You Get What You Need? Nope! You Get What You Are…
The Rolling Stones shared a bit of wisdom with us years ago when they said, “You don’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need…” That may hold true in some cases but when it comes to leadership, you get what you are! Leaders truly do set the tone for what each individual in their organization sees as acceptable performance and that absolutely carries forward in how each of those team members executive the duties within their own roles…
As we started down this path, I shared a story with you about an engineering manager who had extremely high expectations for his maintenance teams’ attendance but struggled with his own. While that was just one of the things that made him a complete train wreck to work with, it seemed to be what alienated that maintenance team the most. Like I mentioned, the majority of those folks had been with the organization since rocks were soft and they viewed attendance as a top priority. Most of them had perfect attendance for years at a time, one of which had a streak that lasted more than three decades! The most senior members of that team never dropped their standards because of his poor example, but it sure did impact the folks who were new to the group. And I’ll let you guess how that impacted the overall comradery in that department, not to mention the level of respect (or lack thereof) that engineering manager had with them…
Similarly, I’ve watched another organization with a longstanding reputation for service and quality exemplify that we do indeed get what we are… The key leaders in the organization are very involved in the day-to-day operation, which sets a great example for overall work ethic. The challenge often comes in being able to give each plate they have spinning the attention it needs, when that attention is needed. In many cases, a plate not only spins slower, it may fall altogether. Since the leaders are so engaged though, they don’t necessarily lose respect from their team but it does set the tone for certain “misses” being acceptable. Unfortunately, the folks carrying far less weight in the organization (who also have far less buy-in to maintaining the company’s reputation) “miss” things too - and those things are often ones that directly impact the customer…
Whether it’s intentional or not, and regardless of how many other things we’re juggling at any given time as leaders, our example of responsiveness, service, attitude, and even performance has a trickle down effect on everyone else who follows us. We do not always get what we want. We won’t likely even get what we need. But we can count on getting what we are! So that makes being a real life example of leadership critical. As we move forward, we’ll look at a few leadership examples in business that have set the tone for their organizations through their own actions and have yielded outstanding results…
A Real Life Example of Leadership
Since we’re gonna get what we are, and not necessarily what we want, I believe it would serve us all well to consider some real life examples of leadership that yielded teams of people who did what they did. Interestingly enough, my internet search for specific leaders who did this yielded little results but it sure did provide me with a whole lot of people who talked about it. I worked with a supervisor years ago who often exclaimed, “a mouth will say anything” - which was usually in response to one of his employees feeding him a line of nonsense! Through the mess of search results though, I did find two articles that at least listed examples of good leaders. And while neither went into detail about how the folks on the lists set an example for their immediate teams to follow, they did serve as a starting point…
In 11 Examples of Good Leaders in Modern History, Mahatma Ghandi was in the number one spot, referencing “his dedication to nonviolence, nonviolent resistance, and a simple way of life” and saying that “His message of love, tolerance, and self-sacrifice still inspires millions worldwide.” While the author didn’t say it directly, much of the inspiration Ghandi created was through the example he set rather than just his words alone.
In the other article, also landing on a magnificent 11, called 11 Successful Leaders: How They Achieved Success, Teddy Roosevelt managed to sneak into the tenth spot. Him being listed there and Martha Stewart being eighth was nearly enough for me to skip the article altogether, but I was able to find a little bit of chicken salad mixed in with all that chicken poop! I often reference T.R.’s “Man in the Arena” speech where he opened by saying “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.” I can’t think of anyone else who could use those words as confidently as him - because he was truly a doer of deeds himself! The article shared a story of how “Roosevelt had his picture taken at the controls of a 95-ton steam shovel digging a trench through the Panamanian jungle” to win the public’s support “as Congress dilly-dallied over building the Panama Canal.” He wasn’t one to rest on words alone. He took action and set an example that led our nation into the industrial age!
Since I never knew either of those guys personally, and I’m guessing you didn’t either, I’ll bring this home by telling you about one man I watched lead by example and how it impacted my career (and life). Fresh out of the Army, Terry Ward was unlike anyone I had ever been around. He was wide open all the time - and still is 25 years later. He was very direct in everything he said and everything he did. Quite honestly, I didn’t like him at first but that had more to do with what I had heard about him than what I had experienced personally. As I interacted with him more though, I noticed that he was always respectful, even in delivering messages that many didn’t want to hear, and he never expected anyone to do something that he wasn’t willing to do himself. In developing a lesson for a group of veterans I worked with several years ago, I asked Terry for a picture from his time in the Army that I could include on a slide. The one he had kept was from Germany, not long after he had graduated from West Point, showing him suiting up to crawl underneath a tank through water and mud so the folks reporting to him wouldn’t have to do it. I didn’t have the chance to meet anyone else who was in that photo but I had seen dozens of similar examples where he had led the same way.
In his book Know What You’re For, Jeff Henderson said “team members who are cared for care for their customers.” That thought holds true for any other part of the example we set for our teams. To have any hope of getting what we want, we need to first be what we want by providing an example our teams can follow! Leaders set the standard for their team’s performance; WE set the standard for our team’s performance… So we’ll dig into that next. First though, I’ll challenge you to ask yourself if you’re excited about your team’s current performance…
Who Sets the Standard?
One of the first things I learned after I moved from operating a press to training on and implementing Lean Manufacturing initiatives nearly 25 years ago was how labor efficiency rates were set. In most cases, the number of widgets that were expected on an hourly basis from any given process was based on the cycle time of the machine involved and some variance for set ups and adjustments. I remember feeling really uncomfortable in the years leading up to that any time an engineer showed up at the press I was running with their stopwatch; I thought they were measuring whether or not I was doing what I should be doing! That always pushed me to work even faster, which really frustrated the old-timers who had learned to milk the system and stretch things out during those time studies so the hourly standards would remain easy for them to meet…
Having worked with teams in nearly every industry at this point, I see so much value in having a baseline expectation for productivity. This not only gives each team member a clear understanding of what they need to be working toward, it also serves as a tool for estimating budgets and workforce needs. The more accurate these labor standards are, the more effective the entire organization can be… In setting those standards, it’s always best if the press operators, the engineers, and the management team have open communication throughout the process to ensure a true representation of the work involved is actually captured.
Fair enough, Wes… But what does that have to do with leaders setting the right example for their teams on a daily basis? Having high (but still achievable) expectations in place for the performance we need from our teams makes huge difference in the amount of productivity we see, regardless of the industry we’re in, but how about the things that require a bit of discretionary effort - those things that don’t fall within the routine of a specified process or procedure?
That’s where it becomes absolutely critical for us to provide a real life leadership example if we have any hope of getting what we need from the folks we’re responsible for! Earlier I challenged you to consider whether or not you were excited about your team’s current performance. Now I’m going to push you a little harder…
What kind of standard have you set for your team? Not just for how much production they need to churn out each day but for the types of behaviors they use to achieve those goals! And what kind of example are you setting when it comes to exceeding expectations on things like internal communication, customer service, or even growth and development? Do they see you exemplifying the things you’re expecting them to do?
I often hear business owners ask how they can get their team members to care about the organization as much as they do. That’s often brushed off as impossible since so many folks believe an employee has little reason to care as much as the person who owns the company. I’ll argue that point! While they may indeed care in different ways and about different things, as leaders we can absolutely set the standard for how our team members care just as much as we do - but we need to be very intentional about providing an example that they can buy into, one that truly speaks to them! And that’s exactly where we’ll pick up next time: how we can move from saying to doing!