What It Takes to Increase Versatility
Taking the view that performance problems in managers often represent a lack of versatility—with versatility defined as the ability to turn or pivot from one managerial capacity to a complementary one—sheds light on what is involved in helping managers develop. Performance problems or development needs frequently arise because one leadership approach is emphasized at the expense of the other. In the extreme case, managers become so enthralled with one approach that they completely lose sight of the other. In their behavior the problem shows up as difficulty turning in one direction or the other. In their minds they are so identified with one approach that they in effect turn their backs on the other. In my experience of the more extreme cases, managers cannot turn a certain way because they will not turn that way.
Thus, what stands in the way of further development is the same thing that restricted the range of movement in the first place. It is the inner aspect—the person’s beliefs and feelings about each side of the polarity. And the inner aspect is tied up in the tendency to polarize.
The irony of this polarizing is that if one side is preferred and used to the virtual exclusion of the other, then the very approach that is valued is put in jeopardy. If a manager, driven in general and consumed in this instance with a passion to maintain the company’s dominant position in an intensely competitive market, insists on having everyone always think big and move quickly, to the point where people are constantly overloaded and chronically overworked, then he or she jeopardizes what is prized—by putting people at risk of eventual burnout.
Learning to Emphasize the Underdeveloped Side
For managers to add to their behavioral repertoire they must contend with their underlying attitudes toward the skills they lack. To increase their versatility is a matter of learning new skills. But it is just as much a question of changing values. People are unlikely to develop skills that they do not value. A major obstacle to becoming more versatile—expanding one’s repertoire—is one’s beliefs. Thus, managers may actually be opposed in principle to a managerial practice. A highly principled executive who forced issues on principle, who “stood in front of freight trains,” took on the CEO in a top management meeting over the impression made on employees of remodeling the executive offices during a cut-back. This is taking the forcing function to an extreme.
A co-worker described the limits on this executive’s versatility in terms of a set of golf clubs:
He has no sand-trap skills, doesn’t like using the putter. He prefers the driver. If you have nine clubs in the bag, he has not perfected using the nine clubs and may actually look upon using all of them as a breach of his integrity.
In this executive’s mind, not being direct and forceful compromises his principles and is an example of being political in the bad sense of the term.
Thus, a behavior that is antithetical to what a leader believes in, something that goes against his or her principles, is not something the person is likely to adopt. Such leaders are a poor prospect for becoming proficient in a skill based on values different from their own. It is almost as if they take the attitude that “I won’t stoop to doing that.”
This is an example of the strong aversion that often comes into play when managers entertain the possibility of taking on a new behavior. Aversion is a good word because its root once again means “to turn,” in this case to turn away from something out of distaste or repugnance. They want nothing to do with it because it runs counter to their beliefs. An aversion can also contain an element of fear. A person can literally be afraid of becoming this other thing.
Aversion, because of strongly held beliefs and because of fear, is an integral part of the polarizing that takes place in lopsided managers. When executives who overdo forceful and underdo enabling think about becoming more enabling, what do they worry about? Becoming weak. It’s as if distinctly forceful managers look over to the enabling side, perhaps with a list like Table 2 in front of them, and see not the virtues but the excesses. They look right past the advantages to the excesses, and, not surprisingly, they recoil. Similarly, when executives who overdo enabling and underdo forceful contemplate a more forceful style, what are they afraid of? Becoming loud and aggressive. Bill Borden, for example, reacted emotionally at first to the data that indicated his extreme enabling tendencies. “I’ll be damned if I’ll become an SOB because I don’t like what it would do to my leadership or my life! I like being an enabling manager.” They glance over to the forceful side, disregard the functions or virtues of that approach, and fixate on the excesses. Both types of manager identify the other approach to leadership with its worst excesses and want no part of it. Their fear of taking on the ugly features of the other side prevents them from appreciating what is useful about that approach to leadership. The more extreme the specialization in either approach, the greater the tendency to polarize. The closer they sit to one pole, the more fiercely they identify with it and the more they savage the other approach.
The tendency to polarize is a visceral thing that may well have its roots in a formative experience that cast the individual in the mold we now find him or her. Bill Borden had an aversion to being “pushy” that he felt arose from being the second child behind a dominant older brother who was forever having run-ins with their father. Bill told us that he decided at a young age that he would have none of that; he elected to “lie low.” This “low profile,” as he called it, is accompanied to this day by a strong distaste for loud, aggressive people, a description that applies to some of his colleagues. Like Bill, leaders may be turned off by the prospect of becoming at all like their opposite numbers. The forces—fear and anger—that drove them to one side threaten to keep them there.
Learning to De-emphasize the Overdeveloped Side
To increase versatility requires more than acceptance of the underdeveloped side. It also depends on taking some emphasis off the approach to leadership that is presently favored. Some may worry that a reduced emphasis will sacrifice a manager’s strength. But that is exactly the point here: The strong attachment to the manager’s current way of operating can get in the way of development.
