The business world is often times divided between “us” and “them”. There’s the “us” versus “them” where “us” is the employees and “them” is the organisation, but then there’s a more insidious and even more damaging type of “us” versus “them” and that’s where the “us” is still the employees but the “them” is “management”/“leadership”/“the bosses”. Needless to say that the divide hurts the bottom line. The only structures that can deliver on the business imperatives we have today are highly collaborative and have healthy group dynamics and a strong sense of shared purpose aka – teams. Teams by definition can not bare division.
This antiquated need for hierarchy and the resulting command and control goes unquestioned in far too many organisations today and yet many still scratch their heads as to why they aren’t able to keep up with human-centred competitors since they emulate all of their PR bytes on empowered and engaged workforce when they have done nothing to alter the mindset of old-school management styles.
The Microsoft-found glaring difference in perception we witnessed last week where employees believe -or arguably “know”- they are more productive and work harder when working from home whereas their bosses believe the opposite, is the clearest demonstration of the ubiquitous nature of command and control we’ve ever had of late. That is the root cause of the complete breakdown in trust that sets up the two sides in opposite positions. If employees and employers would have worked together as a genuine team there would have never been space for this level of fundamental mistrust.
Here we are trying to get enterprises to reward their people for the work they do for them that they don’t even acknowledge when we operate in a world where the organisation doesn’t even believe they do the work they have employed them to do.
And here we are talking about new ways of work and a new era of collaboration when programs to undertake systemic mindset change for middle managers to transform into genuine leaders are absent.
Whether these armies of middle managers are at the top of the reporting line for tens, hundreds or thousands of individuals and whether their command and control needs stem from ill-fitted second-rate management schools advocating stick-and-carrot approaches or, more often than not, they are former SMEs or technical experts who have been thrust into people management roles with nary any training, support or coaching and they had nothing but the poor example of their own former terror-inflicting micromanagers to rely on, the result is the same. Legions of people who trust no one, -themselves included- and who voluntarily or involuntarily, install a reign of fear and dread on their reports and are unable to trust them.
Much of the HumanDebt™ we keep speaking about at PeopleNotTech can be traced back to this fundamental issue: managers are not servant leaders but command and control marshals and they are not helped out of this bankrupt stance by either structured programs to show them better ways to lead, or by the presence of a tribe where good examples could thrive.
Just as having engaged, healthy, high-performing teams requires creating more psychological safety and that can only be created by the team themselves at the team level through “human work”, having inspirational, wise, effective management requires creating a servant leader mentality and that can only be created by the leaders themselves through “human work”. Both types of change require awareness and knowledge and then intentional, habitual work on emotions and behaviours.
Just as we say to the enterprise they need to recognise and reward the human work done at the team level, so must they too recognise and reward the human work that each leader will have to undertake to replace bad habits of old with the ones that we need in this day and age.
What does this change entail? Many aspects. For one thing, understanding the psyche of their teammates, empathy, interest and care but above all a redefinition of the relationship with trust.
Perhaps the most basal difference between old school leadership and what we need today, is how willing a leader is to entrust their team. To believe the best of them, to let them do what they have been hired for and respect their abilities enough not to micromanage their progress. The belief is that should they let their team run with the tasks at hand, they will do their very best and deliver while they as leaders pave the way by taking care of their needs.
The “best bosses”, the most beloved of leaders are barely noticeable. They’re certainly there in the background but they are part of the infrastructure. They are never feared, oppressive or overbearing. They aren’t the completely absent ones that offer autonomy by taking their hands off the steering wheel but those that hold a gentle hand on it ready to course-correct by reaffirming purpose and providing inspiration but are otherwise engaged in providing all the things that will serve their teams from protection and shelter from politics and organisational constraints to guidance, coaching, empathy and above all resources and limited Work-in-Progress lists. Added to that, those who are openly emotional, vulnerable, open, and passionate are the ones who are genuinely efficient. They are often low on ego and high in empathy with a deep love for their teams.
We need every “boss” to become one of these leaders. The demands of the workplace make command and control utterly unsustainable and unsuited for ur current goals so the transformation is not “trendy” or a “nice to have” but a true imperative.
This isn’t a transformation that can happen overnight. We can’t expect career line managers to simply abandon all they know about “leading” and become the wise and exciting partners above by wishful thinking or clicking their heels. We can’t expect them to suddenly trust their people and their people will, in turn, remain devoid of any reason to trust them.
The few who have been able to transform into servant leaders after having been staunch command and control proponents for years have had to work hard for it. They have had to put in the hard graft of understanding why they must change their ways, and ask for the help to do so, be it by increasing their EQ on their own or having coaching and understanding the need for Agility and true collaboration. They have had to do a lot of difficult “human work” to evolve, to grow into this completely new presentation of self at work.
We are collectively in a crisis of EQ in society at large but in the workplace in particular. We are also in a severe crisis of leadership and the need for servant leadership has never been more pressing. To get there faster, we ought to all have ample and true leadership change programs but in their absence, we at a minimum need each and every command and control manager to start on the individual human work that will transform them so when you, the organisation start at long last rewarding people for doing the people work, you must also ensure you pay them for this mammoth task of becoming a servant leader.
Only then will they start morphing into trusting, fearless, empathetic and deeply inspiring leaders who can lead their teams where they have to go. Come back tomorrow to hear some of our tips for creating a culture of servant leadership in our weekly video.
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At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams, come see a DEMO.
“Nothing other than sustained, habitual, EQed people work at the team level aka “the human work” done BY THE TEAM will improve any organisation’s level of Psychological Safety and therefore drop their levels of HumanDebt™.”
To order the “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” book go to this Amazon link