Is There a Recipe for Leadership?

In my first job as an editor for a major book publisher, I had the privilege of working on a revision of Joy of Cooking, one of the most famous cookbooks of all time. (I’ll hasten to point out - especially to current users of the book - that, given my lack of culinary expertise, my role on the project did not involve editing any of the recipes themselves.)

I’m reminded of my Joy of Cooking experience whenever I encounter business books with titles like The Acme Way or Leadership Secrets of [insert name of historical figure here]. I suspect that many people buy these books with the expectation of finding detailed recipes for action that tell them exactly what to do to get the same results as Company A or Person B.

I began reading my own recent book purchase, Talent Management (edited by Larry Israelite), with my usual eye toward whether the authors would encourage this line of thinking by the reader. (“Talent management,” by the way, refers to the collection of things that a company does – interviewing, onboarding, goal-setting, coaching, individual development planning, engagement, etc. – that help employees do the best they can every day to achieve their own and the company’s objectives.)

So it was refreshing to read the following passage on the very first page of the editor’s Introduction:

“I am making no claims whatsoever that what is presented here represents ‘best practices in talent management.’ That would be presumptuous at best and, based on the history of this sort of thing, potentially dangerous. Rather, the authors who have generously contributed chapters to this book describe those talent management practices that have worked for them in their organizations. No one is claiming that what worked for them will work for you – though all who have contributed, I expect, believe that their firm’s talent management practices do contain some universal truths about how to manage talent so that its value is maximized.”

I think that Israelite is making an important observation here about the nature of leadership in general. Leading organizations and individuals is not a matter of finding the appropriate recipe for action for every situation and then applying it to the letter. Rather, leadership is about acknowledging universal truths and general guidelines (what I’ve also referred to as heuristics) and using them to inform rather than dictate action.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Israelite’s observation about universal truths also reinforces one of the YES! Leader themes: Leadership is more of an improvised performance than a scripted play. As I’ve shown, improv is neither about memorizing predetermined lines nor about inventing everything totally on the spot. The performance improviser – and the YES! Leader as well - uses several intervening structures as a guide to her performance and then fills in the blank spaces within the structure as she goes, making in-the-moment adjustments as needed to address each situation as it unfolds.

What are some of the guidelines that inform your leadership practice? Which of the following guidelines (as developed in the YES! Leader blog) might be useful for you?

·         Being a YES! Leader means applying the ExploreFlexSupport model.

·         Leadership involves the appropriate balance of two behaviors: Telling and Asking. (Adjust as necessary.)

·         Leadership involves the resolution of (seeming) contradictions. Frame issues in terms of “both-and” rather than “either-or.”

·         Say “Yes And.” “Yes And” doesn’t necessarily mean Agreeing with the Position, but it does mean Accepting the Person, Acknowledging the Possibilities, and Advancing with Positive Purpose.

·         Negative energy is often stronger than positive energy. Cultivating positivity requires special attention, ongoing awareness, and eternal vigilance. 

The Slippery Slope of Support

In my previous post, I described William Oncken’s contention that a manager must leave the accountability for tasks with his team members rather than assume that accountability himself.  Oncken used the analogy of a “monkey on the back” to make his point, saying that a manager needs to keep the monkey (i.e., the accountability for the task) on his team member’s back rather than letting it leap onto his own.  I also noted the critique of Oncken's analogy by Steven Covey, who said that, rather than just blocking the monkey’s leap, a manager should provide the team member some measure of support in the care and feeding of the monkey.

Many leaders find this “support zone” to be strewn with banana peels, creating a particularly slippery slope. As a leader, you may think you’ve effectively coached a team member to create a good plan to deal with a problem … only to find yourself leaving the coaching session with more to-do’s on your plate than the team member. These to-do’s can take the form of such items as:

1) Redistributing some of the team member’s tasks so he can focus on his action plan;

2) Agreeing to go talk to others on his behalf so they can lend him some help;

3) Gathering information that he will need to implement his plan;

4) Monitoring his work daily and signing off on every step.

Certainly there may be situations when each of these actions on your part might be appropriate. On the other hand, many times these are really examples of retaining a monkey (or at least a partial monkey) rather than having it reside with its rightful owner – the team member.  For each of the above items, ask yourself the following questions respectively:

1) Do any of us have the luxury of focusing on only one problem at a time? Wouldn’t it be better for the team member to learn how to integrate his problem-solving into the rest of his workload?

2) Can’t he go talk to these people just as well as I can?

3) Can’t he find and process that information just as well as I can?

4) If I’m approving his every step, who’s really making the decisions about how to do the work?

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Many leaders accept monkeys from their team members with a certain degree of reluctance. Like a retail customer, they may vow that they’re not going to be sold anything they don’t want, only to leave the encounter with a plateful of monkeys.

On the other hand, as Steven Covey points out, “many managers are actually eager to take on their subordinates’ monkeys.”  One of the reasons, notes Covey, is that the leader may “subconsciously fear that a subordinate taking the initiative will make [the leader] appear a little less strong and a little more vulnerable.” I also think many leaders (especially new ones) still think of themselves as “doers” rather than “managers” of the tasks. Rather than navigating the uncertain frontiers of influencing and motivating others to perform, they just revert to the surer ground of grabbing the monkey and doing the job themselves.

Why do you think you may be taking on more than your share of monkeys? Do you just have a hard time saying “No”? Do you feel you’re doing your team members a disservice by not “helping” as much as you can? Are you concerned that, if your team members learn to solve their own issues, you won’t be needed anymore? How can you continually remind yourself of the importance of “leading vs. doing”?

