As a leader, you live at the intersection of deliverables and performance. Where the demands and deadlines of the organization meet your team’s ability to perform in the marketplace and deliver the results you need to meet your objectives as the leader. That is a busy intersection. How you manage the flow of traffic through that intersection and avoid mayhem says a lot about you as an effective manager and a thoughtful leader.
Let’s assume some basics about you. You want to be an effective leader, well thought of by your team, your colleagues, and your management team. You strive for transparency. You open the window so your team can understand the rationale behind the results you ask them to deliver and your manager can see the capabilities and limitations of your team in setting your objectives. You have empathy. You understand your team as people and you relate to the challenges they face and the opportunities they see. You are humble. You know you don’t always have the answer. You invite others in to collaborate on finding the best path forward.
Now that we know who you strive to be, what do you know about your team? What do you know about their individual situations? What do you know about their styles, especially their behavior under pressure? How do they handle a crisis, or even multiple crises at once? Understanding the styles of each individual and the way they handle stress is absolutely essential to managing your way through pressurized deadlines you’re sure to be asked to meet. Proficiency in staying cool and leading effectively in these situations has a disproportionate effect on your perceived brand as a leader who has upside potential. It’s a must if you want to go higher in your organization.
In my experience, I’ve learned an important little secret about how people behave under pressure. It has to do with who the person really is at his or her core. Their first nature. What does that mean?
First nature refers to a person’s go to behavior. If a person didn’t have to attempt to self-manage their behavior, work style, interpersonal traits, how would they most naturally behave? Here are a few examples of what I mean.
Take Bill for instance. Bill is detail oriented. He likes to research topics he is working on until the cows come home. He requires 100% understanding of the topic before he will give a recommendation or opinion about that topic. Once he completes his personal research and reaches that threshold, he is locked on to his viewpoints. He is not looking for additional information, and frankly won’t accept it. Self-aware Bill understands this about himself. You, his manager have worked with him to involve others more and to be more open to inputs. You encourage Bill to take action before he gets to 100% understanding of a situation, then take corrective action as needed to refine his course. He works hard on normal days not to overplay this character “feature”.
Then there’s Carl. Carl was the captain of his high school debate team. He is logic based. Carl never met a topic he couldn’t argue about, and he’s always got one more angle to win his arguments. Carl has little tolerance for people who don’t approach questions with the same level of logical rigor that he does. He has a strong tendency to judge others quickly, to decide thumbs up or thumbs down on a person based on their intellectual prowess. Once he’s made that judgment, almost nothing will change Carl’s mind about that person. Carl has a preconceived notion of what another person is capable of contributing to a project based on that prior judgment. His colleagues that know this about Carl withdraw because they don’t have the stomach for another debate with him. But, thanks to you, Carl is now more self-aware in calm moments. He understands the effect he can have on others. He self-manages and resists the temptation to come across as too strident in his opinions. Sometimes he lets others take ownership of solutions, even though he already knows the answer. In good times, he’s a great teammate.
Another style belongs to Ellen. Ellen is a hard worker. She regularly delivers the results expected of her. In meetings, she tends to be quiet, even though everyone understands she has great knowledge and perspective about the business. She has some difficulty in conversing with her leaders. She takes a cautious approach, and makes sure when she does speak it is well thought out and clearly articulated. Ellen doesn’t want to be challenged in her opinions, because that could lead to her becoming flustered and embarrassed. So she takes few chances. Outside of meetings though, Ellen is a different person. She is free flowing with opinions and ideas to her friends and colleagues. That new directive or sudden deadline that was handed down gets her blood boiling. She tells everyone in her circle how she feels. Now they are all swirling over how unfair management is behaving to ask for such impossible deliverables. “Don’t they understand our challenges?” You’ve recognized Ellen’s tendencies, and you’ve worked with her to voice her opinions within the context of the whole team, so you can address her concerns. You’ve established a safe communication zone, and made Ellen feel that her opinions are important and valued. When she is quiet in the meeting, you anticipate where her mind is and ask for her input. Your meetings go more smoothly and your team benefits from her insights.
