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?