“If you are a boss, ask yourself: When you look back at how you’ve treated followers, peers, and superiors, in their eyes, will you have earned the right to be proud of yourself? Or will they believe that you ought to be ashamed of yourself and embarrassed by how you have trampled on others’ dignity day after day?”
You can’t manage people effectively unless you know yourself and manage yourself. Charity begins at home. In this context, let me tell you about a related transformation story.
Everyone knows about Steve Jobs founding Apple, getting kicked out by his board in 1985 and then coming back as CEO in 1997 to lead Apple to stupendous success. What is far less known is that Jobs 2.0 was very different from Jobs 1.0.
Jobs 1.0 left Apple to found and run NeXT. While he was running NeXT, Jobs bought Pixar, the animation studio. During that time, he witnessed how Ed Catmull, Pixar’s president, managed the company’s creative talent. Jobs learned how to manage employees from Catmull.
When he returned to Apple, Jobs 2.0 was more patient with people. He was still highly charismatic but no longer repelled people with his abrasive behavior and impossible demands. He had also learned that his ideas weren’t always right, and he needed to listen to others.
Many people pick up the wrong lessons from Steve Jobs. But, looking at his life in two phases can help one avoid making some mistakes.
If someone as wealthy, talented, powerful, and egotistical as Jobs can become a better people manager, so can you.
Read on.
“Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was – and still is – the most important thing we do.”
There is probably nothing more important for a manager or leader than ensuring that you have the right team.
My track record as a hiring manager who also ran a small company that grew to a multi-million-dollar revenue enterprise has been mixed — there were many misses and a few hits.
A hit is a good hire. A miss (aka a Dud) is a bad hire who is fired or leaves voluntarily.
Most people know the impact of the hits. What’s less known or talked about is the impact of the misses. Many managers underestimate the effect of a Dud on the company. Boy, did I have some ghastly misses! So, here’s the not-so-obvious stuff that can happen when you hire (and fire) a Dud:
1. Your clients will doubt your oft-stated commitment to excellence if the Dud keeps interacting with them. This can affect the brand. We once employed an experienced full-time financial trainer for a brief, whose quality was perceived to be so below than that of other trainers that many students were surprised and outraged.
2. The Dud may stay too long and build relationships with other employees. When the Dud is fired, it affects the others, even the good ones, who may suddenly get insecure. I recall this happened whenever we fired a Dud, and that’s how we lost a good employee. Or at least that was the reason she gave before surreptitiously joining the competition.
3. Because of #2 above, some staff will believe that the Dud wasn’t treated fairly. It doesn’t matter how well you try and justify the firing.
4. If a Dud who behaves in ways inconsistent with company policy or culture is tolerated by management, you are sending a message that company culture is just talk. That in turn, encourages other employees to deviate from the company culture.
5. A Dud who is a manager is worse because he not only lacks the right attitude and/or aptitude, but he can also easily destroy the morale and performance of those under him. That’s a negative force multiplier to (mis) use military lingo.
6. By hiring and firing a Dud, you’ve just lost X precious months where a good employee could have come in and helped run or grow the business. That’s a big opportunity cost.
So yes, hiring is super important, especially if you are new and small.
This is what I found out from painful experience about the art and science of hiring and firing:
1. You are not omniscient
Just because you are technically qualified, experienced, and had a successful corporate career doesn’t mean you know how to hire people.
I was a chartered accountant and CFA charter holder with 17 years of corporate experience when I struck out as an entrepreneur. I thought that was enough to know the good, the bad, and the ugly among candidates. I was mistaken.
You must understand how people’s minds work. You must grasp the basics of psychology insofar as it relates to hiring. You should also know the personality traits and values (see below) that the specific role requires and also know how to test for these. You must know how to set up and run a structured hiring process.
2. Get the max out of interviews
Interviews are next to useless unless well structured.
The usual questions such as “tell us about yourself,” “tell us your strengths and weaknesses” and “why do you want to join us” are questions that most candidates will be fully prepared for and hence they can game the process. They will be on their best behavior and tell you what you want to hear. It’s also not useful for multiple interviewers to ask the same question to the same candidate. Or for the interviewers to walk in with zero knowledge of the role and/or the candidate.
All this happens a lot in many companies and is grossly inefficient for both the candidate and the senior executives, who spend hours of precious management time.
Generic questions are best avoided; you want queries carefully designed to understand whether the candidate has what it takes for the role. If there are multiple interviewers, they should each ask different questions that focus on specific areas. Interviewers must study the background of the job seeker and the details of the role before asking any question, and if you are too busy, don’t bother getting involved.
All common sense, but as usual, it’s not so common.
3. Get other perspectives
You are likely to make the right hires of People Like You (PLYs) and screw up when hiring People Like Them (PLTs).
Let me explain. I used to run a financial training company and was also a CFA prep trainer, and (at the risk of sounding immodest) a pretty good one too. Hence, I knew exactly what makes a great trainer, what we should look for when hiring a trainer, and how to detect whether the candidate had the required aptitude and attitude. Hence my strike rate in hiring trainers (both full-time and freelance) was much better than when hiring PLTs. A trainer was a PLY.
In my case, a PLT was anyone who wasn’t a trainer — marketing, sales, operations, accounting, and so on - and here I thought I knew what to look for and how to detect these, but I was so wrong.
So how do you solve this? You get people in your team with diverse backgrounds and specializations involved in the hiring process. If your team is too small, get reliable outsiders (senior executives, HR specialists, experienced investors, and so on) involved. Most likely, they will look at things differently and see what you can’t see.
PS: I stole the PLY/PLT concept from Jyotirmoy Bose, my former colleague at Andersen, who is also a scholar and gentleman.
4. Beware of hiring your tribe
This is related to the above-mentioned PLY/PLT syndrome but on the personality front.
One hiring trap is to hire someone like you in terms of behavior, because we all love interacting with people like us. I tended to instantly like candidates who were like me — honest, funny, engaging, articulate, and confident. Luckily my initial impression often didn’t translate into an offer letter, thanks to further analysis on the part of myself and other team members.
This preference for clones of yourself can result in a lack of diversity, and you could end up with a bunch of yes men and women. You could also end up hiring people who have the same flaws as you do. That may not sound like a big deal, but that’s particularly dangerous when some flaws are detrimental to the role they were hired to perform. For example, if you are a big-picture person who dislikes detail, hiring someone who also dislikes detail for an operations role (where details are everything) will be a disaster.
Before you hire, ask yourself how much your hiring decision is linked to the ways the candidate is similar to you. Even better, get the views of others in your team.
5. Check for values
You must know what values and behaviors you are looking for in a new hire.
For that, you must first know what values and behaviors you want embedded in your company culture. If it’s a start-up, that should not be delayed and should be decided by the founding team soon after setting up the organization because too many things depend on this clarity.
6. Use assessment centers
One recruitment activity that worked for me better than others was to make the candidates do what they would do if they joined.
We would fly potential financial trainers to Dubai for a week and ask them to deliver a number of 30-minute demo lectures on various topics to a few experienced faculty. They were told about the topics weeks in advance to give them time to prepare well to deliver a lecture.
