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Moral: If you know everything going on in your team, you are an obstacle – and you’re likely taking up valuable time which your team could be spending on producing in a more innovative way or at a higher quality, but instead they’re reporting on the humdrum to you.
Excerpt:
“Do [you] know everything happening on [your] team?”
“Well, you shouldn’t. If you know everything happening on your team, you are likely too involved and stifling innovation. As long as a team has a clearly understood vision, empowered team members will consistently solve problems in unexpected ways.”
“An effective leader is constantly surprised but rarely stunned. Being surprised means you see solutions not of your own doing; being stunned means something happened that is out of alignment with the team vision. If you are not surprised regularly by your team, reaffirm the vision and back off” [1].
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- Bill Tolany. “3 quick questions to help leaders get out of the way,” SmartBlog on Leadership. March 27, 2012.
Moral: Indicate you value others’ time by not holding meetings which are mostly or entirely for your benefit.
“Go through your calendar. If you find a group meeting that is solely for your benefit, cancel it. This will signal to your team members that you value their time and that they should value it, too. If you aren’t sure about the meeting’s value, announce that you are going to miss it once and see what happens. If the meeting doesn’t take place, you have your answer” [1].
I’d only suggest two alterations (dare I say, improvements) to this insight:
- This holds true more, I think, for managers than individual contributors.
- This holds true more, I think, when the team in question is stocked with talented team members with expertise and/or initiative and common sense. But, if you hire right (like Netflix seems to), this wisdom should prove golden.
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- Bill Tolany. “3 quick questions to help leaders get out of the way,” SmartBlog on Leadership. March 27, 2012.
- Reed Hastings. “Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility.” August 1, 2009. (PDF)
Leadership is a performance art – one which requires deep commitment and daily practice.
Back in November of 2009, I recounted my befuddlement by the perspective that al Qaeda is inherently weak because it utilizes a strategy of ‘leaderless resistance.’ The government advisor who expressed this view seemed to think that because al Qaeda cells did not have leaders following the Great Man archetype, boldly marching on the field of public consciousness, that they were weak and easily eliminated.
On the contrary, I mused. Perhaps these terrorist cells have selected a strategy of great strength and endurance. After all, as Lao Tzu said,
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him… But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”
A 2009 analysis published in Security Studies, which the aforementioned government advisor must have missed, seems to support my view that this strategy of ‘leaderless resistance’ may be stronger than it appears to the casual observer. This article, by Jenna Jordan and aptly titled “When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation,” states that
“despite a tremendous amount of optimism toward the success of [leadership] decapitation, there is very little evidence on whether and when removing leaders will result in organizational collapse.”
In fact, Jordan goes on to say,
“The marginal utility for [leadership] decapitation is actually negative. Groups that have not had their leaders targeted have a higher rate of decline than groups whose leaders have been removed. [Leadership] decapitation is actually counterproductive particularly for larger, older, religious or separatist organizations.”
Perhaps, anticipating the incredibly predictable strategy of eliminating the ‘man at the top’, al Qaeda took heed of some ancient Tao wisdom and integrated it into their organizational culture.
If only Taoism was more widely (and thoroughly) followed.
While tales of internet addiction have been pouring out of China since 2002, more attention ought to be paid to the solutions being implemented to address it. WIRED magazine’s Christopher Stewart drives this home in a chilling tale of a family’s struggle with internet addiction and their decision to send their son to an addiction clinic. More on this later.
In 2008 the popular television show How I Met Your Mother put forth “The Pyramid of Screaming” as a model for explaining where some of our frustration and come from – and where it can go to. The concept, detailed thoroughly in The Bro Code (a humorous read, highly recommended), essentially explains the process in which our bosses yell at us and, out of a need to ease our own frustration, we then yell at someone lower on our personal totem pole: whether it be a hapless employee lower in the office hierarchy or a family member.
 How I Met Your Mother While The Pyramid of Screaming was meant as entertainment, it has an obvious foundation in reality: when we feel that someone has yelled at us unjustly, we have a predilection for passing on that frustration to someone easily within our power. It isn’t a nice human quality, but examples of it are abundant. This habit, of course, speaks to something larger: a dissatisfaction with our ‘superiors.’ We are much more likely to feel maligned – that is, unjustly admonished – if we don’t respect the figure performing the act, or his/her position.
