There are teams where individuals ooze the highest of standards and there are those where we ask ourselves, “Do these individuals even care?”
A lack of motivation can have multiple causes, but let’s assume that you’re treating your employees with empathy and that you compensate them competitively for their work. Even in situations where employees have additional reasons for lacking motivation, often the problems stem from the leader’s inconsistency in communicating their standards and values through their words and, more importantly, actions. Without clear metrics by which to judge their outcomes, team members don’t have objective ways of measuring their performance. When these standards are muddled by leaders who inconsistently judge their own actions, it can send conflicting signals and undermine their credibility.
article summary
- Employees are likely underperforming due to poor and inconsistent leadership.
- Corporate values help define to employees to what expectations they must perform. When managers do not adhere to these values, they undermine their credibility and authority.
- Manager inconsistency surfaces in specific ways, three common issues are explored in this article.
- Leaders embody good corporate values in the way they act. To remain a leader these values must be permanently followed.
In The Art of Dramatic Writing, Lajos Egri wrote that the most believable characters are those which hyperbolically represent the qualities that define the plot. What does that mean? For example, the premise of Romeo and Juliet is “great love defines even death,” and what really drives that is the extreme romanticism of the two main characters. Romeo’s and Juliet’s extreme convictions give believability and power to the message.
Leadership works the same way. That’s why organizations that deal with life and death situations institute extreme rules that force leaders to act a certain way. For example, the mantra “first boots on the ground, last to leave” is so important for a commander in the military because they speak to values that are crucial for the production of good outcomes, and it’s the commander’s responsibility to live and breathe these values. The rule is institutionalized to make sure the leader lives by it in a consistent way.
Unlike in fiction, humans are imperfect. We can’t live to the standards of an ideal, but we can aspire to and judge our actions by them. Good leaders aren’t perfect, they’re just conscious of how their actions and words affect others and they implement rules to raise the standards of company-wide decision-making.
To give these rules meaning and significance requires consistency and self-discipline. Its when these qualities are lacking that leadership tends to falter.
To illustrate this, let’s go through three examples that commonly occur in office environments:
- When leaders participate in bad-mouthing clients or customers.
- When leaders are lenient in judging their team members by company standards.
- When leaders abuse their power for personal advantage.
We’ll see how inconsistency in acting in accordance to higher values by part of the leadership incentivizes bad behavior across the entire team.
When Leaders Participate in Client- or Customer-Shaming
If you’ve worked in retail or have ever talked to someone who’s worked in retail, you understand that customers can be frustrating. It’s true in any service-oriented industry, really. Customers are paying the company money and they (rightfully) feel entitled to certain rights, and when they act on these entitlements against our own interests it can be jarring.
After the experience, team members may decide to bad-mouth these clients. “That client is so annoying. I don’t get why they always try to micromanage us. It must be terrible to work for that person in their office.” Or, something like that.
Venting isn’t bad, but how we vent matters. Disrespecting clients, or creating an environment of disrespect, influences how the team thinks about the client which, in turn, affects mood, motivation, and the quality of the output.
Section Summary
- Customer- or client-facing frustrations are common. Employees often vent by speaking negatively of the client.
- When a manager partakes, it sends the message that the leader doesn’t respect the client.
- Quality of work for this client will be negatively affected, as a result.
Imparting a higher standard of treatment to our clients and customers, and transmitting those standards across an organization, falls on the shoulders of leadership. Leaders put into place rules and guidelines that define how individuals on the team should act during moments of adversity.
Imagine how little impact these rules and guidelines have when even the leader doesn’t follow them.
The inclination to bad-mouth clients is almost natural. We’re so used to doing it in our everyday lives, like in the way we talk about coworkers, friends, or people who we hold animosity towards. It takes a lot of discipline and awareness to regulate ourselves in these situations. Leaders, who play a special role in an organization and therefore have special responsibilities, have the duty of consistently exemplifying the values they want their team members to hold when responding to tough customers.
If a leader doesn’t live by the standards she sets, it undermines believability by suggesting they are unattainable, unimportant, and/or, worse still, a double standard.
The Roman statesman Julius Caesar earned great results from his armies in large part because of his willingness to abide by his own standards. He was known to participate in training, dig in the trenches, and fight in combat alongside his soldiers. Caesar inspired his men to do these things by showing that these were the standards he expected not just from them, but from himself as well. They associated these standards with his person and achievements, and he made clear no one — not even the commander — was above or beyond them.
