Why leadership is killing your company

What is the role of leadership and management within organizations? Seems like such a simple question, that to even ask it implies a certain naivety about the very basics of business. But, allow me to paint two scenarios:

Company A

Company A is largely comprised of young, unproven employees. They need regular direction and guidance, and due to a number of missteps the company has made in the past, there is a need to be overly cautious in staffing more senior team members alongside those younger employees (typically a small percentage of those senior people’s time) on client engagements to mitigate risk.

Employees review progress with their managers frequently, and nothing goes out the door before they have signed it off. Often times there are multiple rounds of review to get the two on the same page.

Management in Company A is persistent, and primarily serves the function of quality control. Once the younger employees have earned their stripes, they too can be managers and guide others.

Company B

Company B prides itself on hiring extremely talented people, with a mix of backgrounds and experience levels, and since the company is growing fast, new people are joining all of the time.

Things move very quickly in Company B, so the ability to act decisively and maintain momentum on projects are key factors to optimize for. As such, spending time getting senior managers who aren’t involved in the day-to-day “up to speed” on a project is an inefficient and unproductive use of time. So, they don’t really do it, except for rare situations when an outside perspective to solve a problem is really needed.

In Company B, management is really about decision-making — staffing teams, green-lighting hires, making investments. Managers actively work to “get out of the way” of their people, all of which are extremely talented and just need space and conditions to do great work. In this case, management is about creating and maintaining those conditions, and providing employees support, rather than control.

Looking at these two companies, it becomes clear that employing the management style of Company A in Company B wouldn’t just be the wrong strategy, it would be highly detrimental to the environment that the employees of Company B want to operate in.

It’s a fairly simple human condition that leads to many organizations simply misusing the concept of leadership. People want to feel valuable, they want to feel like they have control. The more people have “climbed the ladder,” the more they want to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and those fruits — as they have been taught — is that you now get to tell other people what is good or bad, right or wrong, through traditional “management.”

But, here’s the thing, nobody really wants to be managed. And, effective employees in particular don’t need to be. What everyone needs is support, and the inspiration to push themselves.

“Leadership” is most organizations becomes an offspring of “management.” It means that someone has the answers, when true leadership is about having the insight to ask the right questions that motivate people.

What kind of leaders is your company cultivating? Are you asking enough hard questions and spending time designing conditions that allow people to get out of the way, rather than getting in the way? It’s a question worth spending some time on.