Post the demo lectures you found out quite quickly who cut it and who didn’t, at least as a trainer. You could also learn a lot about their personalities, such as openness to criticism, willingness to learn, and resilience under pressure.
Much later, I found out that this process is called the Assessment Centre method in Organizational Psychology. It’s quite effective not just because you are testing in depth for the skills and traits required for the job but because, unlike in a short interview, a candidate can’t keep the mask on for long in an assessment center.
7. Beware of hiring brilliant jerks
A brilliant jerk is one who is highly competent but whose attitude doesn’t align with company culture.
If you end up hiring one by mistake, don’t keep them around for too long because they represent a living and breathing violation of the company culture, and you look like a hypocrite. It’s easy to hire one because you get seduced by how qualified, articulate, confident, and technically gifted they are and overlook the less-desirable traits, or you often don’t even bother testing for these traits.
I made this mistake and retained someone because he was a highly effective trainer respected by all students, the topper in the company trainer league table. But, unlike other trainers, he detested doing any work outside training and was also a reluctant team player, and all he wanted to do was just teach, something a small company couldn’t afford. We let him go after four years, but in retrospect, that was probably three years and six months too late.
8. How to use recruiters
If you don’t use recruitment firms properly, they either don’t send any resumes and stay quiet for long, or they respond with resumes that show that they have no idea what the client needs.
My suggestions:
• Brief the recruiter in detail, and this briefing should be done by the Line Manager. HR can be in the room, but the manager is the one the candidate will report to, and he knows exactly what he wants (which HR may not). Plus, it’s essential that the recruiter knows the manager’s personality for a better hiring fit.
• With each resume that was rejected in the screening stage, tell the recruiter exactly why it was rejected. Ditto for each candidate who was rejected later in the process. That will allow the recruiter to calibrate because he is flying blind with vague or no feedback.
9. Are we overemphasizing attitude?
Perhaps the most popular meme on hiring is “hire for attitude and train for skills,” the assumption being that you can develop skills by training, but if you are stuck with an employee with a poor attitude, you’re screwed.
However, there are a few caveats here:
• What if the candidate has a great attitude but isn’t bright enough to pick up the required skills? This statement is, of course, a minefield given the ‘wokishness’ pervading the world, but it is undeniable.
• How about if what I need for that job is a high level of expertise and skill, and I don’t give a damn what the person’s attitude is as long as it doesn’t disrupt the work, especially since the employee will not be managing anyone? Many techies and tech jobs fall into this category.
10. People don’t change
This is such an important point.
What I mean is never hire with the expectation that you can change someone’s behavior significantly enough to fit the job’s requirements. Something else I learnt the hard way.
Most people’s personalities are set by the time they hit the age of 25 (when the brain’s pre-frontal cortex develops fully), and from then, you’ll not see much change in their fundamental personality. They may stretch but not by much, and that too only if highly motivated.
A few examples of unrealistic expected behavior:
So, recruiting someone with the knowledge that the candidate’s attitude isn’t up to the mark and with the belief that they can be “upgraded” on the job is not only naïve, it’s dangerous as well.
Delegation can get tricky. Who do you delegate to? When do you delegate? What activities can be delegated? So many questions.
Let me state my experience. I usually tended to over-delegate.
It probably started when I was the finance director of a large real estate development company in Dubai, where I was also in charge of running feasibility studies. The delegation wasn’t because I was lazy — I was so curious and enthusiastic that I rarely said “No,” and as a result ended up with a lot on my hands and hence had to delegate.
I still recall one incident vividly, although it happened 16 years ago.
It happened thus. The CEO asked me to prepare and present to him a feasibility study on a project. Salma was a girl in another department (valuation) with little experience in feasibility studies (and quite frankly, more ambition than ability). She begged me to allow her to present her analysis of a new project to the CEO. Now Salma hadn’t exactly set the valuation department on fire with her work, and yet without thinking of her ability, and obviously against my better judgement, I said “Yes.”
I was super busy and spent almost no time briefing Salma or reviewing the final slide deck. Come presentation time in my office with Salma, the CEO and myself and Salma bombed spectacularly. The assumptions were dodgy, the calculations were off and incorrect, and the whole thing was a shit show. To say it was an embarrassment for me would be to do injustice to that word. To his credit, the CEO was a gracious man and simply smiled and said we need to study this further before walking back to his office.
Let’s take another instance of over-delegation from a small company I know well.
The company had hired Padmini, a young, ambitious woman to look after sales and reported to the CEO. She was average at sales but terrible at following up, something the company found out after she left to pursue higher studies at extremely short notice. Thanks to her negligence (and the incompetence of the company accountant, Martin, who also reported to the CEO), there was lack of proper paperwork like signed invoices, and a lot of money was lost as clients either claimed they had paid the money or refused to pay as there was no proof of service delivered. All this mainly happened because the CEO didn’t bother to delegate properly and check in detail.
This is about over-delegation.
Under-delegation is also a problem, like the story that I know very well of a CFO and the Finance Director (“FD”) working under the CFO. The CFO would rarely delegate any important work to the FD, a qualified Chartered Accountant and a competent and hard-working chap. The reason? Probably lack of trust. The CFO was a perfectionist who didn’t trust anyone to do a good job, plus he probably believed that the FD was after his job.
“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings — and put compensation as a carrier behind it — you almost don’t have to manage them.”
1. Give clarity
Did you guide your subordinates up-front, or did you simply throw them in the deep end and expected them to walk on water?
Some managers do the latter quite often when they don’t have the patience to sit down and explain to a junior.
The result is that the juniors will most likely deliver substandard results.
2. Check on workload and situation
Before you delegate, check whether the junior is overloaded. Subordinates often get swamped with work from multiple managers, but they often won’t speak up for fear of being ridiculed, lectured, or being seen as a slacker or a whinger.
Also, check if they are in the right frame of mind to handle what you are about to delegate to them. For example, do they have any serious personal issues?
And no, people are not machines and will mix the personal with the professional. You probably don’t know because they’re scared to open up since you don’t care. You should know, and you should care.
Some people are so good at talking the talk that you delegate more than you should.
Padmini (story above) was especially good at that, with a perennially confident and cheerful manner. As the CEO once confessed to me, “She sweet-talked me!”
Be careful of sweet talkers. To quote the great philosopher Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify.”
4. Check for fitness
Are they fit for the task?
Never take the junior’s enthusiastic “Yes” as proof of fitness.
A junior will rarely tell you that they can’t do a job. This is not due to deviousness but driven by a desire to please the boss and because they simply haven’t had enough experience to know whether they can do a proper job.
You are the boss. You should know whether the subordinate can do it.
5. Second chance
If the delegation went awry and the employee shows potential, give him another shot.
Everyone screws up. I know I was given several second chances, and you probably were too. Don’t be a hypocrite.
Your delegation decision depends greatly on the person you are delegating to. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. Some people can be trusted, and you should delegate more. Some people cannot be trusted that much (most likely because they are new or untrained) and hence limit your delegation and supervise regularly and closely.
7. Never lose faith
After the extremely expensive mistakes with Padmini and Martin, you’d think the company’s CEO had enough of trusting people.
To his everlasting credit, he didn’t.
Probably because he had the good sense to recognize that you can’t do everything and can’t grow a business that way. The CEO was also keen to develop a great workplace, and micromanagement would have had the opposite effect.
Once, a LinkedIn connection messaged me this unusual question, “How to avoid being a jerk with people you manage?”
It’s can be quite tough to not be a jerk as you rise up the ranks. There are several reasons for this:
Firstly, you are often surrounded by Grade A jerks (especially in the Big 4 firms and investment banking), so this behavior looks normal, is often tolerated, and even encouraged. When something is taken this casually, you don’t think anything is wrong.
Secondly, as you rise up the glorified food chain, your ass is being kissed regularly by juniors, so you think you’re God’s gift to leadership. Although you may be bright you are often not bright enough to realize that they are doing it out of a mix of fear (of being fired) and hope (of being promoted). These chaps, of course, won’t tell you that you are a jerk.
Thirdly, you’ve achieved some success in life so far (CA/CFA/MBA/Manager/VP/Director), and you probably attribute a lot of this to your attitude so why change? What you forget is that what got you here was most likely technical competence in whatever field you work in and not management ability. Which means that your ego is built on the false belief that what got you here will get you there.
Fourthly, it’s much easier to live in delusion and denial than face the truth and change. The process of introspection and self-awareness can be incredibly shocking and humiliating and hence many people don’t even go there. One way to tame your dragons is to pretend they don’t exist. Except that the aforesaid dragons are not only very much alive, but they are also growing in size and lethality as well.
But, all that doesn’t mean you can’t change.
Read on.
1. Be motivated
You must want to change. That’s the starting point.
You must want to be a leader and make a lasting positive impact on lives. You must want to grow the division or company. You must be able to see an incredible power that will be unleashed if you become a better people manager. That’s the start.
Without this foresight and motivation, you can attend as many leadership development programs and read as many self-help books as you want but they won’t move the needle.
2. Get feedback
You must invite honest and accurate feedback.
Surround yourself with people who care and aren’t afraid to speak up to you directly, face to face. I once worked with a manager who was two ranks below me. She thankfully cared enough and was gutsy enough to tell me in private whenever I screwed up.
Don’t retaliate in any way whatsoever when you get such feedback.
3. Get more feedback
Have anonymous 360-degree feedback systems in place. This is where you get regular feedback from your juniors, peers, and seniors. It worked for me.
Health warning — this doesn’t work that well in small organizations where everyone knows everyone else so well that it becomes clear who the feedback is from.
4. Be more self-aware
Admit that you’re a jerk or becoming one. Like I said, the reaction will be shock, denial, anger, and then finally acceptance. Self-awareness at this level is extremely tough and hence quite rare.
5. Set your expectations
Accept that change is painful and gradual and is often two steps forward and one step back.
It’s extremely unlikely you will be magically transformed from a mediocre or average people manager to a Satya Nadella or a Ratan Tata.
You will often revert to type and repeat your bad behaviors. But, if you become aware of this retrogressive behavior and can reduce the frequency and severity of this, you can change over time, not overnight.
6. Start now
The earlier you spot your jerkiness the better. Because the older you get the tougher it is to change, thanks to conditioning. Certain values and behaviors will have become so embedded it may require superhuman effort to uproot them.
It can be quite helpful to have a coach on this journey if you are the coachable type, that is, if you are passionate about your goals, open to feedback, willing to change, highly accountable, and thinks long term.
Humor is actually a serious matter that has so many benefits.
But, I think the prevalence of humor in the workplace these days is low to non-existent. When was the last time you laughed at work? Exactly.
This tragic loss of our sense of humor is a problem that negatively impacts not just people but also organizations. It looks like we are all going over the humor cliff together, falling down into the dark canyon of seriousness below.
Let’s talk about the many ways by which humor helps at work.
1. It relaxes the atmosphere. I have often been in meetings where the atmosphere is silent and awkward and my cracking a small joke has instantly lightened the mood and got people talking again. This can be useful when things get a bit tense or there are long, uncomfortable pauses.
2. Humor connects and bonds people. This works especially with strangers and it’s so important to break the ice initially so you can get on with business. At the start of a gathering of mostly strangers, the attendees are usually wondering what to say to set the meeting going and no one wants to say anything that sounds awkward or stupid. Enter your sense of humor to the rescue.
3. It shows that you’re human just like everyone else and not some colorless robot in a suit. People connect with people (duh!) and not titles or roles and humor is so un-robot-like (well, till they make machines that can crack a brilliant joke).
4. You will stand out. Many people who work in audit, accounting, finance, compliance, risk management, engineering, medicine, and law are often boring stuffed shirts who are under the illusion that you must at all times take yourself too seriously. This worked in my favor as I’d be the only one in the meeting who was different and hence instantly stood out for the right reasons.
5. It makes you more likeable and impactful as a colleague/leader/coach/mentor/teacher. In my previous life as a financial trainer, I often had to run 3-hour or even day-long classes that too on utterly boring and complex topics. How do you keep a room full of students (all white-collar workers who have just finished a tiring 8-hour workday) interested? Simple — crack jokes related to the exam, the topic or the career related to the class. The last thing a learner wants to experience is 3 hours of a dour-looking chap grimly talking only about the valuation of straight and callable bonds by backward induction using the binomial interest rate tree!
6. It demonstrates confidence. The fact that you can deviate from normal business behavior with strangers or in a new situation shows that you’ve guts.
7. Humor helps in making otherwise dull information memorable. For example, viewers of humorous shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report remember more about current events than people who get their information from newspapers or regular news programs.
8. It also shows competence. Because the perception is that humor shows confidence and if you’re confident, then you are competent as well. This is true irrespective of your actual ability, which hopefully should not lead to a thumping let-down.
9. Research shows that work teams communicate better and are higher performing when humor is present in their interactions.
10. Employees rate bosses with a sense of humor higher, and vice versa.
11. Using humor in the face of failure can help us manage our emotions so we learn from our mistakes and bounce back quickly.
12. Shared laughter doesn’t just create closeness in the moment. It’s equally effective at strengthening relationships over time.
13. We all want meaning in our lives. But, work and life can get serious and hard, mundane and stressful. Having a sense of humor punctuates and offsets the seriousness and allows the meaning to come through.
14. Leaders who use levity build trust within their organizations. Organizations with high levels of leadership trust are 32 times more likely to take risks that could benefit the company, 11 times more likely to see higher levels of innovation than their serious competitors, and 6 times more likely to achieve higher performance levels.
15. It demonstrates that you are approachable. This is essential and works quite well if you are interacting with a person or group junior in age or title to you. It helps even more if you are someone they admire and respect and they are slightly overawed by you. I’ve often worked with college, Chartered Accountancy, and MBA students to organize events, and I’d insist on setting up a WhatsApp group with the organizers (mostly students) and interacting freely and humorously with them. The effect was almost always delightful as they lost most of their fear and hesitation and more of them reacted; a few initiated conversations, and they also became more open and honest with me.
16. If your humor is self-deprecatory (i.e., the type often practiced by many Brits), that shows you as humble enough to show that you have flaws and confident enough to talk to a group of your foibles, even as a joke. This style of humor can help enhance a leader’s relatability.
17. Because of all the above, people will want to work with you and follow you as a leader. You’ve made an impression and that’s rare in a world full of dull, serious, unremarkable-sounding folks.
From harsh mountain climbs to grueling cycling expeditions, to tense corporate meetings, to long CFA prep classes, I’ve used humor to deliver insight, uplift spirits, defuse the tension, or break the boredom. I’ve always connected far better, thanks to a well-developed sense of humor.
The higher people go on the corporate ladder, the more zombified they become. It’s like some vacuum sucked out of their souls. There are lots of reasons for this, including the fear that they’re not funny or that they’ll unwittingly offend someone.
Look, you should be brilliant at work. You really should. Focused, diligent, determined, collaborative, bold, visionary, purposeful, impactful. Your work must be the standard by which they judge others.
But, don’t get obsessed with it, even if you’re amazing. Have some humility. Be approachable. Laugh at yourself. Expect mistakes; don’t be too hard on yourself or others. Don’t be a self-righteous ass.
It’s critical that leaders practice humor. Because humans are naturally inclined to mirror the behavior of the highest-status individual in a group, leaders are uniquely positioned to influence workplace culture. By keeping things light and playful, they create the best conditions for great work.
Luckily there is a great guide available. Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas wrote Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life. And How Anyone Can Harness It. Even You. This book covers what makes something funny and how to:
a) mine your life for humorous material,
b) make a strong first impression,
c) use humor to deliver difficult feedback and persuade and motivate,
d) foster cultures where levity and creativity can thrive, and
e) keep humor appropriate.
Here are what they say you could do as a leader:
1. How do you use humor as an effective management tool?
Fundamentals
1. As with everything else, leaders set the tone when it comes to humor at work. It’s less about being funny and more about letting your employees know you do have a sense of humor. Be quick to laugh at other people’s jokes and keep looking for ways to break the tension and lighten the mood.
2. The easiest way to have more humor at work is not to try to be funny — instead, just look for moments to laugh.
3. Never look for what’s funny. Look for what’s true and go from there.
4. Observation and noticing the absurdities and oddities around us are foundational for developing humor and fun. Every joke has a kernel of truth.
5. What if you are a leader and lack a sense of levity? Worry not. Because working with employees who have a natural sense of humor opens up opportunities to create a culture of levity. You can then tap into the humor of those around you — celebrating people and moments, and enabling others to provide humor. For example, you can support and encourage juniors who have the funny bone.
2. How can you practically use humor at work?
1. Use humor in your emails. For starters, get rid of jargon and take a more human tone. Another approach is to add a lighter “PS” to the message.
2. Add levity to your bio or CV. Aaker and Bagdonas cite the bio of a job applicant, which ended by noting that he hosts a podcast “affectionately described by my wife and two daughters as ‘long, boring, and utterly devoid of substance’.’’ It signals wit, humility, and confidence, and was the first thing a hiring manager asked him about.
3. Use humor to acknowledge mistakes or defuse tensions. One woman was called out for being longwinded by a client, and she closed a follow-up email “In future brevity” rather than “Sincerely.” It forged a connection with the client.
4. Get people in a creative mindset. Astro Teller, the CEO of Alphabet’s X moonshot division, asks people to come up with bad ideas. He requests that teams brainstorm “the silliest, stupidest ideas,” and often, freed of the pressure to be brilliant, they generate funnier and better solutions.
5. Celebrate peaks and ends. People, over time, remember most of the emotional peaks and the endings of experiences, so adding humor to them can positively color colleagues’ recollections more broadly. In this vein, Apple executive Hiroki Asai organized elaborate gags for all-hands meetings of his team, including once having a gospel choir emerge from among them to perform.
6. Create traditions out of organic moments of delight. A Ford engineer once remarked that some problems are “harder than putting socks on a chicken.” Amused by the metaphor, his colleagues started presenting new hires and visitors with weird and chicken-themed socks.
7. Kick-off with fun. Starting a work session with levity is a powerful way to set a positive mindset and break us out of set habits (at least temporarily).
1. People’s laughter at work is often less a response to the joke itself than a reaction to status and hierarchy. Maybe they are laughing because you’re funny, or maybe they are laughing because you’re just the boss. Which is it? Self-awareness helps.
2. Humor can sometimes be inappropriate and offensive. A guideline for telling if jokes cross the line is whether a comment would be offensive if you removed the humor.
3. The use of humor at work can be tough as you climb the corporate ladder because what is appropriate humor changes with rising status. The thing is that as a middle manager, it’s okay to joke about top management. But, when you are top management, there’s no one above you to make fun of. The risk here is to make fun of people below you, which usually doesn’t go down well. Never punch down by making fun of someone who’s lower on the org chart. For example, a VP who makes fun of an intern is a bully and a jerk. In these cases, self-deprecating humor is often the next best option for leaders.
4. Regardless of status, never make another person’s identity the prop, plot point, or punchline for your humor. Derogatory humor doesn’t just push boundaries or highlight divisions. It can perpetuate prejudice and impact behavior by those with prejudiced views. It further divides.
Trust is an intangible asset with massive value. But, all over the world, we have a trust deficit.
Just look at the reality.
Kevin Murray, a UK-based executive coach, quotes in his book People with Purpose the below results of a YouGov survey that he commissioned of 4,000 managers and employees:
“Managers interviewed by YouGov either strongly or somewhat agreed — to the tune of 94% — that they were honest at work, with 92% saying they were sincere.
Employees, however, felt differently. Only 63% agreed that the managers were honest, with 37% having mixed reviews or disagreeing. Only 58% of employees agreed that their bosses were sincere, with more than 40% having mixed feelings or disagreeing.
While I have no doubt that the managers we surveyed genuinely believe they are honest and sincere, they should be worried about the perception gap.”
This section is about one of the key elements — trusting your team and vice versa.
“I don’t care if you come into the office at 10.00 am.
I don’t care if you choose to work from home or not.
I don’t care if you work from the garage while they fix your car.
You don’t need to justify to me why you need a day off.
You don’t need to explain how sick your child is and you need to leave early.
You don’t need to apologize for having a personal life.
Yes, I care about results, but I also care about you. Life happens.
We are all human and we are all adults.
I lead people. I don’t run an adult daycare center.
We hired you to do a job and I trust you to get it done.
Just let me know what you need from me to be successful in your role, and I will show up for you.”
The above more or less captured my approach when I managed teams and subsequently ran a small company. I always prioritized outcomes (the trifecta of on Time, on Spec, on budget) over optics.
1. Trust removes the fear that exists in many companies — the fear that is driven by the uncertainty of not knowing whether you will be praised or punished by management.
2. Nobody likes to be micromanaged — it’s demeaning and constraining, hence a recipe for disengagement. Trust removes the need to micromanage.
3. Trust takes a big load off your shoulder as a manager. You can now focus on bigger things like strategy, clients, and new business instead of worrying about whether Farah is really working from home or whether Ankita has fudged her travel bills.
4. In many companies, the information flow is top-down. Trust ensures the valuable upward flow of information on opportunities, progress, and problems. The troops at the front line not only know that you won’t use the information (especially on problems they escalate) against them, but they also know that the boss can only manage things better if he is given the right information on time.
5. High trust promotes collaboration and creativity.
For me this meant that:
1. I didn’t care what time staff came in or left, unless of course their presence in the office was important, for example, to handle incoming and outgoing sales calls, to attend agreed meetings, or to deliver classes. Way before Covid, I was perfectly okay with staff working mostly from home, especially if they worked mostly with clients and/or coming to work involved a long commute.
2. Initially, I used to be involved in every single hire and sit for hours at interviews. That was possible and even essential as it was a tiny company. Once we had a solid second line in place, I refused to interview anyone who didn’t report directly to me (which was mostly the case).
3. I started to overlook mistakes and tried not to penalize anyone for making them, trusting that they would learn from their mistakes.
4. I never kept following up on the status of a project other than on the agreed project deadlines. Once we agreed on the goals, timelines and budgets, I trusted that they would revert to me if there were any issues or potential delays.
5. Of course, all the above was only possible because we’d hired the right people and also after I managed to delegate properly.
Your nature and your previous work experience often influence you. I suspect I disliked checking up on employees (and preferred to trust them) for a few reasons:
1. Instinctively, I did not want to be like my first manager, an incompetent micromanaging weakling who insisted that I stay late till he left although I had finished my work for the day.
2. I didn’t want to lord it over like another boss in another place who directed me not to leave before 6.00 pm for the sake of “political hygiene.”
3. One of my values is freedom, which was such an existential factor for me that I couldn’t see how others could operate without it. With trust, everyone gets some freedom.
4. Most importantly, I saw firsthand how engaged and effective juniors would be once they realized that you trusted their judgement, their ability to execute, and their ability to self-regulate.
1. Hiring is fundamental
Way before trust (or anything else for that matter) comes hiring. This may sound like a cliché, but if you hire right, you should have far less trust (or other) issues.
A good employee is one who is competent and has integrity. I did touch on hiring best practices earlier, but some ways to assess competence and integrity:
a) discrepancies between qualification in resume and social media portals
b) vague or inconsistent while being interviewed on previous roles and responsibilities
c) red flags from the background check from previous employer/s
d) not confident on the subject matter
e) the stated university or institution or degree looks dodgy
2. Trust must be earned
Trust comes before delegation and just like delegation, you have to be careful who you trust. Never trust blindly or indiscriminately. If they are new to the job or overall inexperienced, test them first before reposing your trust for something significant.
Freedom is given, but first, trust must be earned while at work or even before while hiring.
3. Be consistent in messaging
Never break the trust reposed in you as a leader.
Take the example of a manager who declares in October that every Friday at 3.00 pm the team will have a Town Hall meeting where anyone can ask anything related to work. Then for the next few weeks, this doesn’t happen because the manager is “busy travelling or meeting.” After six weeks, he drops the idea entirely as “the busy season is upon us.” When the manager reintroduces the Town Hall meeting the next February, what are the chances that the employees will believe him?
Exactly.
4. Let go of perfection
A lot of the time, the reason managers don’t trust subordinates is because the manager believes that the work will never be done to the level of quality that he requires.
It’s possible that a few tasks must be done to exact specs and hence require specific knowledge and skills, and the cost of getting it wrong is significant. One good example would be deciding what stocks to buy or sell in a large portfolio (and how much and when) despite the existence of policies and procedures. Another would be speaking to big clients. The portfolio manager is justified in doing these himself instead of delegating it to an analyst.
The same portfolio manager should be able to trust the analyst to run a stock valuation model, prepare monthly reports, and so on as long as the work is reviewed by the PM. I know of situations where the manager insists on doing similar tasks himself despite having the authority and the budget to hire good people.
5. Lighten the controls
You have to trust that the majority of humans working with you are not frauds.
This means you mustn’t put too many processes/safeguards, especially when the downsides that you are trying to guard against have a low probability and a low consequence. These controls become onerous, and employees often spend a lot of time navigating through these instead of adding value to clients. They also get frustrated and disengaged.
Yes, the process/benefit may be abused by an employee or client once in a blue moon but that’s not an excuse to clamp down and make the process difficult and irksome for the 99% of the people who are honest. It’s tempting but don’t do it.
Aside from your personality traits (internal) that are crucial, there are three major external factors that influence what kind of manager you end up being. I mention these because, unlike personality traits, you have far more control over the below:
1. Culture
There is the cultural factor.
As an example, that I know well from personal experience, if you spent your formative years in a predominantly Asian culture, you are likely to be analytical, diligent, attentive to detail, critical, stingy with praise, micromanaging, penny wise and pound foolish, and wholly focused on work to the detriment of everything else.
Now don’t get all woke on me because that’s not a racist stereotype — it’s a well-known cultural feature. Obviously, there are exceptions.
2. Bosses
There is the boss factor.
We often unconsciously copy our managers. This is because most of us are impressionable when we are young, and our bosses often look and sound impressive.
If you worked with an empathetic, tactful manager (manager E) who you admired for a significant while early on in your career you are likely to incorporate many of manager E’s traits yourself because that’s your first exposure to leadership.
Conversely, if you worked under an unusually tough manager (manager T) in your early years who you admired, it is logical to conclude that your management style will include many aspects of how T managed people. This happened to me in my early thirties, and I wasn’t even aware of the negative influence until much later in my career.
3. Company
There is the company culture factor.
If you join a company at a young age and stay there long enough, you imbibe the company culture and that influences your management style.
It’s quite tough to craft your style in such an environment, especially if the company culture is embedded in everything you do and because you are penalized if you deviate from and rewarded if you comply with that culture. Because you are young and impressionable and are possibly unaware of how you are changing, you allow yourself to be molded.
The above list doesn’t mention courses like MBA, EMBA, Leadership Development Programs, and so on. That’s because these fancy courses by themselves can’t and don’t do the trick (except enriching the purveyors of such courses). They are too short, too generic, and too theoretical to make any change.
Develop your style deliberately and not by default.
1. Self-awareness helps craft style
If you know your values, strengths, and weaknesses then you can develop your management style in alignment with these.
I will give some examples:
• If freedom is one of your values, it’s likely that you will probably want significant operational autonomy, want the freedom to air your views on work to your bosses, want the freedom to move about the organization in search of suitable roles, appreciate that others also thrive when given greater freedom and it’s unlikely you will be a micro-manager. Of course, freedom in certain situations must only be given after trust has been earned and not granted up-front.
• If authenticity is another of your values, it’s likely that you will bring more of who you truly are to work. It also means you will be consistent in your words and actions; your team will never have to guess where you stand on an issue and that you mean what you say.
• If well-being is one of your values, you will consistently take care of your mental and physical fitness. You will have a proper balance between work and life. You will also ensure as far as possible that the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of your team isn’t compromised because of work.
As an example, when I ran Genesis, I disliked asking my juniors to work late hours or on weekends and would ask them why they were in the office if I saw them sitting past 6 pm as I was leaving the office. However, it was impossible to stick to this 100%, mainly due to the nature of the training business (weekends were busy), so I tried to make up. If they had to work on a weekend, they’d get a compensatory off and also the meals for that day and the taxi fare (to commute to work and back) would be paid by the company.
2. Dealing with clash of styles
What happens if you are a manager, and your management style and values clash with the company culture? What if you aren’t allowed to manage people based on your management style?
This is quite common and hence such an important issue.
Examples of uncomfortable mismatches are:
• If you value integrity, but your company insists that you lie to clients and/or staff.
• If you respect everyone and value women’s rights, but your employer underpays women, and sexist behavior is tolerated in the workplace.
• If you value meaningful work, but the work you do, although highly remunerative for you, isn’t impactful — it just makes your bosses or rich people richer or helps your company or clients avoid laws or taxes.
• If you value well-being but you and your teamwork 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you are always stressed and sleepless.
You really can’t be fulfilled as a manager working in such places.
Do you want to change your style and adapt? But, that may mean working against your values and going over to the dark side and that isn’t sustainable.
One solution is to use your value ranking. If push comes to shove and you want to keep the job, you can adapt your style by compromising on the lower ranked value/s. For example, if integrity is right at the top and achievement is a lower value then, to preserve integrity you may decide to craft your style such that you won’t (for example) mis-sell to clients and are okay with missing the targets and also missing the promotions, pay hikes, job security, and so on that accrue to those who are not that picky about integrity.
There are no easy answers, but food for thought.
3. Choose your idols carefully
Be extremely careful who you admire.
Some leaders are highly charismatic and it’s easy to be swayed by their confidence, brilliance, influence, and success. But, as they say, “taller buildings cast longer shadows,” so it’s likely that they have some deep flaws as well, which most likely you will be blind to. Chances are you will end up with a management style that incorporates a lot of what that person is like. That style may be working for the leader in that context but may not work for you perhaps because you don’t have the same strengths (or some other factor working in the leader’s favor like godfather/s, gender, nationality, ethnic background, etc.).
True, you can’t choose your bosses, but you can choose whether to be influenced by them (or not) and, if so, to what extent.
Self-awareness is extremely helpful in such a situation.
Be aware of the strong cultural factors that are shaping your management style. This won’t be brought to your attention when you are working with a homogenous bunch and is far more likely to come up when you work with a diverse team.
I once worked in Big 4 firms where 90% of the staff were Indians who thought and behaved largely in the same way and hence my thinking and behavior were in line with theirs. I regret that now because my values, beliefs, behaviors, hobbies, network, and so on stayed narrow and never developed during that period as I didn’t know any different.
Try and work with a diverse bunch — your culture-driven behaviors will then stand out and you can decide whether to keep, modify, or lose them. Diverse teams will bring in their own knowledge and experience and that will help you learn and grow.
And, when I say “diverse” I mean distinct enough to get the benefits of diversity such as people from South Asia, Far East, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the United States and Africa, not just different states of India.
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Companies that act like commodities are the ones that wake up every day with the challenge of how to differentiate. Companies with a clear sense of why never worry about it. They don’t have to ‘convince’ anyone of their value.
The need to belong is a very basic human need. When a company communicates their why, what they believe, and we believe what they believe, then we will go to extraordinary lengths to include those brands in our lives. Their products give life to their cause. And, products with a clear sense of why give people a way to tell the world who they are and what they believe.
Start with why.”
Take my stint at teaching CFA prep.
Of all the topics in the vast CFA curriculum, the one that “flows” for me is portfolio management in Level I. My class is a smooth, elegant sequence from risk and return to risk aversion, to utility functions, to indifference curves, to adding a risk-free rate to the Capital Allocation Line, to the Capital Market Line, to unsystematic and systematic risk, to Beta, to the Security Market Line and, finally, the holy grail (!) of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the required return which is a very significant number in finance (used in calculating the cost of capital, Intrinsic value, etc.). Yes, I know all this sounds like Greek to nonfinance folk, but I promise this is the only such mention!
After the class, I found out that students loved my storytelling approach so much that they requested that I could follow the same approach for other topics.
If you bother to connect the links smoothly and convincingly it becomes a story with a beginning, middle, and end. There is meaning to each part of the story. If you don’t tell the story, Portfolio Management for the student becomes a boring narration of unrelated concepts that have to be mugged up for the exam.
Some of the most effective leaders and managers are masters at telling stories. Let’s look at a few high-profile examples.
One of the best storytellers is Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Schultz regularly talks about his own rags-to-riches story. He was the child of often unemployed parents who lived in Brooklyn public housing, and then went on to become the CEO of the world’s most successful coffeehouse chain. He’d use stories as the starting point to describe the history and mission of Starbucks and to explain many business decisions he made. For example, Schultz often explains Starbucks’ values in a story about his father having an accident when Schultz was a young boy. His father was injured and unable to work, and that fired up Schultz to make sure Starbucks took care of its workers and gave them benefits like insurance and adequate time off. By explaining Starbucks’ goals in the context of his personal experience, he made the goals, strategies, and decisions of the company relatable and comprehensible.
Elon Musk has always shown an impressive ability to convince investors to put large sums of money into what must have seemed strange, highly risky business ideas. This is partly due to Musk’s reputation, passion, and his belief. But, even the greatest idea is unlikely to become a reality if it isn’t explained in a way that people can understand. Musk is exceptionally good at explaining what he wants to do, and not in confusing jargon, but in plain language that captures people’s imaginations. In other words, he is a gifted storyteller.
Richard Branson has spoken on many occasions about his huge respect for storytelling and his belief that other entrepreneurs should be educated about how to embrace storytelling as a business tool. He’s perhaps the world’s best-known example of a leader who symbolizes storytelling. In an interview with Carmine Gallo for Forbes Inc., Branson said that “the Virgin story — its ups, downs, opportunities, and challenges — is what attracts people to its products and services, as well as attracting employees to join the Virgin family,” saying that “We would be nothing without our story.”
So why are good stories told well, so effective?
1. A story has structure
There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most people like certainty, which means they like to know where they are now and where they are headed.
2. A story is attractive
If you stick to just the complex and abstract concepts your audience will likely get bogged down in the details.
They focus on the how and not why and because of this they get frustrated and stop paying attention.
A story is the remedy for this especially when smartphones and apps have resulted in many people these days possessing the attention span of a goldfish.
3. A story is comprehensive
What this means is that you’ve cleverly packed all the realities, challenges, processes, options, solutions, and so on into one neat package. I don’t know of any other communication tool that nails all these so efficiently which is quite important when people don’t have the time.
“When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.”
4. A story is relatable
This is because it involves tales of other people and places and events. Unlike dry concepts, people relate to all this a lot because it is more credible and also because that’s what real life is like. This also means that they will pay attention till the end, and every storyteller loves a rapt audience.
One of my most popular posts on LinkedIn was about my academic failure at the age of 16 years and my dejected feeling as I got down from a red bus in the rain in July 1985 and slowly trudged up alone up a long road to apply for admission to a degree course at a mediocre college, the only one that would accept me. The point of the story was that you don’t need a great past for a great future. This struck a chord with those who had suffered academic failure and/or had a mediocre educational background. That post was many years ago but a few of my LinkedIn connections still remember that vividly and keep bringing it up in conversations.
5. A story triggers learning
Ethics in the CFA curriculum can be a dry and boring topic.
Which is why whenever I taught Ethics, I explained each standard with a funny mini case study. I’d randomly pick on a student to illustrate the idea of insider trading or market manipulation or loyalty to the employer and the entire class would explode into merriment at the conclusion of the story.
Learning and fun at the same time.
6. A story clarifies
This is because a story takes concept/s and shows how it is applied in real life. Stories are practical. Concepts are theoretical and hence fuzzy.
For example, you could explain skewness and kurtosis in quantitative methods by talking about these concepts and drive your audience to distraction.
Or you could tell the story of David Viniar, the ex-Chief Risk Officer of Goldman Sachs, who used the skewness and fat tails of the return distribution of Mortgage-Backed Securities (“MBS”). He ordered an immediate review of GS’s entire MBS portfolio and after that, either sold or shorted these toxic MBSs making Goldman one of the very few banks during the Global Financial Crisis not only to escape unscathed but also to make billions in profits.
Suddenly, the concept becomes very real, very interesting, and very clear.
7. A story is memorable
This is important because one major defect of trotting out facts and figures is that they are utterly forgettable which means a total waste of time for the speaker and audience alike.
Like my Ethics classes.
I’ve had students coming to me after 2 years telling me that my examples were so funny, clear, and relatable that they were so memorable. So memorable that they never opened the Ethics books to prepare after attending my class and still aced the exam.
8. A story can be inspirational
You can try motivating your audience by explaining how the low pressure and thin air at high altitude make the cardiovascular system work harder and hence slows your speed.
Or you can tell the story of how you hiked up Stok Kangri, a 6125-meter-tall mountain in North India, a saga full of ambition, confidence, poor equipment, and a near failure on the mountain followed by a last-gasp summit push, glory and a few key lessons learnt on high-altitude hiking.
My favorite story from corporate life is my own and how after a particularly stressful and futile day at work dealing with my paranoid, nit-picking boss I sat in my 39th floor office at night gazing at the traffic below, wondering what I was doing with my life, and decided enough was enough and handed in my Blackberry and access card the next day. That story never ceases to inspire.
If you are a corporate leader, I’ve got ten storytelling tips for you:
1. Link to values
As a leader, you should have introspected deeply and laid the foundation — your values, who you want to be, and your worldview — before you start telling stories to trigger the desirable audience behaviors.
Because ultimately, you are talking of behaviors and skills, and you can link all that back to values.
2. Which story?
This is something that I often grapple with because I have led a fairly varied and interesting career and life, and I often wonder what story to pick for an audience.
If you’re not sure how or where to start mining for your own stories, here are some helpful prompts:
• If your life were a movie, what’s one scene you’ll never forget?
• What’s something someone said to you that you’d never forget?
• Think about a breakthrough moment.
• How about a time you had to follow your heart?
• Talk about a moment you were reunited with something you treasured.
3. Be brief
People’s attention spans are getting increasingly shorter. So, keep stories concise. Aim to keep a story within a 45-second time frame and use a clever hook to keep employees engaged. A quick, punchy story with a strong message can be far more impactful than a lengthy one.
4. Say what went wrong
Talk about mistakes, failures, and disasters. People love tales of zero to hero.
The greatest stories usually have obstacles which need overcoming, such as recovering from poor health, mediocre academics, a deprived upbringing, a toxic mindset, and so on.
The mistake, failure, or disaster is what gives your story tension and fills it with emotion and meaning and hence makes it recallable. The obstacle should be the pivot point of your story and what makes it memorable.
5. Stick to a few points
People often pack even brief presentations with every selling point they can think of.
But, that’s actually the worst thing to do. Because your audience is going to remember hardly anything you cram into that hour. Stick to a short, simple message that you repeat in different ways. When there are fewer things to remember, your audience is more likely to remember what matters.
And oh yes! Stick to your best points. If you have ten points in your story, but six of those are weak, throw the six out.
6. Get personal
There’s nothing more appealing, relatable, impactful, or memorable than as a personal story.
In contrast, stories of celebrities or public figures come nowhere close as people don’t know them that well (they only know what they see in the media) and hence just can’t relate to them.
7. Show courage
This is especially useful when you are an aspiring or current leader.
Tell others about your leadership journey, about how you screwed up in your career, and the lessons you learnt. I did that, and I still do.
Trust me that will be more powerful than a PowerPoint slide on Organizational Culture or Leadership Development.
8. Conclude
Know the moral of the story up-front. The story should be heading to a conclusion that must illustrate or clarify a point (or points) you are trying to make.
Unless you are a born comedian or you have a lot of practice doing this, don’t try and wing it at the event. Know what you will say, when you will say it, how you will say it, and so on well in advance.
10. Structured not scripted
It’s normal to feel stressed before sharing a story with an audience. Become very familiar with your story. Practice enough to be comfortable telling it from memory, but don’t memorize it word for word. If you memorize it verbatim, your delivery can sound wooden, and you might even go blank.
A good tactic is to really learn the words you want to use for the beginning and end of your story (as that’s what people may remember the most) but keep your notes in between as bullet points. That way you can naturally fill the gaps, but you have your most important elements well-rehearsed.
“You signed a contract and are paid to do a job so don’t expect gratitude or thanks when you complete what was your job in the first place.”
That was my attitude for the longest time, even after starting out as an entrepreneur.
Because that’s what I learnt working with my bosses in my corporate career. In fact, not only did I rarely praise (in public or privately), but I was also frequently critical of my team in front of other members of the team under the guise of being honest and practical.
Of course, that didn’t help. Employees were scared of getting excoriated by the demanding boss.
All that changed after a particular incident. I realized that I wasn’t being a leader and that it was hurting the team and the firm. I changed quite a few behaviors and started becoming more appreciative.
The effect was a delight to see. Individual and team morale shot up.
A few related points:
• If you say, “thank you”, it doesn’t cost a thing. You don’t lose your dignity or power by thanking anyone. It’s a quick email or a few words in passing.
• As a leader, you may not expect or need appreciation because you are largely self-driven. But, appreciation often means a lot to others, more than (or as much as) a role change, pay hike, or promotion. Never underestimate the power of a “thank you.”
• Often, we assume that the other person knows you like their work. But, that’s often erroneous — the other person may not realize that you appreciate them.
So, the next time someone stands out, show some appreciation. It costs you next to nothing but may mean the world to that someone.
1. The appreciation rule
You should use the 4 S rule — Swift, Specific, Sincere, Significant — as set out below.
2. Be swift
Say “thanks” soon after the event happens. Appreciation delayed is appreciation denied. It also looks as though it wasn’t important enough for you to appreciate quickly.
3. Be specific
Never be generic in appreciation. Examples:
Be genuine in your praise; otherwise, it will not only fall flat, but also all future praises will be less effective.
Examples:
5. Be significant
As a manager, you cannot and should not shower praise for stuff which is normal and/or doesn’t move the needle at the firm. You want to show by appreciation what is highly valued by the leadership (and hence what is valuable to the firm) and what is not highly valued.
Examples:
6. Appreciation culture
You must build a culture of appreciation.
As a leader, you can’t be everywhere. Because you often don’t have visibility more than two levels below you, it’s critical that those below you follow the same 4S protocol.
Otherwise, only the people immediately below you will get the benefit of appreciation while the rest of the company will slave away, unappreciated and disengaged.
This is yet another reason to be super careful about hiring those below you — middle managers are critical in that they can build or destroy the culture you are trying so hard to create.
