There is a notion that people shouldn’t question their leader’s direction. Questioning direction has been viewed as not being a team layer, undermining, or having a bad attitude. I want to dispel this myth. Having direction questioned is a good thing, once you can get past your ego, and I am going to explain why. I will move forward with the understanding that the people on the team want to accomplish the goal as much as the leader. Friction is good, as long as it is in an effort to achieve the goal. Friction is where debate and new ideas break ground. I’m going to illustrate my point with a personal example:
So I’ve come up with, what I thought, was a brilliant idea. Brilliant. The idea was so good that as soon as I explained the plan it caused so much excitement and energy. And that’s where I heard it, “Biren, the plan, it’s fucked.” Seriously. No sugar coat, no tact. I was taken aback. At first my ego was on fire and I was kind of hurt. I was about to get defensive and fire back, but I took a breath, and asked, “well, why’s that?” I asked that because I knew my guys. I knew that they were professionals, tactless professionals, but professionals none the less. They wanted the mission to be accomplished as much as I did and I knew when they shot down my plan, it wasn’t personal. It was them seeing glaring holes that I didn’t see at my level. But here is the best part, rather than spin out of control due to a bruised ego, which took everything I had not to do, I got a few really ingenious solutions. As much as I was the leader, and maybe had more visibility as to what’s going on at the higher levels of decision making, I didn’t have the best idea, and I didn’t have the visibility at the level of execution, which is critical in order to have a workable plan. My people, however, did. They knew that level very well, it only made sense for me to take on board what they were saying. Now I didn’t take every idea they had, I took on board the ones that made the most sense, that were in line with the vision and that fell inside the limits and constraints I had. The outcome was a very robust plan. We achieved the mission and the guys all had ownership of the outcome. It built my credibility with them, and their credibility me. Here are some lessons learned from this whole ordeal:
Biren Bandara, BSc, CD Founder Leader School Inc @leaderschoolca www.leaderschool.ca
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May 2017
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