#1216 Leadership 101

Today is about two words that great leaders internalize.  Discernment and tact.

I’ve seen this missed too many times.

Leaders, especially those who have been in an unchallenged position for a long time, sometimes forget these two words and build legions of sycophants or cloaked dissidents undermining them around the water cooler.

I have a good amount of experience with people who believe that unvarnished truth means that they can speak without tact or discernment.

This affects leaders more than others because while their lack of discernment and tact land as poorly as anyone else’s they are less likely to be challenged.

My good friend Jim Coler, from whom I have learned so many good business practices and lessons, taught me the phrase, “take their temperature.”  Jim understood that leaders often leave a meeting believing their message has landed when in fact it hasn’t, but the subordinate simply didn’t feel safe enough to push back.

Jim advocated asking for feedback at the conclusion of a meeting and outwardly inviting a different opinion. When we worked together, we went even further with this.  Sometimes inviting a dissenting opinion still won’t elicit true feelings from a subordinate so we would take temperatures for each other.  If Jim had to have a particularly thorny meeting with one of his people, I would take the temperature for him and vice versa. 

The point is that leaders are often insulated, (The Emperor’s New Clothes.)

Too often leaders who don’t use tact and discernment unknowingly house cynics who erode morale. The messed-up part is they don’t always fail.  Some have long and prosperous careers barking orders and replacing quitters with new drones who march to the leaders beat while humming their own tunes in their heads, until the beats are too mismatched to handle and they leave and the cycle continues. 

These leaders can carry on like this for years. I wouldn’t.  I didn’t and neither should you.

Own Your Sales Gene…