Lead with Courage
Courage to Make Decisions
One of the more interesting organizational dynamics that we have witnessed in the past few years is upward delegation. This really has nothing to do with sending your boss a box of your filing that needs to be done or forwarding your overflow email to your manager. Upward delegation is the hesitancy, reluctance and avoidance of making a decision at the appropriate level and rolling it up to the higher organizational level.
As a symptom of a company’s toxicity, this is pretty predictive. When pervasive, this indicates an organization has not supported past decisions, hyper-criticized decisions, not provided positive feedback when decisions were good and not created leaders that are encouraged to make decisions. This bottlenecked approach will lead to dramatically reduced results and extremely poor morale.
Sometimes upward delegation is dressed in the form of “just wanted you to know” or “just wanted to see what you think.” Benign in presentation, these are just labels for “please make the decision for me” and if it goes bad, I can always come back and say that is what you suggested.
Effective leaders have two distinct responsibilities related to decision making. First, when the decision is appropriate for you and your level in the organization; make it. Think about it, review options and make the decision. Support and defend it if necessary but make the decision.
A special note to the over-thinkers in the group. There will never be all of the information needed to make a decision. You will have to utilize courage and select the most comfortable amount of information available to avoid delay and loss of opportunity. Delayed decisions from leaders also contribute to a significant loss in credibility.
A special note to the gunslinger types. Even though the best decision is often your first decision, take a little time and process consequences and outcomes. You don’t have to be the universal expert that has immediate responses to all situations. Take a little time to avoid pitfalls and unintended consequences and gather some information to support your decision.
Every leader has a little bit different tolerance for decision making, the time required for a decision and the information needed for a proper and correct decision. As a rule of thumb, the decision should come with less information than you are comfortable with but more than just your gut reaction. Timing in decision making is important as well. With delay and deferral, your credibility is lost in the eyes of subordinates and peer team members.
The best decision is the right decision. The next best decision is the wrong decision and the worst decision is no decision.
Courage to Stretch
The 110% myth is just that. A myth.
You are not giving 110%. You are probably giving somewhere around 30% to 40% of your capacity both intellectually and in energy.
Self-challenge is one of the more difficult leadership and work related hurdles you will face. Effective leaders are in a constant mode of self-challenge and self-push and gets them close to true capacity. They are looking for ways to accomplish more, produce more and achieve more. They are looking to kill off unproductive and unrelated behaviors that often derail this effort.
The leader that engages in self-challenge will need some courage to defer unproductive behaviors, avoid idle activities and really extend themselves beyond what they think they could produce.
The courage to stretch also has another side related to management of the status quo compared to true leadership. Many people in a leadership position see themselves as caretakers of the system and guardians of the way we do it now. Effective leaders stretch beyond the boundaries of what is occurring today, no matter how successful it might be, and focus on what the organization can become. This requires the courage to constantly ask questions and push the envelope of performance and innovation that is not always popular or welcome.
Courage to Do the Right Thing
A couple of times in each leader’s career they are faced with a choice about doing the right thing or doing the expedient thing. Thankfully, these types of choices only occur infrequently but they do happen.
Often these types of choices involve dealing with team members or how a team member situation is handled. Many times these choices also involve ethical dilemmas.
You are aware that your boss is harassing a new team member in another department. You have seen it and the team member has confided in you that the harassment is occurring but she needs this job and fears retaliation if she says anything. If you report it, you could face retaliation, up to and including the loss of your job. The easy answer is the put the burden on the team member being harassed but the harder answer is for you to stand up and do the right thing. Could there be consequences? Absolutely. Is reporting the harassment the right thing? Equally absolutely.
Betty is a long term team member in the twilight of her career. She is set to retire in a year but has become increasingly sloppy with her punctuality and is tardy two and three times a week. You have coached her and provided corrective feedback but she scoffed at the interaction and openly talks about her tenure with the company and how you really cannot do anything about it. You know that when you send paperwork to human resources, they are not going to let you discipline her formally. Do you write her up or do you just wait out the retirement party? Is there risks associated with attempting to discipline her at this stage in her career? The effective leader does what is right for the company and the team without deference to individual team member comfort or status. Will this require courage on your part? Yes and a healthy dose of stamina as well.
Some principles are going to be more important that your current job. The effective leader faces these obstacles directly and in a courageous and forthright manner.
