Leadership Not For You? Here are your options

Episode #164 Leadership Not For You? Here are your options

It dawned on me the other day when I was answering a listener question, that we have two types of people who follow the No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast.

The first, are leaders who love leadership and want to get better.

The second, are people who are unwilling conscripts, as I call them. They don’t enjoy leadership and they’re looking for some short-cuts that might alleviate the inherent misery they feel in having to lead others.

Now even if you’re in the category of leaders who love leadership, I can guarantee that you have people working for you in leadership positions, who are in the other category. And at this very moment, are wishing they didn’t have any leadership accountabilities at all. You need to work out how to identify those people and what to do with them once you have.

This episode is dedicated to helping any of you who aren’t enjoying leadership to work out what you can do. If you’re already a committed leader, it will help you to identify and deal more effectively with the leaders below you who aren’t interested in leading.

Remember, there’s no point in doing something you hate. So if leadership really isn’t for you, then the earlier you work it out, the better. Only then, can you start to explore your other options and chart a course of action.

• We’ll start by exploring why some people don’t want to lead

• I’ll talk about how power dynamics work for technical leaders

• I’ll give you the principles you need to consider when solving the problem, assuming you have the decision-making autonomy to execute it

• I’ll finish by looking at how, for both you and your reluctant leaders, you can perform to a minimum acceptable standard

why some people don’t want to lead

Some people just don’t want to lead, so how do you identify them?

They’ll tell you in some way, shape or form. There’ll be constant bargaining. You’ll see them going through it every day. Should I do this? Shouldn’t I do that? Wrestling with themselves. Should they step up and do the leadership work or should they sit back and ignore it? There’s always loads of excuses and rationalisation for why they don’t do the things that you want them to do. And they will visibly recoil from conflict.

Another classic indicator is that they will speak in high praise for all their people. These leaders can be the most deceptive. They’ll tell you that all of their people are A players. They’ll tell you they have a high performing team, but, in actual fact, they’re just ignoring that have mediocre performers, as every team does, and they’re avoiding doing the leadership work with them.

They don’t want you to push them to have to do that leadership work, and they will tell you that everything’s going well. Sometimes this is entirely subconscious, but they actually believe their own bullshit.

Why don’t some people want to lead? For many, they highly value their own technical expertise and they don’t want to let go of it. Some are highly task oriented rather than being people oriented, and they’d rather deal with the mechanics than the people. Some just simply don’t connect well with others. They’re shy and withdrawn, or they’re highly introverted. And almost universally, you’ll find that they are conflict averse.

Now this is one that as a leader, you can and should work on solving continually. But technical leaders tend to function okay in technical disputes, they can use their superior knowledge to win the day, but not in any other area, like negotiation or communications and so forth.

So, if these leaders don’t want to lead, why do they accept leadership roles? To go up in most organisations you need to take on a leadership role. That’s the way the hierarchy is structured. But ambition doesn’t necessarily mean ambition to lead. It just means ambition for advancement, status and money. And more often than not, the only way you can get this is by going into a leadership role, and that’s where it gets dangerous.

There are reluctant leaders everywhere. You need to be the one that sets the minimum acceptable standard. For every leader, and every business, that’s different. But there needs to be some form of performance standard, and this is over and above the KPIs. I’m talking about real, multi-dimensional, performance assessment, which looks at both behaviours and performance. Performance standards for leaders should apply at all levels, from the frontline team leader, all the way up to the CEO, and rate performance against common categories.

For example, you might have a performance category for, commercial performance. This category is assessed for every leader, but in a different way at each level. For a CEO, the commercial category might be assessed by looking at the company’s key operating ratios like return on invested capital. But for a frontline team leader, it might be assessed simply on whether or not they manage costs to remain within their allocated budget. Now we’ll have more on the minimum acceptable standards shortly. But the moral of the story is, whatever you do, make sure you think about who your reluctant leaders are and address it explicitly with them. Don’t just sweep it under the carpet. It’s not good for either of you. If you’re not prepared to address it, perhaps that’s a sign that you are a reluctant leader.

how power dynamics work for technical leaders

As leaders, and as people, we exploit different types of power. I did a very early podcast episode on this in 2018, Episode #5; Using Power Wisely. This is a really worthwhile way to spend 17 minutes of your life. It gives all the basics on the five different types of power, when it’s appropriate to use each type, and how likely you are to get the results you want.

