#327: How not to be the company A$$
There is no definition of what an a$$ is, but you’ll know it when you see it
As a seller, no matter how you slice and dice it, you can only offer the best of two variables; price, service, and quality. If buyers are looking for high service and quality, we know we have high costs leading to high prices. When you reduce the price, you reduce the cost of either service or quality.
Leadership does not have that luxury. Good leaders must be able to provide everything and sacrifice nothing. However, when you are choosing who needs to be on a team and who could be a great future leader, there is one thing that you can sacrifice. And that is performance; now let me explain.
When looking for people to promote or be part of a particular project, it is human nature to first look for the high performers. Top-performing salespeople, the most efficient accountant, and the fastest operators on the assembly lines all get promotions. You have looked at them in all different ways, you have metrics to measure each of their processes, and they are your best.
Often, the high performers in your organization are the ones that put their heads down and get everything done. They aren’t distracted by petty office politics. Their to-do list is their top priority, not ensuring they refill the coffee pot when they take the last cup. You may not find them at the company picnic or the Friday afternoon summer barbecues. We know where they are, at their desk. They deserve the promotion.
Why is this often a mistake?
Because we cannot measure the intangibles, the intangibles distinguish the ahatsfromthoseyouwantleadingyourteams.Askanyoneinyourorganizationwhotheahole is, and they all will point to the same person. It’s the one that is often the highest performer with the lowest amount of trust.
It’s the intangible skills and qualities they possess that make good leaders. Things like; trust, integrity, honesty, and being supportive. They have your back when you are in a tight spot and pitch in to help without you asking. They are great communicators, and connectors, finding out what makes you tick, how your kids or parents are doing, and getting to know you through common connections.
When we measure performance against any intangible and ask which one we want to sacrifice, it’s always performance. We will take a mid-performing person with high trust or integrity over anyone with high performance and mid-trust. I don’t often assign homework in this blog, but try this. Take the above graph, put any intangible you can imagine on the X-Axis, and measure it against performance. Where is performance more important than the intangible?
What are the intangibles of leadership?
Trust, honesty, integrity, connection, listening, empathy, presence, self-awareness, and grit are just some intangible qualities of a good leader. These are not calculated by output, numbers, and objective measures; they are gauged by observation. There isn’t a clear-cut definition. You know it when you see it.
You know it when you see it is the expression that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart made famous when describing pornography. He wrote:
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description of "hard-core pornography," and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.
We would all love to find high performers with the highest qualities, and they are out there. But when you have two to choose from, one with the most trust among the team and another that doesn’t but can produce more than anyone else, who is better equipped to take over as their leader?
This blog isn’t an excuse for you not to perform, either. But be aware of the things that will build your following. Leadership is getting people to follow you, not telling people what to do. You know, the one thing you don’t want to be, it’s the athattheypointto.Again,thereisnodefinitionofwhatana is, but you’ll know it when you see it.
Here is a quick litmus test to determine if you have what it takes to be a great leader someday. When you ask someone how they are doing, you want to know the answer.
Do you care?