Why Leadership Training Should Get Us To Slow Down
“There’s never enough time. I’m behind at work, at home, everything seems to pile up. My team members seem to have an endless supply of complaints that need my attention. How can I find time to listen to all of that when I have so many other demands on my time?” Many leaders fall into this trap. It’s like the old saying, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get!” It is a common lament in leadership training, “This all sounds nice but how in the world can I possibly find time to do this? I can’t do everything that is expected of me as it is.”
As a part of a major change effort, the leadership team of the small electronics factory had implemented a system in which the teams could identify obstacles to their objectives and present them to management. Sometimes these issues were presented with proposed solutions but sometimes the problems were outside of their scope of authority, abilities, or access to resources. Each week the leadership team reviewed the issues and made decisions about what to do. They had committed to respond to 100% of the issues with one of three responses: 1) Yes! We will take action right away. 2) No! We are not going to take action and here is the reason. The “no” responses were always delivered face-to-face. No e-mails or memos! Or, 3) Maybe! If the response was a “maybe,” it was assigned to a member of the leadership team with a date for resolution. The team who identified the issue had the right to ask for the status of the issue and had the final word on whether the issue was closed or not. When the leadership team first agreed to this process, they believed that they would need to deal with a dozen or so issues each week, a manageable number. It was not long before we all realized that was a massive underestimate. Issues poured in by the hundreds. Soon, the leadership team began to complain that the process took all of their time. They were getting behind on their other tasks, working long hours, starting to feel out of control. So, we did some problem solving.
One question we asked was, “How many of those other tasks do you really need to be doing?” The leadership team then went through an analysis to see what tasks could be given up. Many of the things that they had been doing were simply done out of habit. Reports that nobody read. Unnecessary double-checking that added no real value. Meetings that no one wanted to go to. Etc. The result was a little like cleaning the clutter out of your office. By the time they were done, they found that they had plenty of time to deal with the issues coming from the teams. In fact, once they started making real progress on resolving the team issues, they had even more time than they did before. Wisely, they used that time to do a better job of thinking strategically about the future and to attending development activities for themselves. Their conclusion was that our real work is responding to these issues.
One of my largest clients has not yet learned this lesson. Their culture is a fast-paced, demanding one. It is not uncommon to hear hallway conversations like this. “Wow, I worked 50 hours last week.” “Oh, that’s nothing. I work 60 hours every week.” “In my department if you don’t work at least 70 hours, they think you are slacking.” It is a contest. In fact, little more gets done in environments like that than in companies where employees work far fewer hours. It is easy to look busy. Putting in the hours is not the same as getting things done. Actually, it is often true that less gets done in organizations where people put in extremely long hours than in environments where people are highly engaged for shorter periods of time. The high-pressure environments are often plagued by:
- High turnover. Turnover is expensive. The average cost to replace a competent employee who quits is about 1 and ½ times that employee’s salary.
- High stress. Stress is expensive. It translates into more absenteeism, higher medical costs, increased errors, poor productivity.
- Poor morale. People complain, withhold information, slack off, subtly sabotage organizational goals, retaliate, point fingers, etc.
- Game playing. People channel their energy and creativity into finding new ways of making their supervisors and managers miserable. It is amazing how cunning an unhappy team member can be.
- Less creativity. People’s ability to think clearly and in new ways is just not as effective when they are fearful and fatigued.
Some companies have programs to increase work/life balance
That is, employees are expected to work hard but not to extremes. They should take vacations, go see their child in the ballet performance, have a date night with their spouse and so on. In some companies, this is genuine. Their leaders recognize that a whole person with a real life outside work makes a better team member than one who lives only to work. In other companies, however, it is just so much lip service. The joke often goes like this, “We have a meeting every morning at 6:00 a.m. to discuss the new work/life balance program. It’s the only time we could squeeze it into our schedule.”
I often tell participants in my leadership training workshops that if their people are consistently working more than 40 hours per week, they have failed as leaders. Most jobs require the occasional week in which everyone has to roll up their sleeves and put in the extra hours. That is normal. But, if that is the norm, something is wrong. If people are always expected to work lots of extra hours, the team will lose sight of its real purpose. Good leaders want healthy, complete, whole human beings. It takes such people to make an effective team. Leadership training that encourages leaders to examine how they are scheduling work may be a step in the right direction.
Some leaders are overly demanding because they mistakenly believe it is a sign of loyalty or effectiveness. “Look how many hours my people put in.” Others may do this because they are not good at saying “no” to the powers that be. Or they may be fearful that they will not look good when compared to their peers. This kind of behavior is exaggerated in companies where performance reviews include strong ranking systems. If their team members don’t put in an excessive number of hours, their wages will suffer or they may even be in jeopardy of losing their job.
Whatever the reason, learning more effective communication skills will help. Listening, really listening, to your team members can go a long way toward helping them be better problem solvers, more independent, creative, productive, and more likely to pitch in when you really do need extra effort. Being able to confront respectfully when the behavior of a team member, peer, or manager is interfering with your ability to be productive can make a significant difference in your effectiveness. Leadership training that emphasizes learning these skills and how they can help make the team more productive will free you up to do the kinds of things that leaders need to be doing. You will have more latitude to schedule development activities, think clearly about strategies, and coach your team members when they really need it. It will also make an impact on your life at home. The old cliché is, how many people would have, “I wish I spent more time at the office,” engraved on their tombstone?