Management’s Missing Ingredient
by Skip Moen, PhD, ©2004Skip Moen, author, speaker and consultant, provides clients with reflective insight into business practice assumptions and practical solutions to human resources issues. He has recently published a book on daily leadership. Skip resides in Florida,
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One day I resigned as President of the company. What a difficult decision! I didn't resign because I was making a career ladder move. I didn't leave over decisions about executive fall-out or even the loss of income. My biggest fears were not about what was ahead but rather what I was leaving behind. My biggest fears were about the group of employees who had worked for me and with me through some very difficult times. Nevertheless, in the world of work, some things just don’t work at all. That led me to say, “No more”.
What I learned, quite painfully, is that there is a very big difference between management and leadership. Management’s missing ingredient is compassion – being able to put yourself in the shoes of the other person. America manages work without providing leadership because America’s managers have not learned what it means to be compassionate.
Compassion is not to be confused with sympathy or empathy. Our picture of compassion is usually unintentionally diluted into one of these less demanding emotions. But if we examine the Biblical use of compassion, we discover just how far we have strayed from the real meaning.
The New Testament use of the Greek verb for being compassionate is only found in the parables of Jesus or in descriptions of Jesus. This alone should raise our interest. But when we discover that the Greek culture actually feared this sort of emotional reaction, we must ask, "Why would this word be chosen to describe the actions of the Son of God?" The answer is a resounding proclamation of involvement. Jesus does not stand to the side and say, "Oh, I feel so sorry for those poor people." He does not decry the fate of others with an empathetic mental image. No, Jesus steps into their lives with the deliberate intention to rescue, heal, repair and embrace.
The Good Samaritan has compassion. He does something about the situation, something that costs him time and money. The father has compassion over his prodigal son and he acts to re-instate him. The master has compassion over the servant and forgives the impossibly large debt. Every other use of this word is ascribed only to Jesus. He is the paradigm example of compassion. Jesus shows compassion over individuals (the widow of Nain) and over the world itself. Compassion is love in action.
And it all begins with the character of God. "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;" (Exodus 34:6). If your influence over others does not display the active involvement of God's character of compassion, you simply are not leading God's way.
Like most start ups, my company had enormous growing pains. We struggled with long hours, inadequate manpower, business-model mistakes. None of this was unexpected even if it was extraordinarily taxing. There was just too much to do, too few people and too little time. This start-up experience reinforces my opinion that there are systemic problems in today’s work world. I saw the same thing in the fifteen years I did consulting for the Fortune 100. These issues are only more apparent when the company is in its infancy. In start-up companies, managerial masks have to come off. This kind of environment is a perfect laboratory for observing the real priorities of employees and managers. What it revealed to me was very distressing.
In any ordinary day, America ’s companies all face some sort of crisis. Work is essentially the challenge of overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of success. Success is achieved not by a straight-line progression but by the ability to turn problems into opportunities. Whether these problems are financial, operational or psychological, every manager is asked to perform his or her duties by delegation, decision or direction that will turn crisis into victory. The usual American models are sports or war. Choosing between them is only a matter of determining the sense of urgency or intensity. American business is about winning the victory, scoring the goal, beating the competition. The dominance of this form of thinking is exemplified by the unusual attention we give to those companies that take a different tact. Hewlett Packard in the early days, Dell Computer as a brainchild start-up, the IBM and 3M skunk works operations so lauded in management literature all make us realize that something entirely different was happening – so different from our ordinary experience in the work-world that someone had to write about it. But for most of us, work is just work. We don’t expect to read about ourselves in some new volume by Peters or Collins.
Why is that? I believe that a significant reason why we experience work as nothing more than busy days is that we have managers who are not leaders. They are “the boss” and the role of the boss is very different than the role of a leader. Behaviorally, a boss directs, demands and decides. His or her plans must become my plans. His or her ideas must become my ideas. I must learn to follow if I am to support the ranked organization of manager-employee. Even at the most executive levels of companies, I have found that there are very few leaders. A manager in an Armani suit is still a “boss” and the essence of a boss is still telling someone else what to do.
