CHAPTER 2

Serving Up Is Not Sucking Up

As he launched into the most important part of his presentation, the regional vice president's microphone started having problems. This was an important presentation from one of the most senior people at my company. There were only three regions, and each had only one VP who answered directly to the C-suite. In the audience was that entire C-suite, as well as the two other regional VPs and every member of their executive teams. And this guy sounded like a wireless call cutting in and out. None of us could understand him.

Thank you . . . the most important . . . if you consider last year's . . . for growth . . .

As a regional director, my boss was one of the other regional VPs, and all I could think at first was thank the lord it wasn't him presenting. But before that thought turned into any action on my part to help, the regional director who served the VP on stage jumped up out of his seat, ran to the AV team, and grabbed a new mic so his boss could continue his speech. The whole exchange took only minutes.

While all this was happening, the person next to me nudged my arm and whispered, “Look at that suck-up. His daddy's mic is not working, so he kisses his ass so fast that he gets him a new mic before the AV team does.” I didn't respond, but as the mic was being wired up he continued: “Man, if my VP's mic does not work, he can get his own new mic. He's a grown man. I'm not here to wipe his nose.”

No, he wasn't. Neither was I. Neither was the regional director whose VP was quickly back on the horse and riding through his presentation. Only one of us, however, saw what the regional director did as sucking up, not serving up. And that wasn't me.

Jealous Much?

Listen, I get it. Perception is reality and there is a fine line between sucking up and serving up. But even if the action is the same, sucking up and serving up could not be more different.

Sucking up, or ass-kissing, is a selfish act of manipulation meant to take advantage or mislead someone. Sucking up is wiping someone's nose—a gesture to make oneself feel needed and recognized by somebody and/or as a means to get something else. Whatever the act, it's never about kindness. There's always a hidden agenda.

Serving up is a selfless act of support for your boss and the vision and direction of the organization, no questions asked. It's about respect, not recognition or feeling wanted, and never about manipulation and hidden agendas.

If you are in a situation where someone calls you a suck-up, ask yourself: Are you genuine or insincere? Are you being gracious and respectful to those you answer to, not from a position of weakness, but from a position of power in serving them to better lead your team and serve the company as a whole? If so, then the people who serve you will have the same respect for you, your bosses, and your company. They will never see you as a suck-up. Suck-ups never serve anyone genuinely and never hesitate to sacrifice those not in a position of power to improve their stature. This makes them not only less likable and less desirable employees but also untrustworthy. If you are serving up, doing what it takes to work hard and respectfully to make you, your boss, your team, or anyone important to your professional and personal life look good, be better, solve problems, and grow, then keep doing it. You will find recognition and reward without asking for it.

Now, does that mean that when you serve up you can't try to align the organization's goals with your own or ask questions about how to do what the company needs you to do? Of course not. It only means that serving up starts from a place of positive intent and not blaming anyone or anything for your problems. Those who call you a suck-up for that are almost always jealous of you and how your career flourishes as you lead with humility and a great desire to achieve. The irony is they would act in the same way if given a second chance! But they would not reap the same rewards even if they did because their motives would be insincere and viewed suspiciously.

In my fifteen years in corporate America, I got promoted for results, not being a yes-man. While I kept moving up in the organization, building bigger and better teams that delivered results and made my bosses look good, those leaders and team members who called me a suck-up left the company, struggled to keep steady jobs, and were often miserable. And boy do those people know how to hold a grudge; some of those people would still call me a suck-up today! Fifteen years after I left a job people have told me that so-and-so who got passed over for my promotion heard my name and said the same things about me that I heard back then: “The only reason he got the job is because he sucked up to the bosses.”

These people don't get what it means as a leader in the middle to serve up. Those who learn to serve up understand their value but have the ability to live humbly. The others who reject its premise are like that guy next to me at the corporate meeting. Let's call him Mr. Bitterman.

I knew Bitterman's story. He felt for years that he was overlooked for promotions. That he was better and smarter than everyone else. He wasn't, of course, but Bitterman did have all the skills and knowledge needed to accomplish great things. He simply lacked the desire and humility to serve up to success. As he was unwilling to do that, anyone who did was automatically a suck-up, like the director who scrambled to get his boss a new mic.