Thus to become more versatile, managers must not only increase the value they place on the neglected side, they must also decrease somewhat the value they have placed on the favored side. In fact, consistent with the nature of lopsidedness, the performance problem stems as much from an overemphasis and overinvestment as it does from an underemphasis and an underinvestment. This is another way to say that strengths can become weaknesses.
It is no easy matter to diminish the emotional attachment to the preferred approach to leadership, and that strong attachment can pose a huge obstacle to development. As one executive observed, “Some people can’t change. They fall in love with what they’ve emphasized. It becomes a religious thing.” Managers keep a tight grip on their favorite skill set out of an abiding faith that it will get the job done for them.
Another reason for the continuing heavy investment in the side that is already strong is, I believe, a fear of not being strong enough in that respect. It is so vitally important to the person to be strong in that way, it is such a high value, that he or she actually is afraid of not being strong enough. Given the absolute faith in one way of being, it’s as if the manager feels that he or she can never have enough of it. Put another way, it is an ideal state, a state of perfection, that by definition can never be attained, and therefore the individual is always worried about coming up short of the ideal. Bill Borden had obviously (to others) earned the trust of his people, yet he worried constantly about whether he was a good enough person. A peer put it to him this way:
You carry around a bucketful of “good-guy capital.” Good-guy capital spills out of that bucket, it’s so full. But your “bad-guy capital” bucket is empty.
In other words, stop worrying about whether you are enough of a good guy. You have built up so much goodwill that you can get tougher and take unpopular stands and your people would tolerate and even welcome it. This advice was helpful to Bill but was also hard for him to take in because he was so caught up in his belief and his anxiety.
Another, related, obstacle is the worry that executives who are lopsided have about the harmful effects of easing up on their intensity level. Their intensity is them. Even as it takes a toll, they count on it to make them effective and to ensure their success in the face of stiff challenges. There can be an element of superstition as well. It is as if they are saying to themselves: “This is how I know to be effective and if I give up any of this precious commodity, this fuel, I may no longer be the leader I want to be.” One executive got credit from his peers in the months following his development effort for “taking the edge off,” meaning that he dominated less and listened more and had greater empathy for other people. Yet the executive himself was worried that he had lost some of his intensity. “I’m used to going 110 mph and so I feel guilty for only going 80,” he said.
Another executive, in a discussion of how intense and driven he was, put it this way:
The things I’ve gotten positive feedback on over the years come from not being relaxed. I’ve gotten positive feedback from superiors: We feel we can count on you. I say, that’s wonderful. But it doesn’t cause you to relax. It requires you to be intense.
I reflected back to him, “You wear the mantle of responsibility as if it’s made out of lead.” He responded, “The one I’m given is made out of aluminum but I turn it into lead.” So, for executives who go to extremes to change, they must work through their possessive feelings about the drive and intensity that got them there.
In fact, based on my work with executives, I believe that moderating a strength does not diminish the strength. Just the opposite: Moderation enhances a strength. In moderation, what gets reduced is not the strength itself but the overdependence on it, which is a weakness. One executive suggested in a conversation with his peers that intensity in the raw form found in young executives is actually no longer effective once they reach senior levels.
At our level, raw intensity—basic energy and competitiveness of the kind you want to see in a recruit—is frightening in a senior executive. So a lot of the softening is necessary and appropriate.
Although by no means advocating any slackening in focus or sense of urgency, he spoke for a smoothing of the rough edge of intense drive.
The idea of moderating a strength tends to cause everyone who has a stake in the executive’s effectiveness to fear that the strength will be lost. The fear is especially strong if the executive has led an obviously successful organization, even if his or her methods trouble people greatly. The attitude is: “You can’t argue with success.” When talking with some co-workers of a successful, driven, problematic executive, I have often found that as soon as they voice a criticism, they take it back or question their right to make it.
Executives themselves, upon hearing extensive feedback that they go to extremes, worry that they will lose what has made them effective if they tinker with it. Glen Herroh said, “I don’t want to trade off my strengths to correct my weaknesses.” It seems as if the strength is operated by an on-off switch. Adjust it at all and it’s off entirely. If it is not on all the way, intense managers get anxious. In reality, as executives who do finally change come to realize, it is possible to adjust an overemphasized strength without losing that strength. Rheostat-like control is possible. The adjustment is known among middle-aged folks as “mellowing.” It is the anxiety overlaying the strength, not the strength itself, that diminishes. The capacity itself emerges unscathed. Glen Herroh, a sports fan, told the story of Sandy Koufax, the brilliant Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher in the 1960s, who had a 98-mph fastball but didn’t become a great pitcher until he developed a curve ball and a change-up to go with it.