7. Be fair
It’s quite common in companies to appreciate the rain makers (i.e., the boys and girls in sales who bring in the money) and ignore other staff who make the magic happen like operations and accounting.
At Genesis, because as MD, I was also in charge of accounting and because it was a small firm, I knew what was happening everywhere. It also happened that the sales team had, like in most companies, the best and most visible news to share (targets met, clients bagged, etc.). But, the back-office team members were also doing excellent work, albeit unseen by most. Hence, I always made it a point to post laudatory messages on the company WhatsApp group.
Example:
“Thumbs up to Zack and the accounting team for following up and collecting all the long-pending receivables of $ 100,000. It was a tough task digging out old invoices and emails and dealing with difficult clients. Zack typically doesn’t like to talk about his achievements, but his work is important and must be recognized and hence this post!”
It is important to do this because otherwise some team members will feel that the leader has favorites and only praises those and never others. Or that some activities (like sales) are far more important than others (like accounting). This feeling of favoritism can be corrosive, leading to unnecessary speculation about nepotism and God knows what else.
“After years of studying leaders and their traits, I believe that leadership begins and ends with authenticity.”
“Authentic Leaders are more interested in empowering the people they lead to make a difference than they are in power, money, or prestige for themselves.”
“Authentic Leaders are as guided by qualities of the heart, by passion, and compassion, as they are by qualities of the mind.”
“They lead with purpose, meaning, and values.”
“Others follow them because they know where they stand.”
“When principles are tested, they refuse to compromise.”
“The reality is that no one can be authentic by trying to be like someone else. People trust you when you are genuine and authentic, not an imitation.”
Most leaders I have known and who I know aren’t authentic lack an inspiring purpose (“creating value for shareholders” is not exactly an inspiring or noble purpose), have mediocre values, won’t admit to errors, are selfish, lack self-awareness, and fear being vulnerable. They come across as fakes. Authenticity makes a leader more impactful.
Whether as a finance director or co-founder or CEO or trainer or mentor I’ve tried to lead with authenticity.
Authentic is what I tried to be whether in corporate or in entrepreneurship. Inauthentic were often the managers I worked with. Look at the differences:
After I wrote down the above dozen, I thought, “Well, that’s all very good but how can someone become authentic?” So, I went back and went through them, this time looking for underlying personality traits. The traits I found that connected with authenticity are:
• Sense of humor,
• Self-awareness,
• Acting per your values,
• Empathy,
• Humility,
• Honesty, and
• Realistic.
Keep it real.
1. Watch yourself
Watch how you behave, what you believe, how you react under pressure, and how you respond to hurdles. Which of these responses feels authentic to you and which don’t? By picking those where you feel true and where you feel fake you start seeing the real you.
2. Review your values
Think about how you were raised, because that will tell you where you got your values and behaviors from. You were ignorant and vulnerable in childhood and hence you soaked up the values and behaviors of your family like a sponge. Some of these — whether they relate to religion, tradition, identity, or anything else — may not reflect the true you.
A lot of the time, you pick up your mother’s attitudes and values because typically the mother is the primary caregiver, and a child spends the most time with the mother rather than the father.
By analyzing where our behaviors came from, you can know what came from where and what you should keep and what makes no sense (and hence should be discarded).
3. Identify inconsistencies
Be honest and look at the differences between your thoughts and your actions (actions say a lot about you) or between your thoughts and your words. Watch out for discrepancies between the two.
This is one of the techniques that I personally use. Often when I say something serious especially when someone asks me for my opinion or advice (action) I immediately think of my own thoughts and sometimes the inconsistency/hypocrisy pops up.
So, the question now is what do you want to keep?
4. Explore your values
Yes, we return for the zillionth time to my favorite topic!
Check how much of your values is being lived by you. Most of the time we are not living our values and are miserable because of it. The closer your life is to your values the more fulfilled and authentic you will be.
5. Cease and desist
Stop unhelpful beliefs and behaviors.
This is the tough part. How do you stop doing stuff that you have been doing regularly for 30–40 years or more? How do you change your mind when the beliefs have become deeply embedded as part of your personality?
There is no easy answer, but I’ll tell you what worked for me when I was trying to be a leader:
• Ask yourself how you want to be seen. I didn’t want to be seen as the arrogant, abrupt, moody, unpredictable boss anymore. I wanted to be respected as a leader by my team. This was not the case and hence while I was a leader by title (Managing Director), I couldn’t really call myself a leader.
• Ask yourself what kind of impact you want to make. I wanted to grow the revenues and profits of the company on a long-term basis, but you can’t do that unless you reduce staff turnover and increase employee engagement and you can’t do that unless you change as a leader.
• Ask yourself what your duties are and who are all relying on you. As the MD, it was on me to lead responsibly. I had the livelihoods of 25 people in my hands, and they trusted me to do the right thing. It was less a case of selfishly indulging my preferences and holding on to an “identity” and more of understanding the big responsibility and acting accordingly.
• Grasp the fact that your identity and personality aren’t permanent and its perfectly normal to change and you don’t lose anything by changing. One of my biggest fears (unfounded) was that my “character” would be diluted if I changed, that I would lose what made me unique.
1. Speak authentically
That means not saying anything that’s not the real you.
Because, just like living a lie results in certain values and behaviors becoming deeply embedded as part of your psyche, you must start living the truth so that these can become part of you.
This can mean saying what is true despite the (temporary) discomfort that it may cause you and others and also not putting up with bullshit.
2. Act with intent
Remember your intention is to stick to your new identity so your actions must be aligned with the identity you are trying to build.
I am focused on health and fitness, so I eat carefully and work out regularly. This is because wellness is a core value of mine, and this is because I want to look good, and I don’t want to live my later years as a sick and fat person who may need to rely on people and drugs for survival. It is also because I want to stay physically active (cycling, hiking, etc.) as long as possible. So being a lazy fat slob would mean betraying those core values and that makes me quite uncomfortable.
As with all major endeavors, having a coach right from the beginning will increase the chances of you becoming and staying authentic. A different set of eyes, especially of someone who is experienced and independent, can make the difference between staying where you are and moving on.
Marshall Goldsmith is probably the world’s leading executive coach and his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There — How Successful People Become Even More Successful is indispensable for anyone aspiring to leadership. This book serves as an essential guide to help you eliminate your dysfunctions and move to where you want to go.
It’s a small book free of jargon and Marshall shares many examples from his coaching practice and also offers some practical tips. I read this book many years ago and it’s a classic. It’s also one of the few books that I regularly recommend to friends and clients.
Malcolm highlights 20 bad habits that typically hold executives back:
1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations.
2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our 2 cents to every discussion.
3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasm and cutting remarks that we think make us witty.
5. Starting with no, but however: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone that I’m right and you’re wrong.
6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.
9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to give praise and reward.
11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
16. Not listening: The most passive–aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.
19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.
These aren’t flaws of skill or intelligence. Some smart, highly talented, and well-educated people I know make these mistakes. These are challenges in interpersonal behavior.
The reality is that the higher you go, the more your problems are, which are behavioral and not technical.
Check yourself against this list. Be honest and don’t fool yourself as you are the easiest person to fool. Please don’t let your ego take precedence over reality.
I hope you get unstuck soon.
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