But what if you haven’t been paying attention to these styles? What if you don’t strive for transparency? What if your empathy meter is low, and you don’t really understand your team members? You don’t understand each person’s first nature? When the fire drill hits at the end of the quarter, you simply hand the pressure of the new sales target over to your team and tell them to go get the new number. After all, there’s no time for pleasantries. You have been given a deliverable and you are expected to deliver the results. We’re all grownups right? There’s no time to waste in debates about what we need to do, we just need to do it.
Unless you keep your cool and behave like a modern compassionate leader, even in the most stressful moments, you can expect one thing. You team members will gravitate toward behaving in a way that is consistent with their first nature. They will hit their stress limit. All the self-management techniques they learned during calm moments will go up in smoke. They will not only behave consistent with that first nature, but they will overplay that behavior.
I’ve seen it.
Bill won’t be satisfied with 100% information any more. He’ll need 120% before he takes an action. He’ll dive so far into the details that he’ll be paralyzed from taking any action whatsoever. You’ll get even less from him. Certainly not the results you asked for.
Carl will disagree with the new number you asked him to get. He’ll debate with you, endlessly. You’ll spend all your energy debating the “why” question with Carl. You’ll never get to the “how” question. The deadline will pass, and you won’t deliver Carl’s portion of the new target. What’s worse, Carl’s judgment of you as a leader may be permanently affected. You may have earned a lasting thumbs down from Carl. Good luck fixing that.
Ellen will quietly leave the meeting where you communicated the new deliverable. But at the water cooler she’ll start venting to others about how unfair you are as a leader, how you can’t stand up to management, how she refuses to go along with such a ridiculous request. Ellen will go beyond her usual passion in voicing her displeasure with her teammates. Now you’ve got a potential poison on your team, and a much bigger problem to manage.
I’ve learned this lesson because early in my career, I didn’t understand this about people, and experienced situations very similar to these. I didn’t understand the limits of personal stress and the effects that can have on my teams and on my business results. It took a few instances of witnessing behaviors like these for me to learn how I could trigger them as a manager, and what I could do to avoid them.
I learned that to relieve the stress from my team members I had to understand them as individuals. I had to manage the fire drills differently with each person. That takes extra time and effort, but it leads to greater output in times of tight deadlines, and better overall team performance and cohesiveness.
If Bill is on your team, you need to talk to him. You need to tell him that his attention to detail is extremely valuable to the team and he elevates the team’s collective understanding when he shares his fact based conclusions. In this situation though, action is what is needed. Even if we don’t have perfect information and we make some mistakes, the team needs to take action in order to meet the deadline. Assure Bill that this won’t be the team’s permanent way of working, and once this deadline passes you’ll get back to the normal course of business. You’ll need his depth of thinking again. But today we need to go faster. Thank him for understanding and his support.
You need to talk to Carl early, before you enlist the team’s support. You’re going to need to take Carl through the logic of management’s request for the new deliverable. You need to relate the new target to the mission of the company at the highest order you are capable of explaining. If you don’t have all the answers, and since Carl is an Olympic debater you may not, assure him that you’ll follow up on any questions and get back to him. But, notwithstanding any open questions that would satisfy Carl, tell him you really need his support. The team counts on his rigorous thinking and judgment. If the team sees that Carl is on board, that means they don’t have to do all that thinking to assess the virtue of the new goal. Tell Carl how much you value that in him, and ask him to express his commitment in front of the team.
Ellen is different. Ellen tends to process things internally during meetings, then with others outside of the meetings. You’ll have to decide whether to approach Ellen before the meeting to preview the new deliverable or to wait until immediately after the meeting. Under no circumstances should you let Ellen leave the meeting and return to work without talking to her individually. At a minimum you’ll want to anticipate the questions Ellen might have rolling around in her head. Address those directly to the team during the meeting. Ask those questions yourself, and answer them in front of the group. Ask for more questions, perhaps even directly asking Ellen if there is anything else she can think of. Then connect with Ellen immediately after the meeting and ask again. Acknowledge that she is an important influencer on the team. If others believe she is on board and committed to the goal, they’ll feel more confident and focus on how they can deliver their portion of the new number.
This isn’t about manipulating your team members’ styles or personalities. It’s about understanding them as people. Being an empathetic leader. Walking in their shoes. Becoming each individual as a person and guiding his ability to manage his own style through heightened self-awareness of his first nature and personal stress limits.
It’s what a great leader does.
Be a great leader.
Lead well.
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