The YES! Leader Meets the Monkey

Performance improvisers are taught to take responsibility for themselves onstage while also reinforcing the efforts of their scene partners. They must both offer scene choices and accept the scene choices made by their partners.

This give-and-take can be a tricky business. Each performer needs to chart a middle course between asserting too much of the scene content (and thus taking over) and passively waiting for the other to make the next move (and thus relinquishing responsibility for the scene’s direction).

This middle course has a name: Support. On the improv stage, support consists of letting your partner run his game while also contributing your own thoughts and ideas – all without slipping to either side (taking over vs. abdicating responsibility).

This common improv dilemma came to mind recently as I was reading a famous 1974 Harvard Business Review article by William Oncken titled “Who’s Got the Monkey?” Oncken uses the metaphor of a monkey on one’s back to illustrate how leaders are often quick to take team members’ problems (their “monkeys”) onto their own backs rather than leaving the problems on the team members’ backs. By regularly taking on these monkeys, the leader creates several additional monkeys of her own:

·         She overburdens her own time by doing the work rather than managing (i.e., delegating) it.

·         She becomes a bottleneck as people wait for her to take care of all of their problems.

·         She fails to develop her people’s ability to become self-reliant problem-solvers.

This all leads to a vicious cycle: The more monkeys the leader takes onto her back, the more she encourages her people to keep bringing her monkeys, and the less they learn how to feed and care for their own monkeys.

Steven Covey points out that Oncken’s basic recommendation – Give the problem back to the subordinate – was a welcome (and radical) departure from the command-and-control management philosophy of the time. But Covey also notes that Oncken may have gone too far in suggesting that the leader merely block the monkey’s leap. Instead, Covey proposes some additional leader actions that can keep him more on the “support” middle ground mentioned above.

First, as Covey notes, “when you give problems back to subordinates to solve themselves, you have to be sure that they have both the desire and the ability to do so.” As a leader, you can do this by applying Situational Leadership, which involves assessing the follower’s level of ability (do they know how to do it, have they done it, are they doing it?) and willingness (are they confident, committed, motivated?). Based on your assessment, you can then accompany your monkey-blocking behavior with the right amount of task behavior (e.g., showing how to feed the monkey) and/or relationship behavior (e.g., motivating the follower by emphasizing the importance of having happy monkeys).

Second, says Covey, “To delegate effectively, executives need to establish a running dialogue with subordinates. They need to establish a partnership.” Just blocking the monkey and saying “You take care of it” cuts off further communication and basically (to mix metaphors) tells the follower “The monkey is in your court.” The “partnership” Covey advocates can take the form of coaching, in which the leader helps the follower by asking powerful questions to stimulate the follower’s thinking and facilitate the follower’s ability to arrive at his own solution.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

What is the distribution of monkeys on your own team? Do you carry the majority of them on your back? Do you insist – without doing more – that other team members care for and feed their own monkeys? Or do you maintain the middle ground by supporting team members as they tend to their monkeys?

Planning vs. Improvising

Improv performers are often told to “get out of your head” – that is, quit thinking so much and just act! On the improv stage, a performer can’t spend time scriptwriting in his head but must take action as quickly as possible and trust his onstage partners to support him.

There are many parallels here with the organization environment. It’s one thing to (say) attend a class in conflict management, read a list of best practices on a Powerpoint slide, and apply them to a case study after a 30-minute discussion with your table team. It’s quite another thing to go back into a live work environment and try to apply the practices when you’re suddenly confronted by two employees having a knock-down drag-out verbal fight. In that situation, you can’t say, “Hold that thought, guys – let me refer to my Powerpoint and call my table team.” No, you have to act now!

In those “on the fly” situations, I think most people would value the ability to act improvisationally and not get stuck in their heads, mulling over what to do while the conflict spirals out of control in front of them. But does that mean that every situation calls for improvisational action? Of course not – and I sometimes think that this is one of the biggest barriers to people’s acceptance of Applied Improvisation: The perception that improvisation means totally shutting off your mind and acting by instinct in all situations. On the contrary, there are many situations that require us to slow down, deliberate, and carefully plan what we’re going to do.

So does this mean that the improviser’s art has no place in the world of planning? To address this, I’ll cite one of my favorite quotes, by that great daily improviser Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Essentially, Ike was recognizing something that the Heath brothers (authors of Made to Stick) also acknowledged: No plan survives contact with the enemy. In other words, a plan-on-paper is built on certain assumptions about the future that will inevitably turn out to be incomplete, slightly off base, or just flat-out wrong. Because of this, sticking rigidly to the plan will likely lead to a march over the proverbial cliff.

But even if the plan is “useless” (and Ike was clearly overstating for effect), the process used to create it is essential  - because, by immersing himself in the problem space and turning over the various possibilities in his mind, the planner trains his mind to bend and flex with each contingency. When reality throws the inevitable unanticipated event in his face, the planner is then in a better position to address it in the moment – i.e., to improvise – because of his mental preparation. Just as the performance improviser prepares by cultivating a mindset of “expecting the unexpected,” so can the planner remain open to the need to change on the fly rather than becoming wedded to his plan.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

How do you regard a plan? As a mathematical formula that must be followed exactly as written in order to get the right answer – or as a framework for action? How do you react when reality doesn’t cooperate with the assumptions cooked into your plan? Are you paralyzed - or can you improvise?