Being In Control

 

Take a moment to harken back over your career for a moment. How well do you remember your very first leadership position? Do you recall how unprepared you felt as you struggled to positively influence and inspire the people that you were responsible to lead?

 

If most leaders were to be truly honest about it, they would have to admit that when they were leadership greenhorns, they believed that leadership was about being in “control”.

 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of virgin leaders and veteran leaders still hold fast to this flawed belief of being/feeling in control. While it is sad, it is also never the less true. According to one Harvard Business Review article on the subject, little has changed over the past 30 years. Leaders being in control is far more a perpetuated myth by supposed leadership, than actual fact. Studies reveal that leadership’s control over performance outcomes amounts to a paltry 10%.

 

For leaders to actually influence people to the point of having a meaningful degree of control over their people and work outcomes, they would first have to have actual “followers”. And like their predecessors of the last century, 21^st century leaders (with rare exception) still don’t have them. All too many leaders remained immersed in the theatre of trying to appear as if they are in control, which is a far cry from actually being in control.

 

When it comes to employees, they simply aren’t buying the theatre routine of their leadership and haven’t been for decades. It isn’t very difficult to connect the dots and see the correlation with the lack of employee engagement in present time. Workers at all levels have witnessed the absence of leadership buy-in, experienced every new flavor of the month program and felt the lack of value as individuals.

 

In considering the Great Recession and the years of its lingering aftermath, how may organizational situations literally got out of control? How many brick walls did organizations encounter that may have even threatened their very survival?

 

When a member of senior leadership steps forward during such difficult times and attempts to deliver a seemingly positive stem winding pep talk to reassure their people – how did their people actually view this all too predictable action?

 

While a handful of employees may have slept better that night, the majority of employees felt that it was either a theatrical act to whitewash what was really occurring or an outright act of deception to keep them in the dark.

 

Given that leadership’s meager ten percent control over performance outcomes is generally unable to contain or effectively correct the situations that placed it in jeopardy in the first place, the tendency is to dismiss the situation by making it attributable to the business environment, economic climate and the like.

 

This is where, when and how leadership typically fails to own up to and account for the fact that decisions were in fact made by the organization’s leadership which placed the organization into jeopardy in the first place and then secondarily failed to get the organization out of the jeopardous circumstance it created.

 

At a base level, there are two components which invariably translate into the myriad of leadership issues that organizations from business, industry and government are faced with.

 

       People in leadership roles that have never actually had any formal leadership training.

 

       People in leadership roles who aren’t sure what to do.

 

In working with a wide array of organization types and business classifications over the years, the same “true confession” story continues to surface again and again. It always goes pretty much like this…

“The more I progressed in my leadership training and development, the more I came to realize that I was a part of the problem and not just a part of the solution. This realization helped me to grasp the fact that my leadership style had been about being in control or thinking I was. Not only was I attempting to perform my own job, I was trying to perform everyone else’s work too. And if I was too busy to do their work, then I bossed them about how to do theirs in order to get it done right. When the problems inevitably arose, I blamed my people for the mistakes. Little by little over time, I retreated to my office, closed the door and endlessly wondered what to do.

 

I had become the ogre in the room who believed he was leading by control and command. As I have since learned, the people that I was responsible to serve as a leader simply showed up at the workplace every day and then left promptly on time. I gave them no reason to do any different. The fact was that I was treating them like worker drones instead of allowing them to utilize their talents, stretch their capabilities and feel safe to make an honest mistake from which we could all learn and grow.” 

 

The reality of this confession story is that it is exists in every organization.

 

As your valued resource partner, we can readily assist your organization, its leadership and your people in changing this story to one where they… Learn more. Do more. Become more.

 

Copyright © 2015 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC