October 2017

The Masks We Wear (and why you should follow Dr. Henry Cloud) #5020 - THE PEER ADVANTAGE

The Masks We Wear (and why you should follow Dr. Henry Cloud) #5020

The Masks We Wear (and why you should follow Dr. Henry Cloud) #5020 - THE PEER ADVANTAGE

My buddy Leo Bottary gifted me a book by one of my favorite authors, Dr. Henry Cloud. It was late last year and my stack of books in the reading queue was high so I didn’t get around to reading it until recently. It’s entitled, The Power Of The Other.

The book is about the impact other people have on you. In every area of your life. A friend has told me it should be the next audio book summary I do. We’ll see. But today I want to share with you an ancient idea – and truth – that Dr. Cloud addresses in the book in a section entitled, “The Mask Of Inauthenticity.” 

We employ our capacity to protect ourselves and establish effective boundaries by donning masks. “Never let ’em see you sweat,” is indicative of our need to protect ourselves by not showing exactly how we’re feeling. Or sharing what’s really may be going on with us.

I was in my 20’s when I got my first real #1 leadership role running a company, a luxury retailing outfit. Retail is largely about engaging the shopping public. Front line people can make or break your success. Quickly I learned that how I entered a store and engaged with employees would impact people. People were reading signals that I wasn’t even intending to put off. Visual signals. Tone. Facial expressions. Body language. They all mattered. It was too long ago for me to remember how I was made aware that my entrance could have a somewhat lasting impact on front line people, but I was glad to learn it – and somewhat dismayed at how to better manage or control it. 

It had nothing to do with hitting the door in a foul mood. For me, it was mostly preoccupation. I wasn’t accomplished in “being in the moment.” I had no idea people could mis-read me so badly, but I knew I had to take responsibility for it. So I learned to sit in the car and take a few seconds to get focused on where I was and understand that front line people would be watching me closely. I grew accustomed to wearing a mask because it’s what people needed from me. They needed to see that things were fine and that, if I found things going well, they knew I approved. Likewise, if things weren’t going well, they needed to know my disapproval (I didn’t have much of a problem with that).

Let me read this brief section by Dr. Henry Cloud on the mask of inauthenticity. As a business owner, CEO or leader you’ll be able to relate. I promise. But first, let me read you a segment that appeared just today over at RollingStone.com about Tom Petty:

Petty “was so smart,” Campbell says, as well as “one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. And he had a good heart.” The guitarist recalls a point “several tours ago” when he was having “some real personal problems. I was doing my job but struggling to keep my vibe up.” One night, in the middle of a song, Petty came over to Campbell, “stood next to me, and he goes, ‘Just remember, up here, nobody can touch us.'”

Masks are exactly about that. Being in a place where nobody can touch us. Safe. Secure. Protected.

Of course, there’s a downside. Like medication that serves us well and has big benefits, there are side affects that may be unpleasant, or even more deadly than the thing they intend to cure. 

I highly recommend Dr. Cloud’s book (I can highly recommend any and all of his books). The masks we wear – and when we wear them – have an impact on our lives. They’re necessary components of our life as leaders. But…

Every person needs a place where the masks aren’t necessary. A safe, secure place where we can shell things down and feel free to be ourselves more fully. Do you have such a place? Are you surrounded by any people with whom you can be unfiltered, unmasked? For your personal growth, professional effectiveness and most positive relationships – you owe it to yourself to find a mask free zone. It may require some diligent searching. Most certainly it’s going to demand that you be purposeful and intentional. You rarely stumble onto high value. Sure, it can happen, but great leaders don’t rely on hope or happenstance for their success. They work hard to put themselves into the best position possible for greater success. It’s precisely what I’m encouraging you to do.

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Smart Leaders, Stupid Rules #5019

The new director gathered his staff of direct reports. Four people. All of them with over 2 years tenure and extensive experience in their respective roles. He hadn’t been hired to perform a turnaround, but instead had been tapped for his vast experience as a solid technology expert. The CTO had heard terrific things about Don. The interview process went well. All signs appeared to prove that Don would be a great director. But the signs didn’t reveal Don’s view of humanity.

In their first staff meeting Don held forth with blunt, almost offensive directives, treating these four people as though they lacked basic intelligence. Shell shocked, the team sat in silence, answering only when directly spoken to and did their best to simply get a lay of the land with their new boss. They’d heard he was very bright, but they had no idea he thought himself so much smarter than everybody. And anybody.

Immediately he began listing things that were important to him. And imposing a variety of rules that instantly put a choke hold on decision making. He wanted everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – coming through him. It was clearly a new day and the four direct reports left the meeting in stunned silence. Fearful of being seen huddling they secretly conspired to meet after work.

A very smart guy with newly appointed power, Don was making a strong impression. A bad one.

Within 8 months Don’s exit seemed 8 months too late. Half of his direct reports had accepted new positions elsewhere. Only one had been replaced as Don struggled to get the team back to full strength. One idiotic move after another. A litany of stupid rules and procedures had turned a once stellar team of four into a lack luster team of 2 very demoralized people who hoped they could outlast Don. The toll was extensive. And costly. Resulting in lost productivity, numerous resignations of good people and greater pressure on the CTO to “get it right” next time (that’s how the CEO expressed it).

