: Change Behavior in Real Time
Now the hard part. We have developed a leadership change plan rooted by specific feedback that will achieve our business goals. Now we must tailor our day-to-day behavior accordingly. I like to say it took me decades to perfect my bad habits – I won’t undo them because I have a new plan. This process can’t be a half-baked, new year’s resolution. It will be done in hundreds of moments throughout the coming days and months. It will be done in emails, employee reviews, meetings, hallway conversations, when we are angry, when we are stressed, and when employees screw up. Yeah, pretty much all the time. Wholesale, real-time change is required. We will forget, revert, and backslide. But if we are serious about those business goals, we will pull up our big girl pants and hit it again tomorrow.
Step Four: Sustain new approach with ongoing feedback
No, you won’t like this step either. In step one, we asked the team to let us have it! Now we must request (and not sabotage) this feedback on an ongoing basis. Step Three can’t happen without this. We need our team’s help. We must be vulnerable. This doesn’t have to take a great deal of time. But it does require regularly scheduled, structured dialog with our people. We must provide them with an ongoing, non-threatening invitation to tell us if we are on course – or not. Will some employees take advantage of this? Will some of the inmates try to run the asylum/ Yes! Again, we need to use the same approach to manage the process itself. We will need to stay cool and remain humble – without relinquishing authority.
Be an example for your team. Let them know that great leaders – and great people – can be vulnerable and in-charge at the same time. This process will take discipline and emotional intelligence. It will be uncomfortable. It will not be linear – you will experience three steps forward, two steps back, one step forward. But if you stay committed, you will exceed your business goals by advancing toward great leadership. In the end, you will bring out the best in others by bringing out the best in yourself.