Leading with Honesty

The fish stinks from the head down.  Anyone who has ever belonged to an organization or institution has given a knowing nod to this proverb at one time or another.  But if you’re a manager, consider this:  is it possible that perhaps YOU might be that stinky fish?  The inclination is to point the finger, or deny: “My direct reports only pay me compliments,” “I don't get any complaints.” “It's not me, it’s the executive/vendor/company,” etc., etc., etc.

Reflecting on the possibility that you may be causing organizational problems is a bit like signing up for root canal.  No one wants it, but with the prospect of enduring one short-term pain to get to the “root” cause and alleviate another, it’s worth peeling back a layer for a quick examination…

Let's start with why you may only be receiving compliments from your staff.   How many employees do you know who openly critique their managers, directly to their managers?  You hold the keys to the kingdom.  You can hire or fire them.  They need to ensure that they continue to get paid.  Why would they risk giving negative feedback and creating a “shoot the messenger” situation?  Even in companies that claim to have flat org structures, there is hierarchy.  Employees tread lightly when it comes to their bosses.  Don't assume that because you aren't receiving the criticism, it doesn't exist. Chances are, if you create the right forum, a safe place to give and receive feedback, you might be able to cull valuable suggestions for organization improvement that make you and your team better. 

Make time to support your direct reports.  Don't assume that you're empowering them by being laissez-faire and leaving them to solve every problem.  Some issues are systemic or managerial in nature, and need to be solved by YOU.  On the other hand, don't do their jobs for them.  If you are too busy "working" to manage, this is a red flag that you need to balance or step back from your work as an individual contributor and start proactively managing. 

Take a hard look at your org structure, as well as the way you manage.  Have you set up a structure that is creating role confusion or de-motivation among your staff?  Have you allowed a problem to continue at your managerial level that is preventing your staff from succeeding?  Are you truly empowering your staff to drive progress, or have you created a dependency on you as the Single Point of Failure?    

The right training can pay off in spades.  There are a number of good programs; Ken Blanchard’s tried-and-true Situational Leadership can benefit both you and your staff.  But whichever your style may be, remember: stay brutally honest about your own role.  Get feedback.  Schedule your own personal regular Agile retrospective to ensure you stay focused on continue improvement.  Be the kind of leader that truly affects positive change.  

Is there a manager in the house?

We’ve all seen it: So-and-so has a manager title, and the whispered comments begin floating about the office, “What does So-and-so actually DO?”  It’s the classic upper management go-to:  promoting the SME or the technician to a management position, or hiring up a tennis partner, college buddy, or the guy from the last startup who single-handedly “managed” a guerilla implementation of that quick-sell app that got everyone cashing out fast.   

Don't be too hard on your leadership. It's human nature to rely on the people we know or have relied on previously; still, all of these hiring decisions assume one consistent fallacy: that management is innately easy. 

It’s unfortunate that SMEs/individual contributors don’t have a way to move up in title and salary by adhering to what they excel at.  Instead, organizations require that they manage.  The genius who unraveled and re-configured code in a way that leapfrogged two generations in front of what is currently in the market, is also assumed to also have the skills to manage and communicate risk to a project, or mentor employees.

Executives tend to get a bad rap when they hire cronies to run departments.  Back room bar deals and golden parachutes come to mind.  But even the most self-focused business leaders have a laser-sharp focus on generating a successful business that turns a profit.  So it’s safe to say that very few would hire a friend thinking, "There's no way he can do the job, but, oh well."  The same goes for hiring a great executor as a manager.  The most common assumption is:  of course a strong executor can build and manage a team of strong executors.  It ain't necessarily so. 

What business leaders frequently fail to realize is that effective management has its own set of skills that are distinct from other business skills.  To make matters more complex, these tend to be soft skills that are often difficult to identify and hire for: situational leadership abilities, varying approaches to decision-making, project and risk management, the full spectrum of communication skills.   Probably over and above all of these is the discernment to identify the best approach after speed-analyzing data points in an ever-changing problem set. The best managers have analytic skills and a high degree of social intelligence, with a proclivity toward servant leadership. 

And you know what, even when you have a manager like this, the file room conversations might still include the question, “What do they actually DO?”  Why?  Because if things are going right, they aren't generating all the deliverables, nor are they constantly in firefighting mode.  A good manager will have subject matter expertise, but will distribute work to their teams, empowering them to be the best they can be, and making sure the trains are running smoothly.  They are transparently communicating the work their team is doing, the roadmap ahead, and the ROI at all times, up, down and across the food chain.  This is often quiet, behind the scenes hard work. 

To my mind, the best managerial KPI would be something akin tothe plus/minus rating in sports.  The +/- rating tells us: did the team gain or lose points when that player was on the court/field/ice, and if so, how many?  That player may not have had their hands on the ball when the point was scored, but these are the key behind the scenes playmakers, setting up others in the team for success.  

So next time someone asks, “What does Manager X do?,” look carefully.  Maybe nothing.  But maybe that person is exactly the kind of manager you want on your team.