For the two years following that meeting, Bitterman changed bosses several times. Each boss liked what they saw on paper but found him difficult to work with in the end. He complained about others and insisted he deserved more right up to the day he was fired.

As for the regional director who grabbed the new mic? He continued to excel in our company until he took the opportunity to start his own company—with the blessing and help of his VP! He has found success at the top and is now making ten times what he made as a leader in the middle. All because that regional manager understood one basic fact: You get paid to serve and help those you call boss.

A Suck-Up Sucks Down Too

We've all been in this position: Your boss gives you a direction or delivers a message about a change that you do not agree with and that will seemingly affect you negatively. You think your boss is ill informed, does not really understand the business, and just might be crazy. This leads to feelings of confusion, anger, fear, distrust, and unhappiness. Or all of the above.

Those are all honest reactions. What happens next depends on your mindset. Those with the wrong mindset usually fall into three categories:

1. “Defend Up, Protect Down” leaders have the mindset to reaffirm their need to be correct and complain constantly to the people they serve (like my clients Steve or Susan). They fear taking action and suffer from analysis paralysis. When they do act (if they do), it is often tentative and lacks commitment, which translates to similar actions from the team. Thus, every action a leader with this mindset takes has the potential to undermine their company's and leaders' direction.
2. “Demand Down Suck-Ups” are a worse version of the “Defend Up, Protect Down” leaders. They try to be good soldiers, saying things like, “Whether we agree or not does not matter. It is what it is, and we are going to line up.” They then tell their boss how awesome everyone thinks the plan is and believes in it 100 percent. Although that might sound like demanding down and buy-in in a military fake-it-until-you-make-it kind of way, these leaders still undermine their bosses and the company direction, because they actually lack belief in the company's decision. They're just doing what they're told. This is not a lower-level leader in the middle issue. As one senior manager told me, “I am the senior VP by title, but really I am just a glorified frontline manager, because I just do what I am told.”
3. “Defend Up Suck-Ups” have the worst mindset of all: They tell their employees that they don't agree with the decisions at the top and that they're wrong. They blame upper management or the company in general for these supposedly bad decisions and side with the employees, painting all of them—including the leader him- or herself—as victims.

Don't play the victim. Serve up. And remember: Serving up does not mean leading with no questions asked. When you do things or follow directions you don't agree with or understand and never ask questions to understand, you do what every company fears most: check the box. You are sucking up to the direction, no questions asked. You are being a “yes man” or “yes woman” instead of a “how person” who faces those feelings of confusion, anger, fear, distrust, and unhappiness, resists questioning the direction, and then asks good questions about how the company sees things being implemented. This not only shifts your mindset but also your perspective.

Change Your Perspective and Challenge Your Assumptions

It's natural to see things from our own perspectives. In business, perspective gets in our way the same way it does in life. When we consider how change and new directions and decisions will affect us and the people we're accountable for, we react in two different ways: When we think the decisions will have positive consequences, we embrace them. When we think they will have negative consequences, we instinctively retreat to the status quo or do only what feels comfortable to mitigate the negative feelings and “pain” of change.

Consider that from the experience of one of my leader in the middle clients, John. John is a sales engineer for a high-tech company that manufactures technology and equipment for drilling companies. He called me one day to say he was frustrated with his boss and the company. His boss just informed him that they were realigning the team and shifting responsibilities. He felt his boss was making a huge mistake and that she did not truly understand the negative impact this would have on him and his team. Her decision was wrong and no one there truly understood how the business runs from the frontlines. They should have consulted him first.

John concluded by telling me he might have to leave his job. “What do you think, Nathan?”

I think you have worked there for five years, and prior to this decision, you thought your boss was awesome and super smart and the company was better than the competition.

“What does that mean?”

