When You Have Issues With Your Team, Less is More
I’ve written a new book on leadership, co-authored with veteran leadership expert Brian Tracy.
We were originally going to call it “Start With You”… because an important starting point for great leadership is self-awareness.
I know… super-sexy idea, right?
Most books on leadership are about changing yourself in a big way, or inspiring change in others.
There are just two small problems with those approaches:
(1) Changing yourself is hard.
(2) Changing other people is harder.
I think what I’m trying to say here, cutting through all of the deep psychological language is… change is, uhh, tricky.
Fortunately for you, I have pretty good news.
To lead well, you don’t have to actually change anyone, or become someone who isn’t really you.
The best way to become an effective leader is often simply to do less.
Now, this is obviously one of those annoying statements where you won’t know, until near the end of the blog post, whether (a) I’m could be on to something really profound and important here, or (b) I’m just on something.
While you’re reading on to find out, let me briefly tell you about Bob.
Bob runs his own business. His typical working day is from about 7am until 11pm.
He doesn’t get to see his family much and after a while they begin to resent this. Eventually, Bob’s wife considers leaving him… or rather, leaving the man who slips into the house close to midnight each night, and whom she assumes is Bob.
Now, you might mistakenly think Bob is a workaholic. Even I might think this, and I just made the guy up literally a few moments ago.
However, Bob wouldn’t agree with us about this. He’d tell us he’s working hard so he can feed his family and put a roof over their head… and he’d be telling the truth.
To him, the success of his business means his family can live in comfort and security.
What he isn’t seeing is the desperate need for balance between his work and family life. He’s out of balance here, and it’s hurting his loved ones.
Yet all he has to do to begin correcting the issue is… work less!
Now, hold on a second.
Before you think Bob’s story is my way of telling you to find more excuses to slack off work (ooh, maybe a subject for another book?)… no, that isn’t my point.
Bob is out of balance in an area where he doesn’t see a need for balance in the first place… and this has unintended consequences for those around him.
The competing needs of work and family life forms a polarity that needs to be balanced... at least if you intend to keep your family.
So far I’m hoping this is all pretty obvious if you’re not a workaholic… because you intuitively recognize the need for balance here.
What’s not obvious is, there are also a number of other polarities that need to be balanced by anyone who leads a team.
I call them “Management Polarities”… and unlike the one between work and family life, these polarities tend to be a lot more subtle.
Relatively few leaders even know they exist. They always involve two opposing traits. Being out of balance in any one of these often has unintended consequences for the team they lead… which can create tension and conflict.
Now, this is where the thing I said near the start of this blog post comes in.
If your team is experiencing issues, I’m willing to bet (your house) that the root cause is likely to be an imbalance in one of these Management Polarities.
Once you become aware of an imbalance and know which side of the polarity you’re expressing more of… the best course of action is simply to do less of it.
When you do, you’ll be surprised at how quickly team issues resolve themselves.
Okay, you may be skeptical of all this. Maybe it sounds too easy, too theoretical... or just plain nuts.
There are two simple ways for you to begin coming round to my point of view… and for this to start actually making sense (rather than sounding slightly deluded).
First, keep reading my blog.
Over the next several posts, I’ll show you several examples of leaders who were out of balance in a trait that affected their team, and the impact it had.
In this post, Bob was fictional… but the characters I’ll introduce in the following posts are based on real leaders, although mixed up and edited somewhat to avoid embarrassing specific people. (Especially you, Tom.)
As you’ll see, often all these leaders needed to do was tone down a particular trait – do less of it – and perhaps use a few simple techniques allowing them to express more of the opposite trait. This usually cleared up the issues with their team.
The second thing you can do is take this Management Polarity quiz... which is a great starting point to see the connection between your own personal traits, and issues that may arise with your team.
