is the subjective perception; that is everything. There is a saying
among magazine designers: ‘What it is, is what you’ve done.’ This
tautology serves to illustrate the futility of arguing, ‘Ah, but I was
trying for this effect,’ if that was not the effect achieved. It can be a
hard lesson.
Self-awareness and delegation
Sue Turner, HR director, Group CIO & Functions at Barclays Bank in
the UK, comments on how feedback from her team, gathered in a
structured way through 360-degree emotional intelligence appraisal,
has helped her to delegate, empower her teams and employ ‘less
assertion; more listening’. She discovered that, though she rated
highly on the important attributes, and had good self-awareness –
rating herself quite similarly to how her team perceived her, there
was something of a gap on two related areas. Her team rated her
higher on self-control than she had expected; and a little lower
on her ability to express empathy. She realized that her strong
desire to achieve by herself, bolstered by nine years’ work in the
individualistic culture she encountered at Andersen Consulting in
the late 1980s and in the 1990s, meant that she had a stronger desire
to control tasks than she had realized:
‘If there has been a personal leadership journey for me over the
last couple of years, it would be about doing less assertion, and
a move to a more listening, empathetic approach; and to an
approach where I am less scared of leaving things undone.
‘I have had an [internal] voice telling me, “I have to do things,
otherwise they won’t be done right.” I have been quite
independent, feeling that no one is going to sort my life out
unless I do it for myself.
‘Without feedback you don’t know what you are shifting to and
whether it works. My emotional intelligence feedback from
direct reports and bosses did contain some surprises. One of
the things I found surprising at the time – I had eight or nine
direct reports – was the variation in those scores. That comes as
a real shock; some scores were either very high or very low [on
the same measure]. I thought, “How can this be?” As I went
through them one by one I realized that probably the scores
bore a direct correlation with the time I spent with people. If
there are eight you can’t invest as much time as one would want
with all of them. The people I spent a lot of time with marked me
higher.
‘With those with whom I hadn’t spent so much time I had
assumed that I was being clear, giving good direction and being
supportive; that I was listening. Clearly I wasn’t (with all my
team), but I had convinced myself that I was. This influenced me
in how I structured my new team; I kept the number of direct
reports down to six.
‘The EI survey itself used different criteria. I came high on self-
control, and lower than I thought on empathy. On building
relationships I scored high. Presence and so on was reasonably
high. Overall there was a reasonably good fit between my own
awareness and the scores; so there was a match. One that I was
surprised at was self-control – that isn’t something that I would
have singled out; I would have scored myself much lower. I
know it’s something that I have worked on over the years. In
some ways it is encouraging; it does demonstrate that if you can
identify something that is blocking your progress or enjoyment
then you can find a way of dealing with it.
‘I could have [in the past] reacted defensively if someone was
criticizing some work that I had done or that my team had done,
and gone into justification mode if I didn’t agree. I would have
been inclined to say there and then what I thought, rather than
listen. I would have tended to fight every battle. I can definitely
remember operating like this in my early days in Andersen 12
years ago. I can remember being in situations where I could
quite easily have an angry outburst with a group of people,
because I would have taken something that had happened so
personally; I felt threatened and vulnerable. I would have
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assumed that I had to be good at everything – it comes back to
being a bit of a perfectionist; I couldn’t show weaknesses.
‘Over the past couple of years I have begun realizing that you
can lead in different ways and can be good at some things and
not others. It is OK if you are not good at some things, provided
that you explain that you’re not. The reaction is not to hurt you
with that information but to support you. It all comes back to
self-awareness. It is so critical.
‘What I have realized is that there are times when people need
space, and that to give them space means that they find their
own way of coming to a decision. If you give people time to
come to a decision on their own, it is a much more powerful
decision. The temptation, in a busy, fast-moving environment is
to seek instant clarity, and this may not give some people the
opportunity to reflect.