With skepticism about someone’s right to admonish us as pervasive as it is, it begs the question whether there is something intrinsically wrong with us (the followers) or them (the leaders)? Are we terrible followers or are they terrible leaders?
Some recent studies suggest what many of us have long suspected: that many of our leaders are not as advertised. Specifically, there is nascent evidence which suggests that – by virtue of their leadership roles – our bosses have increased capacities to fake their own competence and to lie.
As reported by Jeffrey Kluger at Time, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley subjected a number of groups to a series of exercises. After each, participants were asked to rate their fellows on specific qualities. Almost without fail, participants gave higher marks to individuals who spoke out more often and more loudly, whether or not what they said had any merit. In short, the participants demonstrated a tendencies to view someone as a leader based on how confident or competent they made themselves appear.
A study with similar experiences was detailed by the Harvard Business Review just this month. In it, Dana Carney divided participants into two distinct roles: either bosses or employees. They were subsequently given instructions to follow which involved lying to an interviewer. Participants were then studied to see how they dealt with certain biological and psychological results of lying. In Carney’s words,
“Just as kids don’t touch a stove once they learn it burns them, people don’t like to lie because it hurts them emotionally and physiologically. These data suggest that powerful individuals—CEOs, portfolio managers, politicians, elite athletes—don’t get burned when they touch the figurative stove. They seem to be more physiologically “prepared” to lie, which could lead to their lying more often.”
“Just as kids don’t touch a stove once they learn it burns them, people don’t like to lie because it hurts them emotionally and physiologically. These data suggest that powerful individuals—CEOs, portfolio managers, politicians, elite athletes—don’t get burned when they touch the figurative stove. They seem to be more physiologically “prepared” to lie, which could lead to their lying more often.”
After perusing these studies, it is easy to feel some angst towards people in all positions of power. But is that justified? Ask yourself these questions:
1) Who is to blame for this state of affairs?
2) Who can fix it?
The answer to both questions, of course, is “You” – the Everyman of American organizational culture. In a follower role, it is easy to persuade yourself to think you have less responsibility for your organization’s success. But that’s preposterous – followers have just as much responsibility for being good shepherds of their organization as their bosses do. You really are your bosses’ keeper. As Warren Bennis said:
“If I had to reduce the responsibilities of a good follower to a single rule, it would be to speak truth to power.”
There are nearly as many definitions for leadership now as there are examples of poor leaders. Attempting to define such a concept is a challenge for many reasons, not the least of which is determining what qualities your definition should be built upon. Some definitions, for example, play up the need for charisma, assertiveness, and organization (personal qualities) while other definitions might lend weight to relationships as the vehicle through which leadership is accomplished.
“What will distinguish effective leadership…is not just the dissemination of information; it will be the ability to communicate meaning and to translate that meaning into responsible, ethical action.”
Although my personal definition of leadership has evolved over the years, one quality has remained constant: communication. Originally, I think I included communication as a personal skill necessary for someone to become a good leader. That seems rather obvious: of course a leader will need to be able to communicate a vision to followers, communicate progress towards that vision, and communicate what still needs to be done to accomplish it. And that’s just one side to the communication coin – the other being a need to listen to followers. Furthermore, the act of listening need not be a purely physical act; it will also require attentiveness and concern.
Recently, the role of communication in my definition of leadership has grown. Reading the Washington Post’s On Leadership column, I came across an essay which I thought expressed my view on the importance of communication. In an April 9, 2010 column, Katherine Tyler Scott discussed some of the leadership challenges facing the Episcopal church. A board member of the International Leadership Association and a Managing Partner of Ki ThoughtBridge, Scott succinctly summarizes some of the major 21st century issues the Episcopal church is facing and adroitly seizes upon the tools they will need to succeed. She writes,
“What will distinguish effective leadership…is not just the dissemination of information; it will be the ability to communicate meaning and to translate that meaning into responsible, ethical action.”
Scott wisely emphasizes the primacy of communication not just as a technical act – an item to be checked off a list – but as a methodology to effecting impactful leadership. Good leadership, then, is a state of being, a relationship in the strictest sense of the word, which is born out of shared meaning. This shared meaning is fostered by an individual (a leader) for the purpose of motivating a group to action.
or, Bebo: A Cautionary Tale
I am convinced that the study/observation/analysis of social media has been, to date, simply a prologue. Social media has been the “new frontier” which none of us have experienced before. Thus, most theories regarding it have largely been bald suppositions. This is not a bad thing: it is how the study of all subjects evolve. First, blind ignorance. Next, awareness. After awareness, curiosity. After curiosity, relentless pursuit of knowledge. Throughout it all, answers – even if they aren’t the final answers.
