Lose the Ego, Stop Pushing, and Start Pulling

“Leadership without ego is the rarest, yet most valuable commodity we have.” — Bob Davids

If you’ve ever played 20Q and wondered how the hell that little device knew you were thinking about sub-saharan zebras, you have Radica Games to thank for that. Founded in 1983, Radica was the third most profitable electronic toy producer behind Mattel and Hasbro until its sale to Mattel. In 1998, Radica stunned analysts by becoming the most profitable toy company in the world, a title that either Mattel or Hasbro had held for years. How did a smaller, younger toy company steal so much market share from the titans of the toy industry?

I sat down with Bob Davids, former Radica CEO, renowned leadership author, and speaker to discuss Radica’s success and his approach to managing this remarkable turnaround.

And he immediately corrected me. “Leadership isn’t management because management is control. Management is the control, the interplay of time, quality, and money. So where are people? Well, people come under leadership.”

By no means does it suffice to say that management is to be disregarded. Time, quality, and money are all real concerns in any business, organization, or military unit. Leaders have to know their technicals and understand the operations of an organization to develop strategy. However, management and leadership are two different practices that those in power must distinguish from each other. Management entails decision-making while leadership requires unification around that decision and overall goal.

Davids changed the way I think about leadership fundamentally by explaining how managers make decisions but leaders unify a team:

“Managers push people, but leaders pull people.”

People are the lifeblood of any organization, but a leader cannot push them. Rather the leader must create an environment where people are motivated. It’s almost impossible to motivate someone as a leader — you cannot make someone want something that they do not want. Despite this situation, it’s still the job of the leader to create an environment where effort is rewarded by pulling them rather than pushing them toward the goal. Davids has built six different successful companies and he attributes this success to how he leads people by pulling them toward the goal rather than pushing them toward it from behind.

Interestingly, he learned the importance of this goal when one of a leader’s most important assets, communication, was gone. As a young executive in China, he was on a run when he noticed a peculiar sight down to the right of the road. A team of workers was placing a drainage pipe underground, but Davids noticed something was terribly wrong as he stopped to investigate. The workers were laying the pipe exactly parallel to the ground, meaning gravity wouldn’t pull the water down the pipe and it would be defective. Davids hollered out to the men, but immediately realized they couldn’t understand his English.

Little did Davids know, but he was about to learn a foundational leadership principle. Davids needed to get down in the trench and pull the team toward the goal, showing them that the pipe needed to be tilted, rather than directing from the street above. When you push people, you have no idea where they will go. But, when you position yourself between the team and the team’s goal, pulling them toward it, you communicate an incredibly effective and contagious vision and confidence to them.

So Davids removed his shoes, climbed down into the muddy ditch and started pulling. He transcended the language barrier between him and his team through his example. He picked up a pebble and motioned how the pebble wouldn’t roll down the pipe if it was parallel to the ground. Immediately, the team understood the situation and the overall goal — to set a tilted pipe. Davids helped them position a few rocks underneath one side of the pipe so that it would have a slight tilt. Since Davids pulled the team toward the goal, the team had been drawn toward their objective and closer to their leader, not pushed toward it and farther from their leader, even though they spoke different languages.

Davids attributes this key leadership insight to “Eisenhower’s Chain.” During World War II, General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force would explain leadership with a chain. Not just any chain, though. This chain was long and composed of large, heavy, steel links. Eisenhower would pile the chain up in a large heap, bring in his generals from many different Allied nations, and ask them a simple question. If I push this chain over right now, which way will it go? The generals would ponder the pile of individual links chained together and how their movements would affect one another, but they ultimately knew there could be no answer. There were just too many variables in how a push might affect the chain’s posture.

Eisenhower would recognize their indecision and explain that there really is no answer. Eisenhower wanted his generals to understand that just as he pushed the chain over, if they pushed their soldiers, there was no telling where they would go or how they would perform. The key was to pull them using their example as leaders.

Eisenhower continued, “But, if I pick up the end of the chain and pull it rather than push the pile, where will it go?”

Davids said, “The answer is that it will follow you.”

By pulling instead of pushing, you create so much more clarity in the hearts and minds of your team. They see their goal more clearly and they see you, the leader, as an avenue to reach that goal. They spend less time worrying about the success of the mission and more time following you to the goal. Not only will you be more effective in reaching your goal by pulling rather than pushing, but also you will develop a deeper, more trusting relationship with your team by being in the trenches with them.

However, how do you know those people want to go where you’re leading them? How do you know they share the vision you’ve developed? How do you know the last link in the chain wants to be connected just as much as the second link?

You have to use what Davids calls the “Consensus Method,” and if you think you’re too young to create consensus, don’t worry. Davids learned it when he was sixteen!

As a young man growing up in Venice, California, Davids was an avid surfer. He loved surfing and working so much that he took a job as a surfboard sander at the local surf shop just off the beach in Venice at age thirteen. Yeah, times were different back then. Over time, employees kept moving on and Davids kept staying. Eventually the finishers, foam shapers, and night crew all quit and each time, Davids was asked to fill in and he energetically accepted.

“Long story short, I ended up doing every job. After two and a half years, I was fifteen, and I became the manager.”

“Wow, how did you find yourself as manager when you were fifteen?” I asked.

“The owner, movie star Cliff Robertson’s son approached me and said, ‘The manager quit. I need you to be the manager now. Are you eighteen?’ I was a tall guy, six-foot-four, so I looked down at him and said, ‘Of course.’ But I was the youngest in the business. Some employees were triple my age and I did not feel comfortable giving orders.”

Talk about a freshman on the Varsity team. Some of Davids’ teammates were married and he couldn’t even buy a beer across the street yet. So what did he do? He learned how to create action through simplicity and consensus. What he lacked in seniority, he compensated for in the ability to create shared vision without groupthink.

“So I developed this framework where instead of commanding people, I would just talk with them about what needed to be done. My whole goal was to guide them toward an answer and create consensus.”

Davids did not tell his people why his decisions and strategy were best. Rather, he invited them into the decision-making process and allowed them to own a share of the vision because he knew people with equity in the mission would perform even better. Furthermore, he protected against complacency and groupthink by continuously asking questions.

“If you don’t get the right answer about the problem, you just ask the question again differently. And this is the beginning of pulling versus pushing because you can pull someone by just changing the question. This was the genesis of trying to lead by consensus because in doing so people will open the door to your vision.”

Lead by consensus, not orders because people will work, grind, and overcome hardship for a consensus, but not for an order. People can be pushed only so far, but true success and excellence arise when teams are pulled toward the goal. Davids learned the power of pulling through consensus when he was sixteen, and six successful companies, a winery, and a resort later, the principle is still true. Value people by pulling them with you toward the goal.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of my book, Next Gen Leadership which is available on Amazon — here is the link to buy it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KMJQ2MK. If you want to connect, you can reach me here via email hst7@georgetown.edu or connect with me on social: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.