Transcript
Hey, welcome to the podcast. My name is Thomas Harris.
Now I’m a fan of Patrick Lencioni books, and I like the way he writes them because he starts off with a story and then he gives principles in the story and then he ends the book with a short discussion about all the principles that he talked about throughout the story. And one of the books is called The Five Temptations of a CEO.
The temptations apply to any leader
I know the title, it ends with CEO, and so sometimes it’s easy to think these are just for CEOs, but really these temptations can affect anybody. So, I thought it would be helpful for us to go through these temptations and see how it can affect you and me in whatever position we are in as a leader.
And this is important because again, these temptations can affect any of us. And if we fall into these temptations, if you fall into this temptation or any of these, it can mean the difference between success and failure for you as a leader.
When you listen to these temptations, the way they’re worded, your first response might be, “No, that’s not me.” But I encourage you to listen a little bit closer because it might affect you more than you think.
Temptation 1: Status (or image) over results
So, today, in this episode, we’re going to talk about the first temptation. And it’s the desire to protect your status or the status of your career or your status as a leader over results, choosing status over results.
In other words, it’s about you and your image and not the organization, the team or the mission. And when I say mission, I’m talking about, often an organization has its purpose that it’s doing, the mission of the organization, but also it could be certain goals or things it’s chasing after that time. Anyway, so you’re putting yourself over that. You’re putting your agenda over the team, the organization, and so on.
And this makes me think of another of Patrick Lanzioni’s book called The Motive, where he talks about the two main motives why people often become leaders. And they’re really kind of simple. There’s the selfish motive and the service motive.
The service motive
Now, a service one is where you’re about serving the team. It’s about serving the organization. It’s about serving the mission. It’s doing the hard work that you need to do in order to make the team and the organization successful.
It’s putting that over your own personal agendas and you’re focused on making it succeed.
Jim Collins in Good to Great discusses this kind of leader or at least this is one of its main traits or the leader’s main traits. When he was going through his studies they were looking at, first they didn’t look at a leader, they didn’t want to use the leader as part of the formula or whatever they were trying to find of what made a great organization.
But he found that a leader had to be, that first and foremost was the leader. And then with that, he found that the best ones, really they had two main traits that he found, that he discussed. And one was humility and then drive.
And when he was talking about humility, he talked about how they were more about the success of the company over themselves. That in fact, they were okay with the organization or with people down the road when they’re in the organization to not know that they were part or the cause of the success of the organization. They were focused on the organization over their own success and image.
The mirror and the window
And he gives the example of the mirror and the window. And he put it this way, he said the great leaders, when things went well, they looked out the mirror and they cast the cause of the success to other people, or to circumstances, to luck, whatever. But when negative things happened, when there were problems, they looked in the mirror and looked at themselves and looked at them as the cause so they could work to fix it.
But he said on the flip side, the people they compare them to, the ones who weren’t as successful, they did the opposite. They looked out the window, went to cast blame when things went wrong, but when things went well, they looked in that mirror.
Totally different mentality.
Leaders can be about their career
So for any leader, this can be the same because a leader can be about the career. You could be about your career. It’s about going the next step in your career. And unfortunately, sometimes that’s the only way up in a company is through management.
And so that kind of makes the problem worse because people become bosses who really don’t want to be, but they’re put in that position because that’s the only way to move up in the career. And so then you have people who really don’t want to do that job.
So they may do it because of the career, people may do it because of the perks, such as the parking spot, the status, the extra money, the respect they get, all of that stuff. So that’s part of the first temptation is that your whole motive for being in the leadership position is about you, because it’s about what you can get out of it.
So it’s putting again, status of a result. You’re about you over the results of the organization, of the results of your team. It’s about you. So that’s the first thing.
The false “image” of a leader
The second part is just the image that sometimes people think of when they think of a leader or the thing that they’re supposed to have as a leader in those positions. And this can of course, mix with the first.
And this happens in different ways. Sometimes people think that because they’re in a position some think they’re better, some think they know better, they get an ego, and so because they have that ego, or that image, they think they are supposed to live that image, they have to protect that image, they have to protect their ego, they have to protect their status.
Sometimes people think that leaders are just supposed to have this invulnerable image, that they’re supposed to never make mistakes, that they’re supposed to be seen as strong, and all this stuff.
And so then they focus on defending that image that they don’t focus on results.
Insecurity and imposter syndrome
Sometimes it’s insecurity. You get moved into a position and you’re unsure of yourself. Maybe you have a degree of imposter syndrome and you wonder why you’re put there in the first place and you may fear being found out that, man, they’re gonna know that I really shouldn’t be a leader. Or maybe whoever put me in this will realize they made an oopsie and putting me into this position.
Because of that, it can be easy to want to put up a front, an image. You don’t want to show weakness. You don’t want to reveal mistakes because then it shows people that they made a mistake on you. And so the focus then becomes protecting your image and the way you look as a leader instead of results.
What happens when you fall into this temptation?
What happens when you do this?
What happens when you start focusing on your image versus results? Well, one, you may start trying to do things that you’re good at and focus on those and ignore the things you want. So if you’re good at coaching, you may focus on coaching and push aside the things that you aren’t good at so that you can keep doing the things that you like and are good at.
Or maybe if it’s even specific functions like marketing. You were good at marketing, so you try to focus on doing things related to that area. You may try to hide your mistakes and weaknesses and look invulnerable and try to show yourself as perfect. You know, the image of perfection. You may get defensive and won’t admit failures. You may spin things and try to make things look good even when they aren’t.
