Episode #265: Leadership’s Most Underrated Ingredient

Em and I work our butts off every day to produce high-quality, practical leadership content that you can apply immediately, to improve your team’s capability and performance.

And, even though we talk about the emotional, psychological, and mental barriers that have to be overcome to achieve leadership excellence, what I don’t often talk about is the personal investment in the relationship capital that makes all this possible.

You may have heard me talk about the need to establish a high level of trust with your people, and to have boundless empathy (tempered with the strength to do what needs to be done, because you’re courageously committed to getting the absolute best possible outcomes).

 But what it boils down to, in very simple terms is this: if you aspire to be one of those rare individuals who can move from being a competent leader to a great leader, it takes something more—a deep sense of caring for your people.

This is the ingredient that unlocks your ability to do the really hard work of leadership!

Leadership’s Most Underrated Ingredient

EPISODE #265 TRANSCRIPT

THE ‘BEST OF THE BEST’ HAVE A DEEP SENSE OF CARING 

I'm just back from a few days in Detroit MI with the ImpactEleven Community. This is a group of professional speakers at the very top of their game. At the ripe old age of 61, with all my years of speaking experience, and my deep insight and wisdom in business and leadership, I still feel like a rank beginner amongst this company.

It's humbling, but it's also liberating because I can sit back and be an absolute sponge as I learn from the ‘Jedi Masters’ of the speaking business. The ImpactEleven catch cry is, “Give generously, don't keep score”, and it's the perfect articulation of what this group stands for.

I had a blinding insight during a presentation from Seth Mattison, and WHOA!!! If you ever get a chance to book this guy to speak, grab it with both hands. He is a total rockstar: he communicates with a seamless integration of head, heart, and gut. It's incredible to watch.

If Seth had taken a different path in life and decided to become a leader, that's the guy I would've wanted to work for.

While Seth was setting the stage on fire, he led me to a realization that hit me like a pie in the face. Emma Green and I work our butts off every day to put high quality, practical leadership content into the world so that leaders everywhere, at every level can improve their skill and confidence.

And, even though we talk about the emotional, psychological and mental barriers that have to be overcome to achieve leadership excellence, what I don't often talk about is the personal investment in the relationship capital that makes all this possible.

Sure, in my keynotes I talk about the need to establish trust with your people, and to have boundless empathy (of course, tempered with the strength to do what needs to be done, because you’re courageously committed to getting the absolute best possible outcomes).

But what it boils down to, in very simple terms, is this: if you aspire to be one of those rare individuals who can move from being a competent leader to a great leader, it takes something more. A deep sense of caring for your people. This is the ingredient that unlocks your ability to do the really hard work of leadership.

I'll begin this LinkedIn Newsletter by explaining what I mean when I talk about “a deep sense of caring”. I explore how this underpins the most critical facets of your leadership performance. And I describe the immeasurable benefits that strong leadership, combined with a deep sense of caring has on your people.

RESPECT BEFORE POPULARITY!

I often talk about the need for leaders to overcome their fear of conflict. Virtually everything you do as a leader has some potential for conflict. The very first episode of No Bullsh!t Leadership five years ago, was Ep.1: Respect Before Popularity--Letting go of the need to be liked.

We decided to lead out with this one because it's a fundamental truth of strong leadership. Conflict is everywhere you turn:

• Having a one-on-one conversation with one of your direct reports;

• Making a decision that's likely to be unpopular;

• And, let's face it, negotiation is all about conflict–almost every negotiation begins on an adversarial footing, and then it's up to the counterparties to elevate it to a more collaborative plane. 

What should we take from this? If you want to really step into your potential as a leader, it begins with the personal discipline of being able to put your fear of conflict aside.

Look, if you can't, don't worry about it too much. You can still have an awesome career… you can even make a lot of money… but I guarantee one thing: you will hate the leadership work, and you'll avoid it at all costs. So, stop resisting and just lean into it.

As I often say, when I was CEO of CS Energy, I knew that every day when I walked into that company, at least 5% of the people there hated me… for no apparent reason. And, look, I'm sure there were plenty of others who hated me with good reason, because I was deeply committed to turning that business around. The gross under-performance just wasn't sustainable.

Many of you will have already discovered that the higher up you go, the more likely it is that not everyone is going to like you… and that's okay: it comes with the territory.

As Casey Stengel said with his wry wit, “The secret of leading people is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are still undecided”.

Consciously stepping into conflict is a mind game: it’s 90% will and 10% skill. So, it's really important to have some tools to make this easier. Sure, Emma and I bring plenty of tools with all our content, but being comfortable in conflict ultimately relies on two things: empathy and trust.

First of all, empathy is your ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes… to see the world from their perspective, which is why I'm a huge believer in the need for leaders to have boundless empathy. Just be careful though: empathy is very different from sympathy. A strong leader with boundless empathy can be a powerful force for good. A weak leader with boundless empathy is much more likely to become an insipid, sympathetic enabler, who recklessly allows his team to sink into mediocrity.