Through the process of promotion osmosis, most bosses have become bosses because they were once dutiful employees. For this reason, they generally operate on the principle “If you don’t know what to do, you do what you know”. And nearly always when you reach a high enough level in the operating pyramid, this is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Bosses have learned the art of management by following the example of their own supervisors. This means that they have practiced the skill of restraint of independent thinking in order to make the boss’ ideas their ideas, the boss’s plans their plans, etc. So, of course, they expect the same now that they are in the role of boss. But they have never been taught to think “outside the box”, to question authority on the basis of novelty, to look for efficiency in talent rather than timidity. In years of consulting, of supervising and decision-making, I have seen this principle operate over and over. America’s management ranks operate on the Army mentality – a chain of unquestioned commands handed down from the top. Unfortunately, these days we seem to be greatly lacking in generals who are great leaders, and that spells disaster for the ranks.
Leadership is a skill-set that is not entirely useful in American companies because it is not controllable. If I am the boss, and I say, “Do this”, I control the outcome either by threat or reward. But if I am a leader, my behavior is very different. I ask people to “Watch this, and see how you fit in” – and then, as a leader, I do. Delegation comes from example – not from direction. Bosses direct, leaders teach. Bosses demand obedience, leaders garner support. Bosses focus on results, leaders focus on purpose.
This is not a new complaint. The literature of business seems to have spent quite a bit of time trying to tell us how to lead rather than demand. We could each catalog the characteristics of our ideal leader, even if we have never experienced the pleasure of working with one. What I want to add to the list is this – without compassion no one is really a leader no matter what he or she may accomplish.
When I worked with the American Productivity Center in Houston, I once met a CEO who said that when his company grew to the size that he could not remember the first name and the family circumstances of every employee, then the company was too big. This man demonstrated compassion. His leadership revealed itself in the priority that he set – he would know each and every employee because only in that way could he help them discover where they best fit in the organization. Leadership is best seen in the natural flow of letting employees find their place. A leader is able to foster the belief that the best employee is the one whose personal talents and energy are voluntarily contributed to the workplace because they fulfill the inner drives of the employee. Leaders do not demand performance. They cultivate an environment where performance is given voluntarily and enthusiastically because it fits the employee’s desires. Of course, a leader must draw together the right team with the right chemistry. The leader’s effort is focused on the “who” of work, not on the “what”. The right people in the right environment will not be stopped. And the only way to find the right people and create the right environment is to be able to place yourself in the life circumstances of the employee. It is really very simple – if you don’t really care about your employees, they will not care about your mission. They may perform tasks assigned to them, but you will sacrifice the power of commitment. And ultimately you will fail because life is more than work. A leader must demonstrate by his or her actions that the work is worth doing.
Today’s mangers ought to be reclassified. The correct term should be “administrator” because in almost every case, management today means carrying out someone else’s direction – the top down. Administrators are rule followers. They are paid, sometimes quite well, to “get the job done”, a task which usually means implementing the “rules”. This is a far cry from leadership. Leaders routinely break rules, question past behavior, challenge old beliefs. By doing so they cause others to re-evaluate, to make breakthroughs in work and personal life. And they change things by first changing themselves and then changing those around them. Compassion is critical to this effort. When I identify with another, when I make that other person’s life part of mine, I change forever the mission of both of us. Unless I understand my need for compassion from the world's only Owner, I will never be able to demonstrate costly active involvement in another person's life. Compassion begins with me.
It takes only a moment to identify the greatest leader the world has ever seen – Jesus of Nazareth. His mission infected twelve men so much that they changed the course of history. Jesus knew compassion was absolutely critical to leadership. He invited men to “tag along” and learn what commitment meant through the age-old apprenticeship model. And when they failed, he went back and re-educated them. An encounter with him meant life-altering change. It is still happening today. What Jesus communicated to his “employees” was deliberate, active, costly involvement and once they saw it they were released to implement that same involvement in a dozen different ways in the lives of others.
If you have ever worked with a true leader, you know what a difference it makes. If you haven’t, it might be time to ask yourself why not. Maybe you need to check your own "compassion" quotient. It's God's way of doing things.
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