Marble bust of Julius Caesar by Renaissance sculptor Andrea Ferrucci.
Q. What should a leader do when she catches herself bad-mouthing clients?
A. Use it as a learning opportunity, not just for yourself but for your team as well. Criticism is hard to take, so why not take advantage when the criticism isn’t leveled at a team member, but at your own person? This is also an opportunity to teach the values of humility and self-criticism, both of which will help your team members learn on their own as they make mistakes in their own careers.
Q. What should a leader do when she catches a team member bad-mouthing clients?
A. Some might use this as an opportunity to admonish, whether publicly (bad) or privately (better), but the same lesson can be taught another way. Ultimately, the way we want our team members to treat customers is determined by (1) the value they provide us (the company and the people who work for it) and (2) principles of human decency.
We can use these opportunities to teach about (1) the value the clients bring to the table, that is their significance to the big picture, and (2) how to empathize with clients to see the situation the way they do. The first gives meaning, or purpose, to the standard set. The second helps to reframe the issue away from the context of conflict and gives the individual the tools to navigate future conflicts.
When Leaders Are Inconsistent in Holding Team Members Against the Expected Standard
Feedback is an integral part of any person’s learning process.
Yet, so many managers and teammates shy away from providing feedback because they want to avoid the possible confrontation that can come with it. I get it, you know that nobody likes to take criticism. You don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. If you give it, you try to give it in subtle and soft ways that, unfortunately, don’t tend to be fully understood because…they’re subtle, soft, and passive, rather than direct and honest.
There are ways to make your criticism easier to accept that don’t require diluting it, but we’ll come back to this point in a bit.
The standards and values we strive for ought to be reflected in the details of our work. For instance, offering better and clearer insight than the competitor when I audit a client’s website for its performance on Google search is important to me. Accomplishing this requires a significant degree of analytical thinking and attention to detail, which in turn takes work and effort.
Section Summary
- Managers who avoid tough feedback are doing their team members a disservice.
- When suboptimal performance is left unreviewed, it undermines the quality standards of the company and it hampers employee development.
- Tough feedback should be delivered in expected ways (it shouldn’t be random), through a fair process.
To help my team members produce the same quality of work as me when I delegate these tasks to them I will create instruction sets, guides, and task lists for them to follow. I expect these to be followed and I expect the team member to truly endeavor to accomplish each item at the highest standard. I want them to feel the need to do so, that is to feel a self-motivation to produce the best work.
When a standard isn’t hit there’s an opportunity to communicate our values. When a mistake or subpar effort isn’t corrected, you’re not just missing out on that opportunity, you’re communicating that the value or standard is unimportant. Think about what happens when you try to correct the issue the next time it happens. If the problem wasn’t important enough last time, why is it important now?
Furthermore, by failing to provide feedback, you are directly hampering that person’s personal development. You are taking away that individual’s opportunity to learn and improve.
It’s possible to give rigorous feedback in a fair way that will also help team members be more self-motivated.
First, set the expectation that they’re going to receive feedback. If it’s part of the standard operating procedure that they understand and it’s done in a consistent way, your feedback more likely to be considered fair and digested.
Why can random feedback be counterproductive? Because then you provoke the questions, “why this time and not the last?” and “what did I do especially wrong this time?” Imagine yourself in that situation. Wouldn’t you take sudden, unexpected feedback differently compared to expected, institutionalized feedback?
Feedback should be worked into your formalized processes to help make it expected and relevant.
Second, explain how your feedback fits the bigger picture.
We derive meaning and purpose from contributing to something bigger than ourselves, and if we understand how an action fits into this bigger picture we are more motivated to do it. The reason why we complete a certain task ‘this’ way instead of ‘that’ plays a role in producing the desired bigger outcome. Why not make the connection explicit?
In fact, team members rarely fail to meet standards because they’re “lazy” or “incompetent.” More often, they simply didn’t see the connection between doing it a certain way, the standard, and the final product. By explaining it to them, you (1) prove to them why your feedback makes sense, (2) help them understand their value and importance, and (3) show that you trust them and see them as capable of strategic thinking.
