Don’t Take Action (Yet)
The knee-jerk reaction to fix or change the people we are leading is so strong. For most of my career, I tried to fix or change at the very first hint that someone or something was not what I felt it should be. I might have had a 5% window into what was actually happening, and switched into action mode.
So many of the leaders we support have also been conditioned to operate this way, and often feel overt pressure to demonstrate that they’re aggressively fixing and changing anything that doesn’t meet “the bar.”
There’s a BIG problem with this approach. The idea that the most effective leaders are “growing” and changing people is a myth. That might feel like an overstatement, but it was the primary conclusion of the most exhaustive study of management that has ever been undertaken – including over 80,000 interviews of managers done by the Gallup Organization over a 25 year period, and presented in the landmark book First Break All the Rules. The number one finding of that research is that the most effective managers focus their efforts on understanding the people that work for them, seeing what their strengths and challenges are, and then playing to those strengths.
Yet so many of us as leaders spend time focusing on what people are struggling with and trying to take control of those struggles and “fix” them. It puts us into a place of judgment and action so quickly, we rarely understand what’s actually happening and why those struggles are surfacing. Leaders trapped in this action-oriented paradigm are like captains entering a rough sea but determined to plow ahead on their chosen course. Intentions might be noble, but it’s a perilous and exhausting journey.
And as Gallup discovered, the best managers aren’t doing that at all. They’re surveying the sea and seeing where the currents and winds are already strong. They’re not trying to plow their path through the universe. They’re harnessing the power of the universe by letting themselves be guided by what is already true in reality.
Without knowing it, they’re applying the Awareness / Acceptance / Action Model (AAAM), which is rooted in ancient Eastern traditions and principles of mindfulness, but it’s more recently been incorporated into modern treatment programs - including recovery. The basic tenet is that effective action can only happen when someone is fully aware of reality, and accepting it. We have to know and accept what we are before we can change.
Most of the time that leaders fail to practice awareness and acceptance before action, they end up misdiagnosing the problem. They see their actions aren’t taking hold and assume there is an accountability problem, and end up doubling down on trying to force their “change” or path forward. I remember overseeing an initiative on my team that had come from “above” (though I had whole-heartedly embraced it), and laying out a clear plan for my team that would require them to shift their behavior in a significant way. I could see pretty quickly it wasn’t working, but instead of exhibiting curiosity about WHY, I started designing increasingly clear public accountability measures, essentially trying to pressure people into moving forward on my path. Only when our employee morale numbers started to tank and it looked like there might be a looming retention crisis was I forced to rethink.
It’s not a fun way to lead. Nor a very effective one.
It might seem backward to refocus your attention as a leader away from fixing, and more toward fully understanding and accepting what’s happening so that you can act from a full picture of reality. It might seem like a “fixed mindset” or like you’re giving up. But in fact, you’d be doing what the most effective managers in the world already do: accept reality, and go from there. That will not only get you better results, it will be a hell of a lot less stressful.
