If I were to hazard a guess, I would guesstimate that about one manager in 30 actually demonstrates any real leadership skill. This isn’t to say they’re incapable of leading—I simply mean that they’ve never really thought much at all about the act of leadership itself. As I’ve written before, they manage the work and not the people. But of course you can’t really manage work. You can talk like you do, but you can’t turn that blabber into a verb.
Let’s just think about this for a moment. I was talking to an excellent top sales performer at a company recently and she noted in a group session with her managers that the targets were meaningless to anyone who had done the job for more than about a year. After 12 months of repeatedly saying MORE! the employee just tunes it out. If you’ve been selling for 5 years, you’ve heard this stupid plea on the 1st of every month 60 times in a row. You might as well just email them a link to an audio recording that slots in a new digital number every month that is +X of whatever they did last month.
I’ve asked a lot of sales teams what affect that would have and they have universally responded to it super-positively. The few places that had actually implemented it often saw the numbers go up anyway on the “lax month” because the employee was more relaxed and less stressed, so they used their energy more efficiently.
The email suggested that any employee who was even one minute late should text their boss or they should not even bother showing up. Of course, to say to a salesperson to not show up is to say, don’t earn any money for your important bills. How important did this guy think one minute is? He would make all sorts of lame arguments about principle but if he had to debate it with me in front of people he would realise there wasn’t anything principled about his decision at all. Another manager could easily create better performance with a smarter strategy.
The guy had an MBA, but everyone teaching it was an academic who’d never been in a senior position, and even if they had, they’re far more likely to be one of the 29 bad managers, not the one good one. Which shows you can go to school to learn data but in practice you still either have an unconscious manager or a conscious one and only the latter makes people better, and the latter one would never send such a useless, silly and entirely counter-productive email. The reaction to it by the manager’s staff was universally a drop in respect for the him because he had so clearly shown disrespect for their lives and the money those lives need to function in a healthy way.
It was petty, punitive and what bothered me most about it was that it had zero chance of causing that sales team to be more effective and in fact it did the exact opposite. It took people’s heads out of the game. They spend half their time gossiping about how bad their boss was. Yes, it’s much more professional and much more likely to be a promotable person if they show up on time and demonstrate respect for their co-workers so it does have real value, but there isn’t much worth in being rigid about flawless precise timing.
Respect for clients and co-workers (including the managers) has a huge impact. So asking them to leave home an extra 20 minutes early every single day on the off chance they’ll get caught in bad traffic on one of them—that just means work is eating even further into people’s lives and that never pays off because people are starting to choose jobs based on who respects their lives outside of work. And even after all of those reasons, where I live texting and driving is illegal, so that manager’s request was essentially a demand to break the law or make no money. Nice guy, but dumb dumb dumb decision that never held anyway.
Bad bosses will lead by title. They’ll point to their sales record as proof then know what to do when that is almost entirely irrelevant to their staff. The hockey strategies used by a long-armed 6’5” winger are not applicable to a 5’9” speedster with quick hands. Again, that’s unconscious management. Thinking that someone else should just mimic you is arrogant and meaningless. You coach to people’s strengths you don’t try to whip them all into the same person. The meticulous customer service focused person cannot be managed the same as the cold-hearted money-motivated one. They can both be maximized to excellent effect, but not by just broadcasting arbitrary uniform demands from the professional equivalent of a bullhorn.
Don’t think a degree or success in a job qualifies you to lead. It absolutely doesn’t. Understanding people well enough to know how to motivate them as individuals does. So spend less time on rules and targets and penalties and more on learning about what personally inspires each of your staff. Do that and you’ll find they not only perform better than their competitors, but you’ll save yourself a ton in Human Resources costs. And—oh yeah—you’ll actually enjoy your own work day more too. And after all, that is half of your waking life.
peace. s
I help people achieve better mental health by teaching them about reality.