Right brain leadership
We're holding on to an old habit in business that is not compatible with our workforce and it's time we let it go. That habit is leading our employees from our left brain. At its extreme, left-brained leading looks like the disconnection of work from reality represented by the infamous TPS Report from the movie Office Space, but it shows up in numerous, more subtle ways in companies around the world. Managers are often so focused on statistics that they miss the connection between those statistics and the right brains of the teams they lead. Metrics can be our coal mine canaries or our biggest blindfolds and it all depends on whether we view them using our left brain or our right.
I describe the process of getting and using right brain metrics using a pyramid with each layer requiring the one below it to be successful. The following is just a brief exploration of each of these levels. It is my belief and experience that when these levels are executed properly, metrics are extremely useful for leadership and organizational transformation and show up as right-brained leadership to the workforce. Let's get started:
1. Create Safety
Numbers can lie. There. I said it. The emperor wears no clothes. We need to get this out of the way. That pretty set of bar graphs and pie charts that you've asked your chain of employees to spend weeks compiling might have so many fear-based political aspirations built into them that they may be representative of what everyone thinks you want to see rather than what is actually going on. This situation tends to happen more often in companies where employees don't feel safe to speak their minds. There is no faster way to turn your metrics into a useless heap than to collect them in an environment where there is no safety. If raising a concern in your environment is as politically treacherous as a mountain climbing expedition, your first order of business is to improve that. If you don’t, your metrics will be nothing but a dog and pony show.
How do you know if people feel safe? Ask yourself how often you're surprised by bad news at the last minute. Does a project seem to be chugging along on schedule and under budget and then seem to blow up at the end? I'd bet a large sum that many people involved saw that coming for quite some time but were afraid to tell you. Leading from the left would mean you chastised them for slipping the project (reinforcing their fear of telling you). Leading from the right is channeling that frustration into curiosity about why you didn't know sooner and being willing to take responsibility for your role in people’s reluctance to tell you. One method I coach for projects is to regularly ask your key project personnel to give you a "fist of five" where each person rates their confidence that the project will finish on time (or be successful, etc.) by holding up 0-5 fingers - zero is no confidence, five is absolutely confident. There are four important rules:
Everyone puts their rating up at the same time. Count it down like “3-2-1-GO”. This prevents some people from influencing others. This is especially true if the people close to the project are sitting in front of you with their bosses present.
Don't give employees lots of time to ponder this before asking for their rating. The goal of this exercise is not to see who's right and who's wrong. It's to get a gut feeling from the team and prompt a safe discussion about the issues.
One finger is okay, as long as it's the pointer finger.
The most important rule: Publicly praise anyone willing to give you less than five fingers. This will be one of your key chances to reinforce safety and trust. Let's be honest about it, whether the employee lies about a troubled project and puts up five fingers or tells you what's really going on, the project is still going to have the problems, right? Why not foster an environment where you can be a servant leader to help the team keep the train on the tracks instead of finding out after the rail cars are on their sides and dealing with the aftermath?
2. Ask the Right Questions
Assuming you have a safe environment, your next priority is to ask good questions. Too many organizations that want to collect metrics spend too little time thinking about the questions. Asking the wrong questions will almost always get you useless answers - and could be worse than not asking at all.
Over the years, I’ve purchased a variety of cars both foreign and domestic, and 3-4 weeks after the purchase, the manufacturer would send out a survey. Toyota and Honda sent me a 2-3 page questionnaire with 80% of the questions having to do with my satisfaction with the car (the number and placement of cup holders, ease of climate control, etc.) and 20% of the questions about the brand and the sales experience. General Motors sent out a 6 page, double-sided survey with 80% of the questions having to do with the sales experience at the dealership. From an auto manufacturer's perspective, does that make sense? If I love the car but hate the dealership, I'll just go buy it someplace else. But if I hate the car, does it matter how I feel about that particular dealership?
This illustrates another concern with questions: They convey a message of their own. Honda and Toyota conveyed the message to me that they’re interested in making better cars while GM seemed interested in the selling more of the ones they had. GM also seemed to have little or no respect for my time.
Good questions are half art, half science. As a revealer question, I like “Would you recommend Acme Widgets to your friends as a great place to work?” While that type of question won’t give you specifics, it will definitely open your eyes to dig deeper and digging deeper is the next step on the pyramid.
3. Be Curious about the Answers
Once you’ve asked the right questions, you now need to become extremely curious. By doing so, you’ll automatically become more of a right-brained leader. When a large portion of your employees respond “No” to the question, “Would you recommend Acme Widgets to your friends as a place to work?” that should be a huge red flag. More revealing than turnover rates, which speak to departures more than difficulty with getting worthy new arrivals. If the answers you receive to that question are disturbing, it may be time for an all hands meeting. This is another opportunity for you to reinforce safety. Every person who tells you their hard truths is giving you a gift. Receive it that way. Thank every person who gives you feedback and publicly appoint a person to take notes for you so that you can stay totally engaged with the people who are speaking with you while still conveying that every piece of information given will be captured and considered. That leads us to the next level of the pyramid…
4. Be Courageous and Responsible
When you have the facts in front of you, the most important thing for you to do is take action. This may sound obvious but here's one of my laws of right brain leadership: Not asking at all is better than asking and ignoring the answer.Taking action could be as trivial as improving the snacks provided in the break room and as major as terminating a sour grape on a team or even reorganizing the company. Whatever the answers reveal, whatever the consequences, leaders take action. As a servant leader, you are response-able (able to respond). This is often as close to the poetic “moment of truth” as many leaders get with their employees. You made it safe to tell you, they told you, you heard them, now do something.
5. Persevere
The top of the pyramid is a reminder to return to the bottom and keep trying when the actions you take aren't working. Not everything you do will be successful. Sometimes you may misfire when responding. Guess what? You’re human too. What’s important is that you don’t double down on bad choices. Many leaders I’ve coached and worked with over the years were more concerned with being right than having a happy workforce. This shows up with defensiveness, dismissal of people and ideas, and pruning organizations into a workforce that agrees with you.
The Bottom Line
Just like the bottom line on a financial report indicates a result but not the story, metrics about productivity reveal the result of a long story involving teamwork, synergy, morale, work/life balance, happiness, a feeling of purpose, safety, and many other factors. Being curious about those things goes a long way in sending the message that you want to build a better car, not just sell more of the ones you have.