The other element, beyond empathy, is trust. Trust is the foundation you have to establish before people even begin to listen to you. Without trust, people will second-guess your intentions. They'll be afraid to take risks, because they're worried about the potential repercussions. They'll cover up bad news (and as a chief executive, you simply can't afford to have your team covering up bad news). They'll slide into a victim mentality. They'll blame other people and circumstances for their failures. And they'll try to share decision-making accountability as widely as they can, so that they can't be held to account for poor performance.

If you can master the art of handling conflict, establish a foundation of trust, and connect to people with boundless empathy, it's very likely that you'll be an excellent leader who people are going to want to work for. And you're likely to get superior results as well… as long as you remember one thing: you have to put aside your own self-interest, and remain strong in your conviction to do the right things for the right reasons, whenever they need to be done.

I CARE DEEPLY, SO SHOULDN’T WE BE FRIENDS?

Let's talk about the most underrated ingredient of leadership. Deep caring goes a step beyond empathy and trust. It's the deep human connection that you often only feel with people you are closest to. And like many things, deep caring comes with an implicit set of rules for social engagement. The two most obvious of these rules are:

1. Firstly, you embrace your responsibility to act in the other person's best interests.

2. Secondly, you feel an obligation to help people grow and thrive: an obligation that takes you beyond any personal discomfort that you might feel.

"But wait, Marty," I hear you ask, "Isn't your leadership mantra to be friendly, but not friends?"

Well, yes it is, so I'm glad you raised it.

If you care deeply for the people who work for you, and you’re thoughtful about how to give your best, you understand the nuances of this principle.

You can't possibly give someone your best as a leader if you’re invested in a friendship with them. Why not? It almost sounds counterintuitive. Wouldn't a friendship be the best vehicle to leverage your individual caring? Let me just think about this for a minute… Hell, no!

Try thinking of a friendship as though it's a completely separate entity. There's you, there's the other person, and then there's your friendship. And that friendship will often stop you from doing the things that are in the other person's best long-term interests.

A friend who reports to you will take advantage of the relationship… they'll take advantage of your good nature, and you’re going to cut them more slack than you should. Not in a calculating or manipulative way, but just because, with friends, those are the social rules of reciprocity.

A deep sense of caring for your people goes further than this. You adopt a mental model that says,

• I care so much about you, your future, and your personal success, that I'm willing to give you what you need, not what you want;

• I won't allow you to behave without boundaries, because that's not good for you or anyone else;

• I won't acquiesce to your whims just to keep the peace; and

• I certainly won't pander to you, because that will only enable complacency.

A lot of the pop psychology in the world of leadership has taught us that, if we look after the people, then the people will look after the business… and this is deceptively true. It's deceptive because it hinges entirely on what your definition of “looking after your people” actually is. If we oversimplify the message, many leaders are going to use it as a crutch. It's an excuse for them to say, “I have to keep my people happy, so I'll give them whatever they want”.

If you fall into that mentality, the only person that helps is… you. It minimizes the risk of conflict for you, and it keeps you emotionally safe… and it is entirely self-serving. What if you could care so deeply for someone that you had a laser-like focus on acting in their best interests? What if you were fearless in the way you cared for your people? And what if they actually knew that?

CARING DEEPLY REQUIRES INCREDIBLE STRENGTH

When I talk about a deep sense of caring, you might think that I've gone a little soft. But, quite the contrary: it takes an incredible amount of personal strength to do this well. And I'll be the first to admit that I haven't always done this with the people I've led. Even in the latter part of my career, where I would've considered myself to be a pretty decent leader, this was often a struggle for me.

For the most part, you simply can't push yourself to overcome your fear, awkwardness, and anxiety, unless you have something you care about more than those things. A single-minded focus on team performance and results? Well, hey, that can get you a really long way… but having a deep sense of caring takes that to the next level.

We've already spoken about conflict. When you have a deep sense of caring, you'll be able to have the most difficult conversations without hesitation. You won't even consider for a microsecond the impact a difficult conversation may have on you. Why not? Because you care about the other person's growth way more than you care about your own discomfort. But this deep sense of caring goes so much further than just having the ability to stand up in conflict with strength and empathy.

Think about accountability. For people to perform at their peak, they have to feel the weight of single-point accountability. Without it, they won't have the same sense of urgency; they won't have the same level of personal commitment to the outcomes; and they won't feel the self-esteem that comes from achieving difficult things.

I often say, “The older I get, the less certain I am about… practically everything!”.

But, there's one thing I'm pretty convinced about: All self-esteem comes from doing difficult things. Period!

If you don't care deeply about your people, you won't take the risk to stretch them to be their best. And when I say risk, I'm talking about the risk that they won't like you. You won't ever be able to put them in a position to have that feeling of high self-esteem and personal satisfaction. They'll remain strangely complacent and unfulfilled, unless of course they find this type of challenge and achievement in another area of their lives, which many people do.

Stretching the people you lead is a gift that they don't even necessarily know that they want, until you give it to them.

