When you’re at the top of your particular tree, there are some conventions that it’s hard to shake. If you’re a CEO or a team leader, you got there at least in some way through skill, results and getting noticed. With these three ingredients, you bring with you a certain expectation, which can prove a liability to you when it goes wrong.
Most leaders—at whatever level—are respected and looked up to, particularly for the power they hold in the relationship with their people. This naturally creates a respect as well as a series of attitudes and behaviours in relationships that needs careful management.
For when you are the top of any team, your people react and respond to you in ways that might not be the healthiest for you—or for them. . .
Because of the role you have achieved, you will tend to do more of what you’re already done to get there. And you can become blasé about how you work and this can leave blind spots about your areas of weakness.
One of them is that you feel that you’re always right. However much leaders mask this or dress it up with fine words, underneath, they feel they know best. What’s more, they feel that if they allow alternatives, they risk their own positions, so they fear letting go of their own ideas and decisions. They need that control.
It’s almost impossible to be right all the time, if only by the law of averages, yet so many leaders feel that the position they are in requires them to be fail-proof. They stick with the leader’s role of being the best; leading from the front and, perhaps worst of all, having all the answers.
For your team and especially for the power you yield in their eyes, particularly when you are in a position to influence their career; their rewards and even their experience in the workplace, they will regularly go with your flow, even when they would have a good sense that your way forward is not the best. They will—possibly consciously and definitely sub-consciously—let you wear your emperor’s new clothes without saying a word. In time, they will work this way with their own people, so not only can you make a hash of the existing relationship, you can leave your own legacy too.
Sometimes, you need to fail gracefully and learn from it. For, in truth, your people do know when you are wrong. They see you fail and if you brush past that without the humility, professionalism and the character to acknowledge your own failures, they will respect you less and, in time fail to follow effectively.
The workplace is littered with employees who have zero respect for their leaders. It is almost always because they do not have the humility to fail; to make mistakes; to make the wrong decision—and do this openly and honestly—from time to time.
When you aren’t right all the time and seek the support of your team, you will be much more attractive to them as a leader. Think back to the best leaders you ever had. Whether they were tough and critical; or easy-going, and inspirational, the very best ones knew that the truth was the most effective way to lead.
As a leader, you will engender team spirit, personal growth and successful performance when you are a peoples’ leader. A huge part of that brings with it the frailties of making mistakes and getting things wrong. And showing your people that it is alright for you—and them—not to be ‘right’ all the time.
Martin Haworth is a coach, trainer and writer (of things that sometimes just pop up for him!). Learning that it’s OK to be wrong, came to him watching an old John Cleese training video about coaching. And it really works! He lives in Gloucester, England and travels extensively as a Leadership Trainer and Coach with TNM Coaching.
