Rule: People Skills Trump Technical Skills

As a leader, you can get by with superior people skills and mediocre technical skills, but the reverse is high risk. Actions that produced success just a few short years ago are inadequate in today’s business world. It is your responsibility to incorporate the new rules into your leadership persona and to teach them to those you lead.

For example, a retired three-star admiral tells the story of an executive officer (his second in command) whom he evaluated to be superior in technical skills yet lacking in people skills. He mentored the officer on the technical side, but overlooked the people-skills issue because that would have entailed an awkward conversation. When the admiral’s rotation came up, he transferred to another billet and lost contact with the officer. One day, the officer called in a panic. He had been relieved of command for what he called “a petty people issue,” and he asked the admiral to intercede. The admiral denied the request. Years later, he was in a seminar when he overheard the commander who relieved the officer and the officer’s replacement discussing how hard that incident had been on everyone. As he listened, the admiral felt remorse because he had ignored his executive officer’s lack of emotional intelligence and thereby doomed him to failure despite his superb technical skills. The admiral had ignored one of the new rules: people skills are more essential to success than technical expertise.

Rule: Be Clear About Your Values

Few people have precisely the same values. That is why you must communicate yours if you want them to be understood. One manager, Mike, clashed with the women who worked for him. Senior leaders feared that he might be hostile to women because he was not sharing information with them. When confronted with this assumption, Mike laughed and countered, “That’s ridiculous—I have two daughters who are striving to succeed in business. Every fiber in me wants women to succeed in business.”

So what was the real issue? In an attempt to build trust, Mike had confided changes he wanted to make to coworkers who happened to be women, and they had shared the ideas with others. In his mind, they had violated his trust, so he stopped sharing information with them. During coaching, Mike came to see that people have different values and that he could not expect everyone to share his values—or even know what they are—unless he discussed them. Issue resolved. He told his staff, “Trust is my top priority.” They agreed to respect that value, and open conversations resumed.

If values (think computer hardware—hardwired) are the basis by which you lead, then beliefs (think software—reprogrammable) are what drive your decisions and actions. Beliefs fall into two groups: enabling (“I am” or “I can”) and limiting (“I am not” or “I cannot”). In Mike’s case, he shifted from a limiting belief, “I am not willing to discuss ideas with people who don’t share my values,” to an enabling one: “I can work with people with different values as long as we understand and respect each other’s values.” Understanding and respecting the values of others—and clearly sharing yours—are critical for sustained success in a diverse business world.

Rule: Pay It Forward

It is essential to build new relationships proactively, because when you really need a relationship, it is too late to develop it. Chen, a communications industry entrepreneur, volunteered to serve on the board of directors of a nonprofit organization. During his tenure, the nonprofit went through a crisis related to the alleged misappropriation of funds by its executives. Even though his schedule was jammed with work for his own fledgling company, Chen paid it forward by working long hours to resolve the matter. Other directors instead resigned because they were reluctant to spend the time or to be associated with the scandal. Chen and Rachel, another board member, worked closely during the crisis, including making nightly calls to discuss each day’s events.

When the crisis abated and his term ended, Chen left the board. Years later, he ran into Rachel while making a sales call at the firm for which she was a senior executive. She told him that she had been impressed by his integrity and willingness to work tirelessly to resolve the nonprofit’s issue. He won the contract, and Rachel’s company became his largest client.

Chen’s reward for his pay-it-forward investment did not come when or how he expected. It rarely does. When you help a relationship partner, you make a deposit in the relationship bank. When you require a favor or do something foolish, you make a withdrawal. Effective leaders have large balances in their relationship banks because they have paid it forward for years. As a leader, you owe it to your followers to demonstrate pay-it-forward behaviors and teach them how to pay it forward too.

Rule: Compete Vigorously—but with a Long-Term View

Many executives see business as competition among organizations and individuals. They encourage their people to “conquer” customers and “attack” competitors. Today’s leaders, in contrast, understand that business is a complex ecosystem in which organizations thrive by building relationships that adapt to change. If you win today’s transaction but damage an important relationship in the process, you may actually have been the big loser, because bitter relationships are rarely forgotten. As a leader, you may compete at the transaction level, but in the long term, you must form strategic partnerships to grow your industry and serve all your stakeholders.

The competitive spirit is useful in both the management and leadership mindsets. In the leadership sphere, it stimulates innovation and creates value for stakeholders. In the management sphere, it spurs a team to operate at high levels in order to outperform competitors. However, competition can be destructive when it is directed inside an organization or toward the wrong objectives.

