A successful leader must respect everyone’s thoughts
COMMUNICATION Often brilliant middle managers make terrible leaders but leadership requires individuals to first try and understand what all stakeholders are saying and then ensure that everyone understands the leader’s message
We all know of brilliant middle managers who go on to become terrible leaders. In fact if you make a list of 10 leaders that you know in your mind right now and rate them, you will probably give a rating that is quite low for most of them. But these are the people who have come through the crucible of competition to reach where they have. So why is being a good leader so difficult? While books have addressed this and management courses constantly work on it, based on my 30 years of experience, let me give below three tips, which if leaders follow, their chances of being considered a ‘good leader’ is much higher. and communicate the same to people. Only if you assume that you know nothing will you understand what people are really trying to communicate. And people on the ground always know much more than what you do. But this is difficult as ‘you are the boss’. You know or are supposed to know. People’s egos come in the place and they try to make themselves understood before understanding. So to get over this normal tendency, leaders should remember the question and make very generous use of it: “can you please help me understand….” what to do. The widget had to be made exactly the way it was prescribed, meeting the requirements of the assembly line and at the speed needed. The person, the worker, had no input into it. But in the knowledge era, that is unworkable. As Peter Drucker, the famous management thinker said “In the knowledge era, a pair of hands comes with a head attached.” People co-opt into the work that needs to be done. Your job is to inspire people into that self-realization. If you tell people what to do and then tell them exactly how to do it, you are robbing them of their self-worth and commitment. It is again extremely difficult as ‘you know what is to be done and also know exactly how it needs to be done’. Your job is to ‘tell’ people how. A good leader has to separate these two things consciously, every time, in every interaction with people. In my own experience, every time I have delegated authority on how things need to be done, it has been done several times better than what I could have imagined. But one has to remember this adage all the time because the normal human tendency is to ‘tell people exactly what is in your mind’. So leaders should remember you can communicate only either the ‘what’ or the ‘how’, not both. A leadership job is full of difficult compromises every day. Hundreds of them, some become particularly difficult. And people looking up at leaders assume that the leader is taking ‘myopic’ decisions. But in many cases, the decision that looks myopic is so because it is being analyzed from only one angle whereas the leader is able to look from the top of the mountain and see all the different sides.
A useful approach in such a situation is to explain the different angles and ask the question ‘If you were in my position, what would you do’. The other normal response is to assume that ‘people just do not get it’. And with that response, the people will think that the ‘leader just does not understand’. But given the larger context, and putting people in your shoes and giving them the view that you have, people will invariably be able to see the same picture that you see. That will suddenly provide the context that was missing in the decision. Each of the above asks for the leader to ‘slow down’. To take time with people to bring them along. But today we do not have time. One of my colleagues loves to say that “people mostly listen to respond and not listen to understand”. So it all comes down to listening. To giving people the time to understand their point of view. To giving people the respect for their thoughts. We are all so wrapped up in our own thoughts all the time that this is difficult. Hence leadership is difficult. But it need not be. And these simple three tips, will help us become a better leader. At Philips we believe, a diverse, inclusive and an engaged workforce is an essential element to a thriving innovative business and we strive to attract employees from a wide range of backgrounds.
Diversity and inclusion is at the heart of our talent life cycle, and helps us to enhance employee engagement and drive performance. Valuing diverse perspectives, we leverage the diverse thinking, skills, experience and working styles, while simultaneously fostering an innovative, collaborative and high-energy work environment. To promote diversity in the workplace, we provide opportunities for work arrangements that accommodate the diverse needs of people at different career and life stages. Women leaders today are at the forefront of redefining