And while our disposition towards a subject changes, it must change also. In order to facilitate proper examination, we must see our subject in all its phases. Consider medicine, for example. Consider yourself a medical student. Do you think you could glean all you need to know about the human body just from work with infants? Could you learn how to treat the feverish symptoms of an adult simply by examining the hiccups of a child? No. For medicine to arrive at where it is today, we have studied humans of all ages and varieties – but especially, we have studied corpses.
So, does it not hold that we would need social media corpses in order to study what factors determine “healthy” social media? If so, we need not wait much longer. While I’ll grant you that some social media corpses littered the internet more than a decade ago, I suspect there will be distinct differences between social media sites which were born and died in virtual anonymity (read: no media attention, very little public awareness) (pun intended), versus those which matured in the spotlight and then faltered or became titans.
In an April 8, 2010 CNN Tech column, Mashable‘s Pete Cashmore observes that Bebo – the social networking site which has found broad acceptance in the UK – might soon some crashing down. More important to us – as consumers and technorati – is why? He suggests that innovation is the key.
James Robinson of The Guardians‘ Observer column seems to agree. He points out that Bebo’s unique visitors have fallen 45% in the last year and asks, why? Why has Bebo lost traction while Facebook and Twitter have gained it? Ultimately, he agrees with Cashmore: Bebo simply failed to be creative, therefore, it faltered.
Darwinism is certainly at work on the internet and this is exemplary evidence of that. Innovate, it seems, or go the way of Bebo.
This is a good warning to be heeded by companies large and small who wishes to establish an impactful online presence. After all, as Robinson points out, one of the major challenges facing social networks is that they are subject (i.e. they have subjected themselves to) the fickle desires of the viewer. Nowhere is this more poignant, because on the internet your competitor – or some beckoning distraction – is only a mouse click away.
In the March 15, 2010 edition of Newsweek, Devin Stewart reports that “the estimated number of hikikomori” is burgeoning. Hikikomori, as it turns out, is the Japanese term for “shut-ins who have given up on social life.”
Stewart seems to suggest that this is related to the miserable economy, where Japan’s massive debt has contributed to just 14% of respondents reported feeling confident in Japan’s direction, according to an Ipsos/Reuters poll cited by Stewart. But, what if the economy is just a single contributor among many? And what if hikikomori are cropping up across the globe and not just in Japan?
As I read Stewart’s brief column, I couldn’t help but remember a March 2007 essay published in Harper’s where I first encountered Internet Addiction (“I was a Chinese Internet Addict.”) That essay discussed the phenomenon, likely to be added to the DSM-5, in which individuals become so obsessed with the internet that they lose touch with reality (I’m dramatizing, but only slightly). What of the people who give up on physically social lives, and opt for solely (or predominantly) digital ones?
This bears keeping in mind. As social media develops and becomes more pervasive – as comprehensive connection to a digital world becomes more facile, what do we stand to lose?
Way back in aught 08 (September 2008), I wrote about the building evidence for Internet addiction. The March 2010 Entrepreneur brings us an article by Joe Robinson (“Email is Making You Stupid“) which explores several aspects of technological addictions – including the harmful side-effects.
This article suggests that the burgeoning amount of emails, instant messages, tweets, and texts we receive are becoming a harmful and prohibitive cacophony of hyper-communication. So why can’t people reduce the amount of messages they send (and receive)? Well, they could be addicted (“e-compulsion”). In such instances researchers notice decreased attention spans, increased stress, and decreased productivity (Alarming statistics! Read the article).
The most frightful thing to consider? What if what we’re doing – emailing about – day-to-day really impacts our life in the long-term? Robinson brings to light an argument by Winifred Gallagher, authored of Rapt, that “humans are the sum of what they pay attention to: What we focus on determines our experience, knowledge, amusement, fulfillment. Yet instead of cultivating this resource, she says, we’re squandering it on ‘whatever captures our awareness.’ To truly learn something, and remember it, you have to pay full attention.”
As noted by Robinson, it pays to pay attention to attention.
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