I think there are two types of leaders/managers, “intentional” and “despite themselves”. Both can be and are successful, however the “despite themselves” leaders are only temporary and are marking time before they hit a wall. An intentional leader practices “Expect 3″ mentioned in an early blog.
- Develop expectations
- Communicate Expectations
- Verify Expectations are being met
An example is a division a friend of mine runs. He is very good at developing ideas and halfway decent communicating what he wanted his people to do, though he came up with so many expectations his people began to pick which ones they wanted to follow because they could not accomplish everything. There was never any verification that his people were doing what he wanted and he did not know he had so many expectations his employees had no way to live up to them all. He did not know that his employees were picking which expectation to live up to.
He had several layers of managers under him and because the people he directly impacted were conflicted so were the other layers of management below them and so on and so on. Everyone under him was following his example of not verifying accomplishments on a regular basis. So what began to happen is that the clerks who entered invoices and paid bills, 3 levels of management down the line, were not doing it properly and because their managers were not verifying their work the mistakes began to pile up. Until finally a cash flow crisis reared its ugly head when year end reconciliations were run.
My friend had to end up retrenching the entire division and firing several layers of management, some of whom were blatantly stealing since no one was verifying the accuracy of their work. The direction of the division went entirely in a direction he had not intended and all because he did not follow up on his employees to verify that the expectations he had communicated were being met on a regular basis. If he had checked weekly or monthly or just even regularly he would not have had these issues. He would have seen his managers were not doing all he asked, and he could have redirected them sooner. I firmly believe that 95% of employees want to do what is expected of them, the other 5% need to go elsewhere, but employees cannot do what is expected of them if they do not know what that is.
The bottom line is that there are some leaders who can just by sheer force of will and providence be successsful “despite themselve”, but personally I don’t really see them as leaders but as visionaries. If you are not developing, communicating, and verifying I really don’t consider you a leader, and that is not an insult (next blog topic). The majority of us out there, when we are blessed with a leadership role, have to work hard to be successful leaders and we have to be intentional about it. If we are not intentional about how we lead, then soon we will be unsuccessful leaders.
Future writings, “Why being a successful follower is more noble and harder than being a successful leader”, “The best leaders are the ones in the middle, who have to follow and lead all at the same time.”