‘One of the big themes that I have tried to support over the last
two years with my team has been getting the team working
without me. That is necessary, but I do remember feeling very
threatened by the very success of that. I can remember this
vividly: we were holding an annual [internal] human resources
conference. My natural reaction would have been, “This is so
important; I am going to be there with my team, talking about
the future and what we need to do. I have to be involved at
every stage; being the leader is being out there in front.” Then
one of the team said, “We’re all going to get together next week
for a day to work through the conference; everyone’s really fired
up.” I thought, “But I’m not invited!”
‘I spoke to another member of my leadership team, who said
to me that I have always told them that I want them to work
together; that I give them the overall sense of direction and they
know what I want. She said that they would play it back [their
plan for the conference] the following week. “Trust us,” she said.
It still felt uncomfortable.
‘We had a meeting where they played back an outline of the
conference and it was superb. They went through who would do
what at which session. I had let them get on with it and they had
a great sense of ownership. Momentarily it was frightening. I felt
vulnerable: Am I really needed? Luckily, I was able to talk to
people around me about how I was feeling, and I was able to
put it in perspective.’
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Sharing data with the team
One reservation some executives express when it’s suggested that they obtain
feedback from their staff is whether the team can be bothered to take the time. As we
observed at the beginning of this book, though, the boss is important to everyone, and
we spend much of each day thinking or worrying about how he or she is or what they
may be thinking.
In practice when we ask our teams for feedback some of them agonize over their
responses for hours. In nearly all cases they want to help you, at least in part because
this will have benefits for them. Most would probably value the opportunity to
understand what the feedback did for you, and how you are going to use it for your
own personal development plan. Even when you feel vulnerable in view of some of the
negative feedback you might receive, this sharing will enable you to build a really
strong team. In fact some of the team might like to follow the same data-gathering
process for themselves.
Nick had recently moved into a senior management role in a global chemicals company.
He took on the job of managing a multinational team of people, many of whom who
had been doing their job for over 20 years. Market share and sales had been steadily
declining by 5 per cent over a three-year period and Nick was faced with a clear
dilemma: replace most of the team or coach them to change the way they work. He
decided to have coaching himself after he had been in the role for six months.
When he reviewed the results of the leadership style inventory, Nick’s strongest style
was democratic. As he was uncertain about what direction to take he felt he needed
ideas from the people who had worked in the area for a long time. He put off crucial
decisions hoping to get a consensus to a new strategy. He listened carefully to what
people were saying; heard their concerns and anxieties and tried to create a sense of
collaboration.
What he hadn’t realized was that he was seen as a ‘ditherer’ who lacked focus. As
competitors stole more and more customers Nick persisted in running endless
meetings to try and get ‘buy-in’ from the team. So, although everyone rated him as a
really nice guy and very empathetic, what Nick now realized was that for the first six
months he had mainly used the democratic and affiliative styles, using empathy and
coaching and high-emotional self-control. He was popular, but these styles were not
enough.
In his work with his coach, Nick realized he had to use a greater variety of
management styles. Now that he knew what most of the team were thinking and
feeling it was ideal for him to articulate a purpose for the business with clear goals
and objectives, both for the team as a whole and the individuals within it. He shared
his data from the management style inventory with his team and spent an hour
discussing with them what he was going to do more of, and what he was going to do
less of. He told them what he was going to change, what he expected from himself
and others in the team.
He remembered not to abandon his strengths. His high level of integrity and his
likeableness enabled Nick to share the new purpose with his team. They listened. He
also shared with them the fact that he was going to use a command and control style
more often over the next six months, and why. He explained that he felt that they all
had to make some quite drastic changes to the way they were doing things. He
recognized that this might be difficult for some people who were resistant to change
and the group discussed the consequences to this resistance.
This was not an easy meeting. Despite the high regard in which Nick was generally
held, some were unhappy about changing to a higher-paced way of working that
reflected the competitive pressure. For Nick, it was contrary to his instinct to employ
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