Flexibility pays
For those of you who manage people, it’s no longer enough to understand your own preferred style
For those of you who manage people, it’s no longer enough to understand your own preferred style; you should learn how to be flexible — and never take your people for granted.
Over the last few weeks, we have explored some critical aspects that when applied can ultimately strengthen the emotional connection between a leader and their teams. These concepts grow from the inside out of a business so once embedded into the company culture, they will drive the attitudes and behaviours that connect on a deeper level with customers.
With thousands of management and leadership books published every year, there’s a plethora of advice on which personality traits and strengths are most desired in a leader. Certain traits, like extraversion, are traditionally seen as more desirable in a leader than others, with qualities like gregariousness and charisma valued highly and seen as paramount in leaders gaining support from their teams. Yet the premise from where I coach, is that we each have our natural traits and preferences, and that leaders are developed not born. For every leader and anyone who manages others, it’s no longer enough to understand our own preferred style, believe we naturally are gifted with desirable traits and expect others to work around us. In order to truly get the best performance for each and every person in the team, a leader must be able to understand and flex across everyone else’s preferred styles and traits. Not only does that require a high EQ, it also requires a lot of practice as well as a deep sense of humility and service. When you hire your team, how much emphasis do you place liking the person you are hiring? Multiple studies show that we are naturally attracted to others who share a similar trait profile to us as well as those who perceive the world in a similar way. This translates into how they communicate and behave and how easy they are for us to get on with.
While this can make getting work down easier and more enjoyable, it does not enable you, as a leader, to benefit from a broader range of opinions that provide you with more perspectives or data that strengthen both decision-making and strategy development within your business. Put another way, valuing familiarity over differences can contribute to a narrowed perception limiting options and actions when dealing with solving business challenges. While it may not be as blatant as the narcissistic leaders who create around them peers of yes-people, it can be just as damaging to the business, undermining effectiveness and potential. In a market downturn, leadership decisions that are not appropriately challenged, can mean the difference between success and failure. What about customers? How much do the people within your business assume that your customers will have similar preferences? The bane of many marketers is to implement campaigns purely based on the preferences and whim of their senior leaders. The greatest and most powerful influence you have over your business, your teams and how your company deals with its customers is through the ability to understand and flex across all preferences, personalities, traits and behaviours. Flexibility creates more choices, and more choices creates a greater chance to effectively resolve new challenges.
In 1977, a young engineer called Steven Sassoon, who worked at Eastman Kodak, invented the digital camera. When presented to the marketing, technical and business departs and his bosses, they believed that no one would want to look at their photos on a TV set. At the time, Kodak made money on each step of the photographic process. They allowed him to continue working on the project and in 1989, along with his colleague Robert Hills, Sassoon created the first digital single lens reflex camera. Again, Kodak’s marketing department rejected it in the fear that it was erode at the company’s film sales. While Kodak made money of the patent, it refused to embrace the digital market. The patent ran out in 2007 and Eastman Kodak’s performance continued to plummet, three years later, the company filed for bankruptcy.
Kodak’s story is probably one of the most famous examples of the results of rigid thinking and fear of change. Had the leaders been flexible in considering their customers’ preferences they would undoubtedly have picked up on the market demand for digital camera. Our personalities, traits and preferences motivate how we speak our opinions at work as well as our buying behaviours. Flexing to accommodate these will not only build rapport with staff but also extend that rapport to connect better with customers. The writer is founder and executive and marketing coach, Your Neuro Coach, The Change Associates. Views expressed are her own and do not reflect the newspaper’s policy.