How can smart bosses (and leaders) impose and even love stupid rules? Well, let’s be clear. Smart leaders are often smart mostly in their own estimation. But sometimes they might outsmart themselves. Or they may have their ears and mind stopped up to listen to anybody else, always thinking they know best. It could be they’re sometimes insecure, feeling as though they have to prove they’re worthy of their position. Somebody way smarter than me will have to figure all that out. But I do know this much after decades of running successful companies – even smart people can do stupid things, including imposing stupid rules or implementing stupid procedures. Let me give you just 2. The two biggest ones I continue to see.

The Distance Between The Decisions And The Work Is Sometimes Too Great

This is often the case when the rank and file find procedures or workflow frustrating. Daily they’re involved in doing the work. But sadly top brass won’t involve them in finding better solutions. Stupid rules and decisions happen whenever the leaders are further away from the actual work impacted by the rules or decisions.

Such an easy thing to fix. But it requires a humility that sometimes evades leaders. Sometimes it’s fear and not knowing how to effectively engage with the work, and those who perform the work. Relating to people is necessary and not all leaders (or title wearers) have the ability. Most often, in my experience, it stems from the belief “I know better than you.” That arrogance can cause smart people to make stupid decisions.

Get out of your own way if you’re that kind of a leader. Realize that if you were doing the work – the actual work – 8 or more hours a day, you may have some insights that others would lack. Sure, there could be other factors that would escape you, but engaging the people who do the work can also provide you the ability to listen, and to share. Everybody can learn. Everybody can better understand the problem and devise an effective solution. There’s a lot of brain power on that front line. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a business in retail, medical, manufacturing, hospitality or any other sector. Every smart leader will work hard to close the distance gap between the actual work and the decisions that affect that work.

The Unintended Consequences Aren’t Considered (or corrected)

We have a specific problem. So we address it. We think we fix it. Inadvertently we’ve created problems we didn’t have before. We’re either too blind to see those new problems, or we minimize those problems as we focus on how well we did addressing the first problem.

A company had no onboarding procedure. Like many companies they simply had a new employee report to a new post and left it up to each boss to welcome that employee and deliver whatever training might be necessary. Sure, there were the required HR type things. The company manual was handed out, requiring a signature that the new employee had received it and would comply with the contents. But the company had no structured process and it was creating quick turnover of new hires.

The braintrust decided that the central office of the region (within an hour or so of all the locations) would be a great place to conduct a few days of onboarding before employees reported to their designated offices. They spent weeks designing a training program, complete with slide decks and scripts for live training. Given the size of the operation they figured they’d perform this onboarding every month at a predetermined time. The schedule was established and the first sessions went off without much of hitch. Great! Problem solved.

The company had mandated that before any new hire could report to the office which hired them, they had to complete the 3-day onboarding at regional headquarters. Okay, that seems reasonable. Until you realize that offices were now held hostage on when they could actually start their new hires. If the 3-day onboarding for the month had just completed, then it meant the new hire would have to wait a full month before starting. People would accept the job offer, then bail out when they found a job that would allow them to start immediately. New hires weren’t able to go a full month without a paycheck waiting on the onboarding schedule. Sometimes they’d notify the company they were taking another job. Quite often they simply wouldn’t show up for the onboarding. The result was an enormous problem in understaffing at area offices. The offices were constantly feeling the pressure to not only find qualified candidates to hire, but trying to line up those candidates to fit the onboarding schedule. Their work load didn’t matter. Smart people had implemented a dumb process that created new – even bigger – problems. Unintended consequences were more devastating than the original problems of not having an onboarding process.

You’d think such problems would be quickly addressed. You might be wrong. Sometimes leaders are so dug in on a decision they refuse to admit their fix has caused new problems. That was the case with this onboarding problem. Dozens of potential good hires got lost in the shuffle. Countless man hours of frustration ensued at offices that were woefully understaffed. All because leaders didn’t open their eyes to the problems they had created.

Did they not care? Were they indifferent to staffing challenges? Who knows? Who cares? The fact was, one problem was addressed, but the solution created a new, bigger problem that impacted the business.

Humility. Openness. Honesty. 

Let me leave you with one powerful suggestion. Learn to recognize the power of people – namely, your people. The people in your organization. The people doing the actual work. The collective group is far smarter than you by yourself. They always will be. It doesn’t matter how talented you are, how high your IQ, or how advanced your degrees. You and a room full of people doing the work is infinitely smarter than just you.

Smart leaders – the very smartest ones – are people who know the value of collaboration and connection. They intentionally engage others with a strong desire to learn and understand. When they get it wrong – and we all do – they readily accept it, and correct it. It’s not about saving face or looking good. It’s about being the best. It’s about making a positive difference. Serving the good of the organization by serving the people doing the work…that’s the goal. It’s always the goal.

Subscribe to the podcast

bula network podcast on itunesTo subscribe, please use the links below:

If you have a chance, please leave me an honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking Review on iTunes. It’ll help the show rank better in iTunes.

Thank you!

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