I have written before about Leadership, most recently here, https://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2011/01/24/on-leadership/, though it is often on my mind these days in my role as the COO of a small, but mighty company, Powertek Corporation, www.powertekcorporation.com.
A few days ago I was talking to one of the employees about working with others and they mentioned how they felt a person had to earn trust and I realized that I took a slightly different perspective and at least to some extent this difference in approach reflected different leadership styles.
One way I differentiate leaders is between those who want to avoid losing and those who want to win.
The former tend to micromanage people, usually find someone to blame (other than themselves), are able to be successful though often as individuals which may or may not build an organization, and are not fun, at least for me, to work for.
The latter tend to tolerate failure, are more fun to work for, and I believe are more able to grow organizations.
Each brings their own price to the table. The losing-avoider finds it more and more difficult over time to find out accurate information since people are reluctant to provide information on problems only to get blamed. The same goes for risk takers who will always fail at least part of the time as their work ‘outside-of-the-box’.
The winning-desirer often will over-trust and often will not invest enough time in oversight activities, which is doubly important for someone who delegates a great deal of authority.
Both can be successful and if successful enough that alone will attract people to work for them. However in the long run it is those leaders who want to win that are most likely to create large and thriving organizations, because the resulting culture is larger than them. Losing-avoiders end up with organizations that are only about themselves as individuals.
Coming back to the conversation I mentioned at the beginning, it occurred to me that this was just one aspect of the same overall theme. Leaders who want to avoid losing lean toward having people earn their trust. Leaders who want to win lean toward trusting people unless that trust is lost.
Smart leaders who want to win remember to “trust, but verify” and I continue to strive to do both.
Comments
2 responses to “Leadership: Winning versus Avoiding Losing”
While your views on this aspect of leadership is conversationally interesting, is there not a divide? Management styles are reflective of one of two scenarios; 1) either the resources under the managers oversight require a more thorough management approach, or the manager believes they do; 2) or the manager has only one managerial style.
The price for managerial failure is strangely absent from the thoughts on leadership above. Perhaps, thinking outside the box is a needed requirement in a research and design environment for advancement of society whether NASA or CDC. But do not all environments in and of themselves demand a “managerial ” style to succeed?
Will the leadership syle of the COO with Bank of
America work within NASA?
Your article confuses supervision and leadership.One ensures things are done correctly, the other makes sure the right things are being done.
It reads as if you are in the midst of personnel problem for which you are opposed to a leadership style which you personally dislike with a style that’s works for business.
Again, what is the price of failure and for failure?
Would you want your surgeon to think outside the box, or follow the prescribed method?
Again, what is the price of failure and for failure?
I ‘ve found the most challenging question in leadership to be – who will bare the brunt of failure? Will It only be my company or my customer?
A belated response …
There are many aspects of how to be a good leader and/or a good manager. The answer depends much on the intersection between what characteristics a person brings to the table, what the situation is on the ground, and what the broad cultural aspects of the organization encourages (or allows). I would agree with your comments that different situations require different approaches, assuming the person who has to adapt can. I also agree that there are clear differences between being a leader or a manager, though I suspect that there are great disagreements on the ground as to the precise differences.
Having said all that, my point was that some people I have worked for tended to be willing to accept risk (bare the brunt of failure) and in the process, in my opinion, grew the organization better and were more fun to work for; and some people I have worked for made sure that others were the one’s who accepted risk and its implications.
The issue of how to allow an organization to fail from time to time but not do so in a way that damaged its various stakeholders is a good one to explore but was outside of the issue I was trying to address.
Hope this clarifies my entry a bit.
– Dan