The “Right” Approach for Negative Outcomes

I didn’t do very well in a meeting last week, my client shared during our session. Why, what happened? I had a feeling it most likely wasn’t as bad as she recalled. I’d been working with her for about 6 months and I found her to be a warm and conscientious leader with a highly relational approach. She was highly assertive for her people, and yet when it came to her own needs she struggled to speak up and set limits or share opposing opinions with how things were sometimes handled above her. This had been one of our areas of growth focus over the last few months. 

Well, I got really frustrated with leadership in our last meeting. I really pushed back and said I didn’t like their idea and didn’t think it would work nor was it something I felt I could take on. They told me all the reasons I shouldn't feel like that and they’d help me get it done but I know they won’t help because they don’t have time to do it either! In the end, I shut down and gave in. Fine, I said, we’ll try it. I really wish I would have shown less emotion. 

I had a very different perspective about what did or did not go well for my client, and it had nothing to do with her expressing frustration in that meeting with her leaders. 

What did not go well for her was the approach from leadership. The backstory is, what the leaders were delegating, was ownership over a difficult project that was due quarterly and wasn’t getting done. Why? Because it was time consuming, clunky, involved multiple people across multiple departments and no one wanted to own it. Thus, my client’s leaders got together and decided she should be the one to “oversee” that it was accomplished and managed. This is where the breakdown began. 

Effective delegation isn’t just being in tell mode. In fact, I’d argue that tell mode isn’t effective a majority of the time. Why? Because we’re not adding code to some computer program, we’re working with humans, who at their core, are relationally based and naturally resist leadership that takes a technical, task, and tell approach. Especially when delegating the project no one wants. 

Problem 1: my client was a highly productive leader in her organization, and had the highest workload by at least 30% to that of her peers. 

Problem 2: her leaders assigned the project to the person who had the least bandwidth because they knew she’d get it done. 

High in Responsibility (Gallup’s StrengthsFinder) and Achiever, she was not the kind of leader to let things fall through the cracks. Yet, getting it done shouldn’t have been the only dynamic her leadership focused on. Getting it accomplished with buy in and engagement should have been a greater priority if they wanted long term success. I promise, they will be dealing with this same problem in 60 days because they basically “guilted” someone into saying yes who doesn’t like confrontation or conflict. So, although my client recognizes that she does not have the capacity to do what she’s agreed to do, she agreed in the moment when pressured. Most likely she will try, and perhaps even succeed, at least succeed from an operational perspective. 

She’s obeying, she’s not following. The cost her leaders are unaware of is significant. It cost them trust, engagement, a belief that her needs and opinions matter, and frankly, even if she does accomplish the goal it won’t have a sense of satisfaction for her that it could have if there had been a more collaborative and honest approach. The accomplishment will be tainted with resentfulness and dissatisfaction. In fact, she left the meeting frustrated and feeling like her perspective was not only totally missed, but not even invited into the room. 

Taking a relational approach would have cost these leaders much less time and money (meetings are often a high expense for most organizations) as well as the missed opportunity for team building and maximizing talent. In the end, the cost was much greater to the organization than the problem that was solved.