(credit goes to Kevin Spear)
Last week I was part of a women’s panel and was asked again what my leadership beliefs and style are. I reflected on what I have learned and done over the years. Here are some main points.
1. Servant leadership is it, hands down
Whenever I think about leadership, I always think about what I learned at the Duke Fuqua School of Business from professor Leboeuf. Given his background, it’s not hard to detect that this style has roots in the military. I remember he once invited the then CEO of Procter and Gamble Robert McDonald to speak to us. I will remember and practice what Robert McDonald said for the rest of my life: I always put my team first, I don’t eat until my soldiers have eaten.
As a leader, don’t ask what the team can do for you, ask first what you can do for them. Lead by example. If there is a difficult obstacle, you are the first one to roll up your sleeves and tackle it, then the team will follow. Lead with selflessness, and you will earn their respect, trust and loyalty in due time.
2. The flip side is to run a tight ship with a high standard of excellence
Being a servant leader does not mean you are weak. Going with the same military metaphor, the fact that you let your soldiers eat first doesn’t mean that when you ask them to run laps they won’t. They will and they will do exactly what you say, and perform to your standard, and higher.
Sometimes leading a team is a bit like dealing with children at home: you must set boundaries and act on consequences. There will always be people who are there to test on either or both. If you don’t set a high standard of excellence and act on behaviors that don’t meet such standards, your team’s performance will quickly start to deteriorate. Coming back from that is much harder.
3. A good leader knows how to vary the style depending on the talents
Conficious said, teach your students based on their talents, 因材施教. As a good leader, you need to do the same.
Strong and experienced talents don’t like to be micromanaged, they want to know their goal, having you there to consult and seek advice from when they find it necessary, and carry on. If you poke your nose in too often they will feel frustrated and angered. I’ve always personally hated bosses who need status reports. If I have progress, I will proactively show it to you without you asking. If I need to escalate an issue, I will do so promptly without waiting. Let me do my thing and I will reach out to you when I need.
Team members who are not as experienced or who don’t have the same level of drive need a lot more guidance. You would want to help them create a framework for success, check in to see they are making progress towards the goal, and guide them whenever you feel they are diverging. You will also need to be wary of “mid managers” who just want to be boss and who don’t do hand on work. Keep an close eye on the team and ensure that no one gets to free ride on other people’s work. As the CEO of Snowflake Frank Slootman pointed out in his book, these people are passengers. Either you turn them into the drivers or you have to eliminate them from the bus.
Finally, for the weak players, identify them early. Well, for starters, you shouldn't have hired them in the first place. That’s a topic for a different day. Sometimes you inherit a team of various degrees of abilities. You should clearly outline your standards, and give them a chance to meet them. Once you know they won’t, cut them loose immediately. This leads to my next point.
4. Tolerating weak performance is a big slap to the strong performers
If you don’t take action to remedy and ultimately eliminate the weak performers, you are signaling to your entire organization that mediocracy is ok. This will drive the strong performers crazy. You are almost saying to them implicitly that what you are trying to achieve doesnt’ matter and you shouldn’t try that hard. The moral will go down and they will lose their motivation quickly.
I grasp the notion that not everyone can be a rock star in life. Maybe for some organizations and some industries that is ok. But my belief is that you should build organizations that contain rock stars only. This is how you can be agile, move fast and achieve results. We are too lean and we move too fast to carry dead weight. We must upload them immediately.
5. Great leaders bring the best out of people. They are not just bosses, they are coaches
Going back to my point about teaching according to talent, great leaders are great coaches.
Coaches will not just give the team praises. They are there to observe the strengths and weaknesses and guide them to enhance their strengths and elevate or fix the weaknesses. Maybe they will put you in a position where you can play to your strengths. They will certainly not sugar coat things or not tell you where you suck for fear to hurt your feelings. We have a game to win, they will tell you where you are failing and how to fix it straight up.
An implicit point about this one is if your boss doesn’t do any of this, either they don’t care about you or they are not good bosses. No one should be stuck with doing what they are doing with no chance to advance. Good leaders recognize that and provide a path forward. If they don’t, you are not important enough for them to coach you, or they are not capable of doing so. It’s time to move on.
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