You may keep going forward on the decision. Maybe you made a decision on something, it’s not turning out as well as you thought, but you don’t want to admit it, so you keep pressing down on that decision even if it’s wrong.
You may avoid the things that make you uncomfortable.
You may not make great decisions because you don’t listen well to others, because if you listen well and ask for feedback and advice, that would show you as not knowing something.
In the same vein, you may avoid feedback because you don’t want anything that hurts the image you are trying to protect, and you don’t want to hear it. You may get defensive if anybody brings up anything.
You may gloss over issues and downplay poor results.
You may start focusing on the short term, what makes you look good now, what gets results now so that you can look good, versus doing stuff for the long term.
You may surround yourself with yes people, because you want people who agree with you and make you feel good and look good.
You may hire B people, people who aren’t as good as you or who aren’t the best people for a position because you don’t want people to outdo you. Or you may fear or get jealous of those who do well because you fear making you look bad and you may even work against them.
You may focus on the metrics that show you as doing good versus that really shows the health of the team or company.
And those are some of the effects that this mentality can have.
So question for you is, have you seen any of these traits in other people or even in yourself? Anytime you put your status, your image over the company, your team, your organization, you are going to do harm.
Non-profit example
This reminds me of a story a friend of mine told who works or worked as a nonprofit.
His job was to meet different people, go in the community, and raise money or other donations from people to help the organization, because they did a lot to help people. And so the thing is, he did really good in his job. So good that he outdid his boss.
And when he outdid his boss, she wasn’t happy that he did well. She got afraid. She got upset because she was afraid that he was gonna make her look bad. So what the organization ended up doing is that they moved him under a different boss.
The thing is, that’s going to hurt that whole organization because she’s so fearful and jealous, are afraid of the results he’s getting and being outdone.
And the thing is, as a leader, when your team does well, that actually makes you look good.
The leader “image” front
When we put status over image, when we put how our motivation, if our motivation is wrong and we’re about us instead of the team, it can have a lot of those effects we just talked about, about focusing on the wrong things, hiding things. And when we do those things, then it hurts us in so many ways.
We may feel like we’re putting up a front. And you may have seen this in other leaders, or people who are in leadership positions, that they don’t, they try to put up a front and the fake of being, you know, a leader that kind of, I don’t know how to describe it, you know, the head up and yeah, I’m a leader.
And they don’t want to admit mistakes, they don’t want to admit when things are wrong, and they just look so fake. And the thing is, that’s what you look like when you hide your mistakes, when you try to pretend that you’re invulnerable, when you try to put that ego, whatever it is, it makes you look weak as a leader.
Not only are you hurting results, you’re hurting yourself as a leader because people won’t really see you as a leader. You hurt your influence with people because people see through it. In many cases, long term, that can hurt your career because you’re being fake. You’re not getting real results because of it.
What to do if you find yourself falling for this temptation
What do you do if you find yourself falling into this temptation? Well, one of the things that Lencioni also talks about in his book is that with the five temptations, we may all be tempted by different temptations. We may all, whether the first one, the third one, some may tempt us more than others.
So if you see yourself being tempted by this, if this is something you struggle with, don’t regret, don’t worry about it. What we want to focus on is fixing it.
Self-reflect
So first, I want to encourage you, whether you feel like you’ve fallen into this temptation, self-reflect and see what your motive is. Because if you don’t have the right motive, you’re going to hurt forever in your leadership.
So make sure you have the right motive. And if not, then work to change it. And if you’re not willing to change it, then I encourage you to find a different job because we need good leaders. And if you’re going to keep hurting your team organization, then find a job where you can do that without hurting others so much.
Use imposter syndrome to learn
When it comes to insecurity and imposter syndrome, I wish I could give you a simple solution, a simple cure. But I will say this, it’s really better to have imposter syndrome to a degree than ego. Because when you have ego, you think you’ve got it figured out. You’re not trying to learn and get better. But if you can use your imposter syndrome, and I’ve read about this, Adam Grant talked about this, I think Jocko Willink did.
You’re like, oh, I don’t feel like I know enough. Use that to learn. Use that to grow. Use that to become better. And if you do that, then you will become a better leader.
So don’t think it’s always a negative that you feel like maybe I’m not a fit for this role. Use that to become a fit. Use that to grow yourself.
Talk with others
And I encourage you to talk to other people. If the culture is good in your organization, talk to your boss. Talk to some leaders you respect, whatever it may be, talk with people about how you’re feeling in this situation and to learn and get encouragement through it.
Embrace vulnerability
And realize that vulnerability is good. It’s not about status, it’s not about looking good, this whole temptation, but it’s about results. And people generally see your mistakes anyway and when you fake and lie, that just hurts you, of course, your influence.
So let your focus be on growing. Get feedback from people because it helps you grow. Have the growth mentality about learning. If you don’t know something, ask. Be about what it takes to help your team to grow as a person so that you can get results.
Keep growing
And I encourage you to keep growing as a leader. In fact, I have some no cost training coming up on my website that you can sign up for and my leadership plus newsletter that you can join as well. I encourage you to do that.
So in summary for all of this, and then we’ve probably summarized it 50 times, but make sure you have the right motive. Make sure you’re about results, not about yourself and your image and status. And if you need help with that, feel free to email me, thomas@theexceptionalskills.com.
I hope this podcast helps you. I hope that you keep growing as a leader and that you are able to work through this temptation if it’s something you struggle with.
And if not, stay tuned to the next temptations because it might be something that can help you grow. I’ll see you next time.