Leadership Comes With Duties, Not Advantages
At one of my employers, we had a strict open-to-close schedule that wasn’t flexible. You came in before 7 AM and work was over at 3:30 PM. For a while, there was a period where team members were chronically coming in late. Literally, I walked in at 6:58 AM one morning, I was one of three people in the office, and everyone else didn’t start to trickle in until 7:05. Company policy was that you had to be in your seat at 7 AM ready to work. If you want a cup of coffee, you come early. If you want breakfast, you come early. A strict policy, but nonetheless these were the rules.
These rules were never followed.
We can talk about the rules’ fairness. Are those good rules? Do they make sense?
We can talk about how they were enforced. Were people let go? Were people given warnings? Were they admonished for arriving late?
Section Summary
- The team members who should most strictly abide by company rules are the managers.
- When managers don’t follow rules, they undermine their authority.
- If managers don’t follow rules, they can’t expect their team members to do so.
The company owners were good people. They weren’t going to send you home, dock pay, or line you up for a firing based on coming into work a few minutes late or making your coffee after the clock started. There were no fear-based incentives (thank goodness, those are the worst).
Still, the owners never considered whether, given these realities, the rules were worth changing. They still expected them to be met, even though they never were. They held this expectations because, fundamentally, it was a question of respect toward the company.
Part of the problem was that not all the owners followed their own rules. Some came consistently late and left consistently early. Ironic, then, that they saw tardiness as a lack of respect. Do they disrespect their own company? No, but by not following the rules they undermine any connection between tardiness and disrespect. After all, how can coming in to work be disrespectful if some of the owners do it themselves?
There are managers who recognize their duty of having to set a good example. They are the first boots on the ground and the last to leave. Then, there are managers who use their position and power to get advantages that others don’t. They come in late, because they can get away with it, they leave early, and they don’t speak to others as equals. The former are leaders who communicate and promote the values of productivity and respect. The latter aren’t leaders, and they promote a culture of abuse.
Abuse doesn’t have to necessarily imply abuse toward employees. It could be as simple as abuse of one’s position to get away with things that subordinates can’t. What does this say about what traits the company values in its managers? What does say about the type of person the subordinate should want to be in order to get in those same positions? If a manager doesn’t have to come in on time, can leave early, and can shirk on the job, why would a subordinate feel inclined to do the opposite of that?
The Battle of Ia Drang, in Vietnam, is a classic example of good leadership. Lt. Col. Moore, who led from the front, was the first on the ground, and the last to leave, managed to preserver in the face of a numerically superior opponent.
Q. I have legitimate reasons for coming in late sometimes. I fly to client meetings on weekends and sometimes get in very, very late at night on Sundays, so I come in an hour late on Mondays. I can’t change this, what do I do?
A. Communicate to the team that you’ll be late (or will leave early; or whatever) and why. This helps to instill fairness, sets boundaries on what’s acceptable, and it explicitly communicates the idea that otherwise the right time to show up for work is at 7 AM.
Consistency Matters: Believability & Inspiration
In his “On Duties,” Cicero writes to his son that there are no virtues more attractive than justice and generosity, especially among those who share those same characteristics. In other words, the virtues of justice and generosity are inspiring.
Does an inspiring person, someone who attracts others of like mind, only need to be inspiring only once or does that person need to be consistent over a lifetime?
In his essay, “On Friendship,” Cicero relates a story of Themistocles, the Athenian statesman who defeated the numerically superior Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis (480 B.C.) and effectively ended Persian aspirations to conquer Greece. Understandably, Themistocles returned home a hero. But, his popularity was fleeting. Cicero writes,
“Who was more eminent in Greece than Themistocles, who more powerful? But he, after having saved Greece from slavery by his leadership in the war with Persia, and after having been banished because of his unpopularity, would not submit to the injustice of an ungrateful country, as he was in duty bound to do: he did the same thing that Coriolanus had done among our people twenty years before [ed. Attempt to overthrow the government with foreign support]. Not one single supporter could be found to aid these men against their country…”
In other words, as much of an inspiration and leader Themistocles may once have been, the moment he stopped embodying those virtues he lost the support he once enjoyed.
You will have team members who go above and beyond because it’s in their nature to do so. The rest of your team will look for a bar that’s set by you, and if you’re inconsistent in communicating where that bar is at then your team will be confused, unmotivated, and unlikely to perform at the height you expect them to. And, if you do not maintain that bar, the performance of your team will fall with it.