KEEP YOUR DISTANCE
The best leaders know how to get close, but not too close.
The Detroit Red Wings hockey team fired long time coach Dave Lewis in July 2005. Coaches are hired to be fired, so the termination was not big news outside of Detroit save for one factor. The reason given for Lewis’s firing was that he was too friendly with players.
That is understandable. For many years, Dave Lewis was an assistant coach under the sometimes prickly Scotty Bowman, who led the Wings to three Stanley Cups and nine titles overall in service to other teams. For all his brilliance, Bowman loved to mix it up with players; he kept them on an emotional edge to keep their playing edge sharp. Lewis was the players' coach, the shoulder to cry on. So when he was elevated to head coach, skeptics wondered if he was up to the job.
Sadly the popular Lewis wasn’t. While he piloted the Wings to two consecutive playoff appearances, his teams folded in early rounds. The Wings wanted to make a change and did so bringing in a more fiery coach – Mike Babcock. Lewis was a gifted talent but given his relationship with the current players he was not demanding enough. You can blame the players themselves for not picking up the slack, but it’s easier to fire the coach.
The management lesson for those of us outside of professional athletics is simple: Keep your distance.
Limit the Ties that Bind
Douglas McClelland, the organizational theorist, posited three factors that drive individual performance: achievement, power and affinity. Successful leaders exhibit behaviors that are strong in the first two but weak in the third. In other words, leaders seek to achieve and want to be in charge but they do not need, or want, close relationships with their followers. How could this be? Aren’t leaders supposed to be caring and concerned about their people? Yes. Did no less a tough guy than Vince Lombardi speak about love as an attribute of leadership? Absolutely.
But all successful leaders draw a line between leadership and followership. When managers are promoted to supervise their peers, the situation is very touchy. Suddenly the guy or gal who employees may have palled around with is in charge. The tough part is maintaining a good relationship. The late Skip LeFauvre, who ran Saturn for General Motors, once told me that you never put a manager in charge of peers.
But in many smaller organizations such promotions are the rule rather than the exception. So what can you do? Here are some suggestions.
Establish boundaries. As much as our management culture pushes for harmony and collaboration, there are limits. People must harmonize over the workflow but they do not need to become friends. Each should respect the rights and abilities of others but that does not mean you have to put everyone on your Christmas list. Some do, yes, but it is not required. Managers must focus on the work and the behaviors necessary to get the work done. That means you must set expectations and provide avenues for fulfilling them. If you want to socialize, fine. However, the wiser course is to invite everyone along, at least when it comes to parties. Long time friendships will survive this, but they may not. And that is the sorry side of management.
Support the team. Managers provide means and machines to do the work, even in our virtual world. There is nothing virtual about managerial support. Employees have a right to expect their manager to be with them in the trenches. Sometimes it will be to pass along a shovel, sometimes it will be to help with the digging. This is not meddling. At the same time, the manager has a right to expect employees to pull their own weight. Support does not include coddling.
Invite feedback. One terrific way to build rapport is to pull the Ed Koch trick. As mayor of New York, Koch was famous for asking one and all, “How am I doing?” It was his schtick but there is merit in the gesture. When you ask employees to comment on your actions, you invite conversation. It is important to listen, even when you do not like what you hear. Criticism goes with the territory. At the same time, value criticism that is focused on work and behavior, not personality. Managers are under no obligation to implement all that they hear, but they are obligated to listen and respond. That action will build trust, which essential to performance.
Caring is Essential
Maintaining a line between manager and employee is well and good, but it does not preclude personal interest. Many managers are very happy to mix and mingle socially with their people. Such behavior is good for camaraderie and builds the team spirit. Likewise, you want managers to know what is going on with the personal lives of their employees, as it affects work. For example, if an employee is chronically late, the manager needs to find out why. Perhaps it is a child care situation or a health issue. Managers need not pry into private lives, but they must keep their antennae up when it comes to employees’ behavior and emotions. That behavior demonstrates concern for the individual as well as support for the organization.
Management is about enabling others to do the work. You strive to put the best people in positions to succeed. That means making tough decisions about work flow, job assignments, development plans, and promotion and retention. Again and again, organizations become paralyzed when managers promote cronies who may be less competent than a more talented performer. The manager has a right to be comfortable with his team, but managers who crave their own shoulders to cry on at the expense of team performance are treading a fine line.
As for the Wings, Babcock is guiding the team into playoff contention with one of best records in the league. Perhaps other organizations can learn from this example. Game on, eh?
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John Baldoni is a leadership communications consultant who works with Fortune 500 companies as well as non-profits including the University of Michigan. He is a frequent keynote and workshop speaker as well as the author of six books on leadership; the latest is How Great Leaders Get Great Results (McGraw-Hill). Readers are welcome to visit his leadership resource website at
www.johnbaldoni.com.