Copyright forbes
Margaret Andrews offers a route to the self-understanding that can help make leaders more successful. Raj Bandyopadhyay_Series A Photography There is a temptation to believe that — for all the talk of the need for authenticity and empathy in the modern workplace — successful leadership is all about performance. After all, it is what impresses executives’ superiors and ensures that the ultimate bosses — investors — are kept happy. And yet many aspiring leaders are increasingly finding that there appears to be more to the job than just hitting targets. As consultant and teacher Margaret C. Andrews puts it in her recently-published book Manage Yourself to Lead Others, “Talent, expertise, hard work and good intentions are not enough.” In a recent interview with me, she explained that she frequently comes across people who “realise they don’t get the results they want to get or are not getting traction.” In the words of the saying, they are seeing that “what got you here won’t get you there,” she added. Indeed, the book, which is based on her similarly-titled, hugely popular Harvard University course “Managing Yourself and Leading Others,” begins with the story of a participant in the executive program who related strongly to the case study the class was discussing. That example centred on a surgeon with — her italics — “terrible interpersonal skills” who performed his job flawlessly to the point that he enhanced the reputation of the hospital but created havoc in the operating theatre by “barking orders, bullying and intimidating others and generally running roughshod through the organization.” The result was that, while the hospital reaped financial rewards from the surgeon’s prowess, it paid a price in terms of “higher employee turnover, the fraying of a team-based culture, plummeting morale and a potential lawsuit.” The person who reacted to the case study was an engineer rather than a surgeon, but otherwise it could have been him, he said, describing himself as “a really good engineer,” but “an awful manager and teammate.” The sad fact is that — as many who have worked in organizations know only too well — the world is full of people like these. Andrews says she has come across them in every program she has taught and in every audience that she has addressed. In fact, she admits that she has been there herself. The traditional explanation for this problem is that many people — when they take on leadership responsibilities — carry on doing what they were doing before. This makes a certain amount of sense because their promotion can be seen as a reward for being good at, say, making a department achieve its financial target or bringing in a project on time. The issue, though, is that being a leader is not really about doing more of the same. As Andrews points out, the work leaders do is fundamentally different from what they were doing before because it “is increasingly done with and through other people.” And, she argues, people cannot become effective managers of others before they manage themselves. MORE FOR YOU Perhaps this is why so many appear to come up short. Andrews anticipates the criticism that some will level: that leaders spending time trying to understand themselves is self-indulgent or self-serving. But she writes that, while it is not easy to develop self-knowledge, this is the “foundation of powerful, consistent leadership.” Once leaders have self-understanding, they can manage themselves and begin to understand others better, and this results in them being able to lead more effectively. It goes without saying that not every leader will be prepared to do what it takes to build up this self-awareness. Similarly, many organizations clearly tolerate leaders who do not worry too much about understanding themselves or those working for them. But some leaders and organizations are prepared to do the work. Hence the popularity of the Managing Yourself and Leading Others course. And for some individuals going through the program can lead to an enlightenment of sorts. “Some people realise they need to get a new job,” said Andrews in the interview. “Sometimes people realise they are not good at managing. Once you understand yourself, you can identify situations where you can be yourself.” Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
