5 difficult things Leaders must learn to do and how to do them right…
Leadership is easy. Only joking. It’s hard. It’s bloody hard! But there are ways you can make it easier. This starts with finding a way to be comfortable in discomfort.
This means overcoming a lot of natural impulses to run from or avoid difficult tasks. And this starts with giving them the time and attention they deserve. There’s a long list of things that every leader will need to learn how to do. A lot of these aren’t easy and they aren’t fun. But they are necessary.
1. Getting the Right People in
Hire the wrong person and they can quickly do a lot of damage to an estab- lished culture. Isn’t someone better than no one? Probably not, no. The truth is a smaller team of dedicated and cohesive person- alities will beat a larger but disjointed team nine times out of ten. So what to do?
Take the time to get good at hiring. It goes beyond CVs and experience. In the interview, establish contextual examples of scenarios they’re likely to face and see how the person reacts. Ask for actual examples of when they’ve done as they say, rather than letting them give generic and well-drilled answers. And pay attention to how they model their values. How do they respond to not knowing something? Are they po- lite? Do they keep changing their answer to fit your follow up?
And don’t forget you’re selling the company and your leadership as much as they’re selling themselves. Talk about your values, your humanity, and your expectations. Be authentic and honest. Take the time for them to see the person behind the job.
2. Getting Diverse Perspectives in Alignment
“It’s like herding cats”. This is how my first boss referred to getting different departments to pull in the same direction. And as adorable as the idea of a little cat shepherd might be, this is serious. We’re serious. Only serious managers here.
Organising a team takes the delicate balancing of a few skills. A recipe of competencies.
- Organise yourself and others (dead- lines, targets, timelines)
- Delegate responsibility (you can’t do everything, so remove yourself from all but the essential)
- Motivate yourself and others (focus on intrinsic motivation)
- Monitor (avoid constant oversight, but you will need to be there to nudge things on course, especially for newer staff or when you’re a newer manager)
- Achieve results
Different people have different agendas. This is a feature, not a bug. But if they aren’t aligned, it can become chaotic, back-biting, and divisive.
It’s your job to make sure it works.
3. “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” — Peter Drucker
Goals give us a roadmap. But even if you’re a good goal setter, it’s something else entirely to be an effective goal achiever. Because you can make all the plans you want, but if you can’t get people to get things done, your plans are point- less.
Life gets in the way. Other tasks creep in to fill your time. People have bad days. As a leader, you can’t control these variables. All you can control is your effort, your discipline, and your response. However, there are some common things that good leaders ensure they anticipate and avoid.
We can all fill our day with junk tasks. They’re the kind of thing that takes up your time and feels like work but isn’t really moving the needle. Schedule a little time for it but be strict to keep it out of your action time.
Be disciplined. Vanity metrics
Such as sales numbers, volume, hours spent. Sometimes they’re useful. But consider them in the context of the work being done. A high volume of top line sales isn’t so impressive if you’re not breaking even. Look for the truth behind the numbers. Be smart.
Fire-fighting
That which is urgent will fill your time. You’ll convince yourself you are effective. But being busy doesn’t mean you’re productive. Make sure you’re making time to do valuable work and not just fighting fires.
Be pro-active, not re-active. The duplicity of relief
It feels great to get a difficult con- versation done. But it’s not about feel- ing good after (though that’d be nice). It’s difficult because there’s something to be addressed. So don’t prioritise getting it over with so you can feel good with getting it over with so the problem is addressed.
Be honest with yourself. Parkinson’s Law
Tasks expand to fill the time you allow for them. So plan realistic time based on experience, and stick to it.
Be diligent. Hofstadter’s Law
However, tasks always take longer than you think they will, even if you account for Hofstadter’s law.
Be flexible.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” — Mike Tyson
4. Remembering Where the Buck Stops
If decisions were easy, we wouldn’t need leaders. But they often aren’t, so we really do.
We’re the leaders. We choose the direction. We set the goals.
And while this gives us both status and a level of autonomy, it also burdens us with something we’re wired to want to avoid: other people’s dislike of us. We may need to make decisions that affect people, often negatively. Or can be framed unfairly. Or conflict with how we want to be seen or see ourselves.
It’s not a nice feeling. Sometimes we need to figure out the greater good, and then make choices on the way there that seem counter-intuitive. It can be brutal. And if you’re a compassionate, popular leader, this can be a hard thing to do.
Nobody likes being the bad guy.
But this is your cross to bear. Don’t waste time worrying about being dis- liked. Instead, spend your time making sure you get good at evaluating data, exploring possibilities, thinking outside the box, and making good decisions. Or
at the very least, fair decisions.
You can always course-correct if evidence shows you made the wrong call. But only you can really know if it was wrong in the end.
“There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs; and you try to get the best trade-off you can get, that’s all you can hope for.” — Thomas Sowell
#5. Fire Staff the Right Way
Nobody enjoys firing people.
And in an effort to avoid conflict or put in the time and effort to address an employee’s issues, many bosses end up just neglecting the employee and failing to give them the skills to succeed. Then they quit.
But this lets the employee down and it lets you down. This isn’t leadership.
Learning how to do this the right way takes time and practice. Hopefully you’re not getting too much practice!
To improve your firing process:
- Be transparent about the reasons (with yourself too) and gather
- Check with a 3rd party / panel / supe- rior whether this is the right
- Plan what you want to say (but not a script).
- Announce the meeting (think care- fully about the time and location), and ensure another colleague is there and that they take
- Keep the meeting short, to the point, and professional. Avoid making it
- Once the employee has left, have a meeting with the rest of the team or department to clarify and
After it’s over, I normally take some time to reflect on how we got to this point, consider changes I could have made to support the employee better, and note any lessons that can be applied to recruitment. Then I draw a line under it and move on.
You do not need to beat yourself up and you do not need to dwell on any mistakes that were made. Accept that
this is how you learn, and promise to do better next time. Then put those words into action.
“The day firing becomes easy is the day to fire yourself” — Tom Peters
Thanks for reading!