Of course, we can't talk about accountability without also focusing on empowerment. They travel together: they're two sides of the same coin, which is why you need to get really good at working at the right level. I mentioned this in last week's episode, Ep.264: Controlling Without Micromanaging.

Working at the right level can be super tricky. It's so much easier to step in and fix something when it goes wrong: to over-function for one of your people who isn't performing to an acceptable standard. But it takes a really deep sense of caring to muster the personal restraint that's needed to let them fail, and then help them to learn.

I know leaders who frequently step in and justify their intervention by saying, "I always deliver. I'm the guy who gets the job done." Look, that may well be the case, but if you choose to do that, you know deep down that part of you did it not just to get the job done, but to avoid the hard work of leadership: that eyeball-to-eyeball conversation with the individual who didn't deliver.

This doesn’t help anyone. The person who isn't performing never gets the opportunity to improve, and the rest of the team becomes disengaged because they see that you aren't serious about setting a high standard for performance.

A deep sense of caring is going to open your eyes to the downside of stepping in to do the jobs that your people are being paid to do. You'll stop seeing it as a problem for you to solve, and you'll begin to focus on the person. Your deep sense of caring is going to compel you to invest in your people's growth for their good, and the good of the company.

OVERCOMING THE CRISIS THAT WEAK LEADERSHIP HAS CREATED…

There's a crisis in leadership and it's happening as we speak. But it's a really slow burn.

I love the metaphor of the boiling frog. If you take a frog and drop it into a pot of boiling water, it's going to jump out straight away. But if you place the same frog in a pot of water that's at room temperature, and then gradually turn up the heat until it's boiling, the frog won't even attempt to escape.

We've become so focused on trying to make our people happy—to retain them, regardless of how they choose to behave and perform—that we forget the real truth of the matter: An empty house is better than a bad tenant!

A recent Fast Company article cited some research from HP. The researcher surveyed 15,000 employees in 12 countries, and the findings were pretty incredible. They indicated that:

• Only 27% of knowledge workers say that they have a healthy relationship with their work. Three in four people say they don't have a healthy relationship with their work.

• 55% of those employees struggle with mental health and self-worth, and they report feeling like a failure. This is critical, and I'm going to come back to this one.

• 76% of those who report an unhealthy relationship are considering leaving; and,

• 39% say they're disengaged.

Just let that soak in for a second.

What do you think that's doing to your team's productivity and performance? And before you say, "Marty, that's not my team." Think again… Do you have a deep enough connection with your people to really know what's going on for them?

Remember, friendly, not friends: a deep sense of caring, with appropriate professional distance. Your duty of care is everything. That means strong boundaries, high standards, and expecting the best always: taking a person's career beyond its current trajectory.

I was never afraid to stretch my people to bring out their absolute best performance, and I had an awesome team at CS Energy. I have to say, at least half of my direct reports on any given day thought they'd do a better job as CEO than me: and that's exactly what I wanted. I wasn't worried that they'd leave and go somewhere else, as some of them did. I worked out that, without constant growth and renewal, people can't be their best.

So why would I want them to stick around like some jaded workhorse waiting for their pension to kick in? Most importantly, if they weren't at their best, they would never get the feeling of elation and self-esteem that comes from doing difficult things.

If you care deeply, you'll stretch your people to be their best, even when they'd rather stay cocooned in their warm complacency. You'll believe in them enough to help them realize their potential. You'll give them the opportunity to improve by putting yourself at risk to give them the feedback that you know can make a difference.

I can't tell you how heartbreaking it was during my corporate career to see people who had an obvious issue with their performance or their behavior and not one leader in their whole career had cared deeply enough to tell them what they needed to hear. They took the easy road. They said, "You're doing a great job," year after year after year. And they let them sleepwalk through their jobs, blissfully ignorant.

They robbed them of the opportunity to grow and change and improve, and their careers stagnated. And over the years, they became increasingly cynical and resentful, and then they started blaming management for their plight. And they were probably right: just not for the reasons they thought.

Some of the conversations I had were surreal. When I tried to give one of these individuals the feedback he needed, and shared my most considered observations, he just looked at me skeptically, and said, "Marty, I've been in this company for 20 years and all of my performance reviews say that I'm performing really well. Why should I believe your feedback? You're a ‘Johnny Come Lately’. It's not me, it's you."

And that is just about the saddest thing I ever saw.

CARE DEEPLY, PERFORM, AND BE GREAT!

When you care deeply about your people as a leader, you put yourself in a position to change their lives, not just their careers. You'll find a way to give them the opportunity to grow. They'll experience both the elation of success and the depths of failure (and it's the depths of failure that color the successes to make them worthwhile).

They'll be given the ability to make a choice. What do they want to do, and who do they want to be? Because they know you are there to help them bring that answer to life. And let's be real, not everyone wants this. In fact, as a corporate leader, you'll find that more people reject the opportunity than embrace it. But if you care deeply, everyone will get the option.

A deep sense of caring for your people is totally underrated. But when you have it, positively impacting your people's lives becomes effortless. That’s when a competent leader becomes a great leader.