In today’s episode, I just want to talk about the different ways power is used by highly reluctant, technical leaders, as opposed to how it’s used by strong, capable, and willing leaders. To illustrate this point, I’m going to have to drift into the world of rash generalisations, but I think in this case, it’s worthwhile.

As I’m talking through this, I’m sure people will pop into your head who typify these types of power dynamics. But we have to remember that every individual is unique and the way they apply their leadership style is unique too.

Let’s look at technical leaders first. Technical leaders rely mainly on their expert power. They prize their technical skills above all else. It’s incredibly important to them that they know more than the next person. And that includes the people who work for them in their team. So they become the super expert in everything. Any personal development is applied to increasing their technical capability, knowledge and credentials. They rarely admit they’re wrong, even if they know they are, because it’s important to them.

I know this might sound a little harsh, but this is why I’m wary of senior people with too many university degrees. I don’t mean this to be disparaging in any way, shape or form, because acquiring a university degree, particularly at the master’s and doctoral levels, is amazing. It’s a great achievement. But what it does do is demonstrate that focus on technical learning.

I know people with three master’s degrees and two doctorates who can’t break into executive ranks. And perhaps this is because their focus on technical learning outweighs their focus on leadership, relationships, and people performance.

For the technical expert, the key is that they gain respect and following from what they know. And this creates a knowing culture, rather than a learning culture. Now the expert, power element might seem pretty obvious, but for the technical leader, the dark side really comes in with the other forms of power that they have to deploy to get things done.

Because of their lack of attention to forging appropriate, arm’s-length relationships, between leader and follower, they rely variously on three other types of power.

The first is legitimate power. This is the power that comes from their position. “I’m the boss, so do what I tell you to do”. In conjunction with this, their expert power leads them to go further and say, “Besides, I know more than you and you know it”.

The second type they use is their reward power. “All my people are excellent, so we need to pay them highly”. Technical skills rule, and of course, we like to hire in our own image, so they hire other leaders with a heavy, technical bent and pay them over the odds because their knowledge and experience outweighs others. But remember, there’s a massive difference between 20 years experience, and one year’s experience 20 times over.

And frequently, they’ll use the third type of power, which is coercive power, because they often lack the influencing skills that strong leaders possess. They rely more than they should on getting results through fear of repercussions.

Now let’s contrast this, with the power dynamics of a strong, capable, professional leader. Their power of choice is referent power. And guess what? We haven’t heard that before because referent power isn’t used by the technical leader.

People follow these leaders because of who they are. Their values, their consistency, their selflessness, their lack of ego, or at least their ability to control their ego, I guess. Their drive for the greater good, and the obvious care that they have for all their stakeholders.

But also, their strength in setting standards and demanding the best from people. Remember, the fastest way to lose your best people, is to not deal with your worst people. Now these strong leaders prefer the use of referent power, but when necessary, they use other forms, sparingly.

Legitimate power, the power of your position, is always in play. And although these leaders don’t pull rank very often, they know the right time to do it.

Reward power, is also used cleverly, to differentiate between good and not so good performers. Now differentiation between the different standards of behaviour and performance in the reward and recognition cycle, is a prerequisite to creating a high-performance culture. And yes, even coercive power can be used as a last resort. I would often use coercive power in the dying stages of performance management, to see if any tactic at all would reach an underperforming individual. My inner dialogue said, “So I can’t influence you rationally to lift your performance, would the eminent threat of losing your job, give you any motivation to perform?” As a leader, it’s important not to just think about getting things done, but how you’re getting things done.

What to do with your technical experts who don’t want to be leaders

If you self identify as one of these people, think about how you might create a situation like this for yourself, either in your current company or another organisation.

Technical people are highly valuable. If you have any doubt about that, have a look at the woes that Boeing has experienced in the last few years. Their technical problems with the Boeing 737 Max aircraft caused two commercial airline crashes that resulted in the loss of 346 lives.

This week in the Wall Street Journal, it was reported that there are problems with some of the titanium parts on the 787 Dreamliners. Apparently, the acceptance of the parts was signed off by people who didn’t have the appropriate technical qualifications. The result? Weaker titanium components than specified, in some parts of the plane. Hardly confidence-inspiring, for frequent international travellers.

We can argue all day as to whether or not these failings are technical or leadership in nature, but in my world, it’s always a leadership problem. Because even if there was a technical gap, it’s the leader who needs to recognise it, understand it, and find a solution for it, but I digress.

When you have excellent technical people that you’ve clearly identified as unwilling conscripts to the leadership task, you have two imperatives. The first, is to make sure they aren’t put in a position where they’re required to manage people. It’s that simple. Don’t mess with this one.