For example, two sales managers in a large pharmaceutical company were licking their wounds after losing a promotion to a third colleague whom they had not seen as a serious contender:

“Frankly, Jack, I thought you were my only competition for the promotion, so I watched your numbers as closely as my own. Now I see that Sue was developing her people, implementing new sales strategies, and building trusted relationships in addition to meeting her numbers.”

“Yes, Bill, we both missed out. I thought all that counted was the numbers—that’s how I got to be a sales manager. But the reality is, all three of us exceeded our goals by roughly the same amount. Yet Sue also set the stage for an uptick in sales over the next several quarters, which made her a clear choice for the position. What I’d like to know is how she did those things while still meeting her numbers. Maybe she would mentor us so we can do the same.”

“Let’s visit Sue to congratulate her, offer our support, and ask her to share her secrets. After all, she is our new boss.”

Clearly, Sue was seeing the big picture and blending the management and leadership mindsets as she won sales, exceeded goals, and mentored her people. Yet there was more to her conversations: she valued excellence more highly than beating competitors. Excellence enables you and your team to win over and over again. When relationships are strong, you can meet any challenge and solve any problem. But if your relationships are broken, that alone can impede your success.

Rule: Think “Yes-And,” Not “Either-Or”

Either-or means that one party is right and the other is wrong, which can lead to toxic power struggles. The either-or mindset is incredibly limiting. You are not either a manager or a leader, you are both. Yes-and means you are combining the best of your ideas with the best ideas of others in a way that works for everyone. The accepting nature of a yes-and attitude strengthens relationships and expands an organization’s capacity. “Yes, Jackie, that is a great idea, and what if we also . . . ?”

Your purpose as a leader is to motivate people to achieve holistic objectives. Think in terms of your team reaching its goals and other teams and the organization as a whole achieving its goals. Imagine the positive effects such an organization-wide point of view would produce. When each part of the organization takes responsibility for its success and the success of the other parts, people look across boundaries to identify priorities, give and request assistance, and cooperate to achieve shared goals. Whereas this urgent need to work together is obvious in the midst of a crisis, the sense that cooperation is vital often gets lost in routine, everyday business transactions.

As you move up the leadership ladder, will your existing mindset allow you to compete with the market instead of your peers? Look beyond your silo. You are not responsible solely for finance, sales, engineering, or whichever piece of the organization you personally oversee. Avoid competing for resources to build your area at the expense of other parts of the organiza­tion that may need the resources more urgently. Reaching your goals is important, but success ultimately will be measured by how well everyone aligns to achieve the organization’s mission. If one fails, all will struggle. Playing on the leadership team requires you to collaborate with people who are different from you. Yet mutual trust and respect enable you to work together to produce results that competitors with a self-centered point of view may think is impossible.

Rule: No More Command and Control

You have no doubt seen people who bullied their way to the top using command-and-control tactics. What you probably have not seen is how often we are called in to coach executives to use a more motivating style. Those executives are under crushing pressure from their bosses to change, and they speak candidly about their predicament:

One common fallacy about being in a leadership position is thinking that everyone will adapt to you and trust you merely because of your title. “Now that I’m the boss, here is how we will do things.” We often see this belief play out in mergers when employees of the acquired company are expected to adopt the practices and culture of the acquirer. “Welcome aboard. Listen carefully to your new goals and how we will measure your performance.” Mergers have a higher probability of success when the cultures are blended and conversations are held to align everyone behind a shared vision. “Welcome aboard. Let’s start this meeting by seeing how we are alike or different in core business processes. Let’s get off to a great start by identifying several that we can all rally behind.” A shared vision strengthens relationships and avoids a power struggle to determine who will be the top dog.

Rule: Match Culture with Objectives and People with Culture

Because culture determines what an organization can achieve, it follows that the culture must align with the organization’s key objectives. You should choose (or develop) a culture that fits your leadership style, and hire and train people who will thrive in that culture. In small organizations, culture serves as a conscious filter that naturally leads to the hiring of like-minded people. IT companies like AOL, Google, and Microsoft are famous for their distinctive start-up cultures. We all have seen brilliant programmers who produce top-notch products single-handedly. If independence is a cultural value, these programmers are good hires. However, if teamwork is a prized value, they will be a disruptive influence no matter how brilliant and competent they are.

For many positions, attitudes and behaviors are more important to hiring and promotion than are experience and skills. For example, are you hiring and training people who build relationships quickly and easily? Are they willing participants in open and honest conversations? Are they comfortable accepting and giving feedback? Having the necessary skills and experience should be the go–no-go criterion for even scheduling an interview—as it will probably be when you interview for your next promotion. Ensure that the people you hire and promote will either thrive in your current culture or function as catalysts to change the culture if that is appropriate.