What Do Good Bosses Believe?

A friend of mine (thanks, Kat!) recently forwarded an intriguing Harvard Business Review article titled 12 Things Good Bosses Believe, by Robert L. Sutton.  I found this to be a refreshing departure from many such lists about "best practices" for leaders, many of which I believe to be fairly obvious in their recommendations.

I would like to focus on three of his 12 items in particular:

4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.

6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.

7. I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my people to do the same thing.

I was immediately struck by the way these three items echo some of the paradoxes I've been discussing in recent articles:

• Matthew Syed's observations about the need for an athlete to be utterly convinced of his eventual success while also being aware of his shortcomings so he can improve his game;
• The need for a leader to be both influential and influenceable;
• The need for a leader to be confident in his course of action yet also flexible enough to course-correct if events so require.

And I'll also cite a fourth item from Sutton's list:

10. Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

"Bad is stronger than good."  Hmm ... it seems as if we've seen that one before.