The second is, if they’re really good as technical people, try to retain them by giving them a path to satisfying their ambition in another way. Let’s deal with these one by one. Pulling a technical person out of a leadership role is really difficult. They’re going to experience a loss of face. There will be ego issues. They’ll feel less valued, and it can really mess with their perceptions of future advancement.

The other nuance, is that at each level in the organisation, a different mix of technical and leadership skills is required. So in the first instance, you’re looking to see leaders at the front line, the managers of others, who can competently keep their team moving, while demonstrating their technical excellence. So I’m thinking this is roughly, I don’t know, 30% leadership, 70% technical. But for you as their leader, it’s important to start the conversation early, about how that has to change as time goes on, and they progress through the layers of the organisation, to more senior roles. Basically, you’re looking for the minimum acceptable standard of leadership at each level, which we’ll get to shortly.

But to further muddy the waters, there are different types of roles that require higher levels of technical expertise, even at more senior levels. For example, leading an engineering team that maintains your company’s prime assets, requires much more technical capability than the CEO role that this person might report to.

Now part two of the problem. Finding something else for those leaders who aren’t cut out for leadership can be really difficult. In the best case, you’ll be in an organisation that has both leadership and technical advancement streams, that lead right to the C-suite. But most companies simply don’t have that. You’re looking for ways to give these people advancement, satisfy their ambition, their drive for financial reward, and their need for status. The core solution, is to find a role that gives them those things without the need to exercise leadership and management accountabilities. So creating roles like principal advisor, chief engineer, marketing specialist, or chief development officer, those are some of the ways to do this. By definition, there won’t be many of these roles. They’re reserved for your very best technical people, in a certain field who don’t have either the will or the aptitude to lead others.

For everyone else, they have to meet the minimum, acceptable, leadership standard, which you have to be diligent about enforcing.

What is the minimum, acceptable standard for leaders?

For everyone who takes on a leadership role, some things aren’t negotiable. Even your most reluctant leaders, will need to be focused on the expectations you have on them as leaders.

Fundamentally, it all comes down to respect before popularity. The concept of doing what’s necessary, without procrastination and avoidance, is something that all leaders need to be aware of and to work on. And the leaders you lead, have to get this message really clearly and strongly from you. It’s a constant battle, but you can’t let any of your leaders off the hook, no matter how good they are technically. Unless of course, you’re happy to have a grossly underperforming team.

Here’s a short list of 5 things to look for and therefore to coach, mentor and assess, your leaders on.

#1 Setting standards of behaviour and performance

Without this, you’ll be in a world of pain as will the people who work for that reluctant leader. When weak leaders let standards slip, it hurts everyone, and it ultimately hurts the organisation.

Weak leaders, lower the standard to meet the performance, but strong leaders lift the performance to meet the standard.

#2 Communicating what’s required and what success looks like

Clarity of purpose and communication of objectives is absolutely critical. You can’t have a performing team without that. Leaders need to be able to communicate at a basic level.

I’ve had to part ways with more than one executive who simply couldn’t communicate effectively with their teams and their peers.

#3 Managing the work program

The ability to assign work and hold people to account for delivering it is one of the non-negotiable elements of leadership. Often, problems arise when excuses for non-delivery abound and the leader doesn’t hold people to account for their choices.

Work programs slip, compromises are made, and the value that actually gets delivered is only a fraction of the value that was envisaged when the project was approved.

It can change the whole economics of a work program and these things can really mess with a company’s profitability and performance.

#4 Making decisions

Leaders have to make decisions all the time. Some are popular and many aren’t. If leaders are frozen, for any reason, that’s not sustainable.

This can be through not wanting to get it wrong, their perfectionism, it can be because, particularly with technical people, they’re too mired in the detail to see the big picture and make prudent judgement calls. Or it can just be simply through fear of not being liked when you have to make a tough call.

#5 Evaluating individual team and self performance

Some level of reality is required here. Often, technical leaders are poor at this because they measure the wrong things.

It’s all about value delivery. But I’ve seen countless leaders with a technical bias, reward activity and process when there’s no relationship to value. So those are a few key things to watch out for, but more than anything, you need to have awareness and vigilance for this problem.

Some people have no desire to be leaders, but fall into it because that’s the only way they can progress. Finding a way for your best people to realise their ambition in the appropriate way is a really difficult challenge. But, it’s one that you need to take on. There’s often a big gap between a person’s ambition and their aptitude. And if you don’t deal with it, the problem will be yours soon enough.