When Yes Man Meets Boss Man
By Jose Acevedo, S4 Consulting
When senior executives, who do not like to hear “no,” surround themselves, consciously or unconsciously, with people unwilling to say “no,” you have a recipe for poor decisions, inconsistent execution and inadequate innovation.
This debilitating dynamic is rarely acknowledged in most organizations with whom we have worked.
It seems difficult to raise as an issue because it either gets ground up by the “team player-at-all-cost” steamroller or swept under the LCD projector by the emperor-has-no-clothes syndrome.
It is a difficult proposition for anyone in the organization to get a senior leader to be willing to discuss his own behavior that results in shutting down of people; behavior often done with good intent and a healthy dose of sincerity. It is perhaps even more difficult to get his team members, who haven’t been willing to challenge him much, to now start revealing what’s really so for them in terms of the impact this key manager has been having on them.
In a larger sense, it seems that companies create a culture that either acknowledges the value of an authentic “no” or they create one that results in people doing a shadow dance-- saying a wimpy form of “yes” when they know in their hearts it’s a “no.”
The shift to a healthier dynamic starts with managers acknowledging that there are times when they make requests of their people and times when they issue commands. The distinction between a request and an order seems to occur primarily in the employee’s listening. If his employee seems to feel that they really can’t say “no” to the apparent request, then it was really a command. In today’s environment, whether viewed through diversity, generational differences or differing expectations, the manager that continually relies on a command and control approach runs the risk of developing a team with low accountability, creativity and energy. Even today’s Armed Forces have made more progress in this regard than many companies by knowing when to issue commands and expect action and when to make requests and receive an authentic response, including “no…and here’s why.”
In the end, the manager that encourages her team to raise issues and be willing to say “no” in an authentic way will end up with a more cohesive and resilient team than the manager who takes the easy route of having just compliant followers as team members. In much the same way, employees that are willing to challenge their leaders in pursuit of something more valuable, from a customer or shareholder perspective, should be rewarded and retained as “keeper” employees.
© S4 Consulting