Take a step back and look at this from a better and bigger perspective. If prior to this decision your boss was smart and your company was awesome, then that has not changed. So this latest decision is one made by an awesome company and a smart boss, and maybe you don't see that because this time the decision appears to affect you. The key word is “appears.” But all the decisions they have made affected you. They just didn't appear that way. You are basing your decision about the future on how it appears in the present.

John paused for a moment and agreed that he might not be looking at the big picture and how this decision benefits the company and the team as a whole. So he did exactly what we discussed: He gave his boss and the company the benefit of the doubt. He spoke to his boss about the issue to get a better understanding of the decision, not to prove him wrong. He then asked his boss how she would recommend he move forward and learned what he and his team needed to do differently to make them successful.

After a few months, John saw the benefit of the decision. Although he was right that it made his job a little harder at first, he was wrong overall. After those initial inconveniences, he recognized it was the right decision and the team achieved greater success. John is still at that company today and would now tell you the decision was the right one. Things were better in the long run than his perspective at the time allowed him to see.

The questions are: What happens next time when a decision appears to have negative consequences for John and his team? Will he keep his current perspective? Will he protect himself from the pain and flare his ego, or serve up? Most decisions or directions upset leaders in the middle like John not because they feel the actual decision is bad but because no one asked their opinions: If they cared, they'd ask me! They don't respect me or my team. In turn, these leaders fail to assume positive intent on the part of leadership, deny that those leaders above them may know more than their own perspectives allow or warrant, and thus refuse to serve up.

As you will see in Part 3 of this book, when it comes to serving up, we must assume that our boss and those who lead us have more information and more visibility to make the best decisions for the company and us. In many cases, we may never know why the decision is made until much later, if at all, even at companies that are very transparent. Although we would all like to be consulted on these changes—or feel like we are important enough to the organization to be asked our opinions—the truth is, most of us are not. We can't let that perspective lead us to believe that our bosses and company do not have a full understanding of the consequences of the decision.

I'm not saying that a leader in the middle can't ask for understanding and still serve up, but you must make that your real intent: seeking to understand and not to judge or criticize. Sure, you have a right to an opinion and many bosses like being challenged—wait, no, they don't. Not unless they ask for feedback and invite you into the process. Yes, all bosses should treat their people with respect and not judge or assume they will resist the changes. But unless those decisions violate your principles or the law or would cause something or someone pain, you need to buy in by serving up.

Your Belief Determines the Action

As a leader in the middle, I didn't always understand the reasons behind some of my company's changes, but I committed myself and my team to go full speed in whatever direction we were told. If it was the wrong direction, we would turn and go full speed in a different direction without fear. The cool thing about this mindset is that it is all about belief, and belief does not require proof. Things that can be proven don't require belief and faith. Big decisions and changes in direction in business by necessity require those things because they are all about speculation.

So when I hear a leader in the middle say, “I would believe it if I knew it was the right decision,” it makes no sense to me. Everything is about believing without proof or even reasons why. Remember: Your power as a leader in the middle is not determined by whether or not you made the decision but by your belief and commitment to serve your leaders by leading your team to success without ever understanding the “why.” Your power and value are based on your mindset, discipline, perspective, and execution, not by who made the decision.

Leaders in the middle must share the company's expectations with their employees and hold them accountable to the belief. If everyone is accountable to the belief, then leaders won't have to worry about holding their people accountable to the activity.

Do you find that a tough pill to swallow? Remember: Leaders in organizations have different levels of visibility to decisions and for one reason or another can't share all the information with their employees. Sometimes the decision being made is based on anticipated changes in the market-place or industry that the organization wants to get ahead of, but the needs are not as clear today as they will be in the future. I agree that businesses and leaders should always be as forthcoming and transparent as possible, but unless it is something illegal, immoral, or against your values, your paycheck does not come with a requirement for anyone to prove to you why the decisions the company and its leaders make are right. This belief is not based on weakness, rather it is based on the conviction of serving up.

Can't follow that rule as an employee or leader? Don't feel your boss or company has the right intentions or right plan? Quit or transfer to a leader you can believe in. Do the same for the people you lead or let them go. Don't let those unwilling to serve change the mission—even if they suck up to you.