When they diminish an overemphasized strength, managers gain effectiveness for two reasons. First, they stop overdoing the strength, taking it to destructive extremes. Sports Illustrated reported that Koufax came into his own when he followed his catcher’s advice “to stop trying to blow his fastball by the hitters, to try more curves and change-ups, and to throw his fastball less hard and more accurately” (Olsen, 1994). Walter Alston, the Dodgers coach, said that Koufax was less effective when he pitched with “all muscle and no finesse, trying to use 100 percent of his strength, when his experience has taught him that he is most effective when he uses about 90 percent of it in a steady, rhythmical pattern” (p. 44). One executive reported a similar lesson. “At the start of this [development] process I worried that the good part weakens. But, no, the bad part weakens, and the good part strengthens.”
Another advantage in de-emphasizing an overdeveloped strength is that managers are then able to make more selective use of that capacity. In no longer making that attribute an absolutely supreme value, they can begin to see the limits of its utility and can make more discriminating use of it. Glen Herroh concluded after getting feedback on being much too strong and intense, “I don’t have to give up my fastball. I just don’t have to throw it all the time.”
The Primary Development Task for Forceful Managers
Forceful managers place great faith in their own powers—their ideas, decisions, vision, convictions, focus, drive. When in doubt, they fall back on their own resources. As a result, they tend to have trouble listening, turning subordinates loose, resisting the temptation to take over when problems arise, and developing the capabilities of their subordinates. The force they exert can shut people down and turn them off. One way or another, overly forceful managers are at risk of losing the potential contributions of others. In relying so heavily on what they are able to do, they don’t enable others enough. In fact, they disable others.
Glen Herroh received advice along this line from his co-workers, mainly subordinates:
He needs to do it [listen] so people believe he’s listening and take into consideration what they are saying.
I’d like to see him get more input from below and value it.
If I had to identify one thing he should change, I guess it would be his ability to trust more people. And be open to more interaction with those people—to help him run the business, gather more input, make decisions, things like that.
He can take his greatness to another level if he would take other people’s ideas seriously.
He needs to have faith in others.
He doesn’t trust the organization. That’s a key word. I’m sure in many cases he doesn’t trust individuals. He doesn’t have to trust every individual, but I think he needs to be able to trust some individuals for specific situations and really solicit their opinion without interjecting. He’s got to change.
Trust—confidence and faith in others and their capacity to contribute—is what people wanted from Glen. They also wanted consideration, not in the sense of being nice to people but in the sense of his considering what they think. His agenda for development came down to trust. Could he place enough trust in his people’s skills and commitment to do two things: first, be receptive to their attempts to influence him and, second, turn over responsibility to them without yanking it back at the slightest suggestion of a problem. A superior summed it up this way:
As incredibly successful and talented as he is, he doesn’t seem to have the personal confidence to trust others. For whatever reason, he is not able to convince his people, with the style he uses today, that he trusts them.
Glen Herroh ultimately recognized that by relying so heavily on his own intellect and energy and determination to move the organization forward and by overpowering and even intimidating his people, he deprived himself of their full contributions. They knew what he thought, but he didn’t consistently know or take seriously what they thought. To the surprise of many people in the company, Glen was able in the next year to make an adjustment in his role and operating style. During that time he almost completely stopped being abrasive with subordinates. He learned to listen better and heard people out before saying his piece. Finally, he granted his subordinates more autonomy to do their jobs. Glen remained a star but made more room for other stars in the galaxy.
About a year after receiving his feedback, Glen reported the following:
I’ve been able to achieve a lot, and I’ve done it by being more focused on strategy and process versus what I personally need to do on Friday. Probably the most important change is I’m learning to let the hunters hunt. I still have a need to prove I’m the best hunter, the best fighter pilot, in the world. So it’s not easy. I’ve done a couple of bonehead things recently, but at least I recognized them. I think this process has given me the confidence to take that new role. I used to take pride in getting my in-box into my out-box better than anyone. But that’s not what is expected of me. Now I feel I’m a better manager because I’m learning to use others better.
The Sandy Koufax story helped Glen understand the shift required of him. One of his peers, upon hearing about Glen’s decision not to rely so much on his fastball, engaged him in a conversation that built on the baseball analogy.
Peer: The key to this—you’ve got to develop confidence in the other pitches. Also, let the catcher call the pitches.
Glen: You can always shake off the catcher if you don’t like the pitch he calls.
Peer: But how many times can you shake him off? More important, you don’t have to strike everyone out, as Koufax believed. Let the rest of the team help get people out. You know, if you strike out the side, it takes a minimum of nine pitches. But if you use your fielders, you could do it in three pitches.
Glen had been afraid that he would lose both effectiveness and intensity if he focused more on relationships.
I used to think I could overcome everything with performance. It was almost a perception of combativeness. I worried if I got softer, I couldn’t win. But it’s been exactly the opposite: by focusing on relationships I think I’m more effective. I don’t think I’ve given up anything on the drive side but I’ve gained ten times on the relationship side.
As we will see below in the discussion of development for enabling managers, a move in the desired direction depends on an increase in self-confidence. What really happens is that the manager stops worrying so much about whether he or she is good enough. As Glen said,
I’ve been striving always with the idea that I’ve got to do better than the next guy because I’ve got handicaps. That’s what drives me. I still have that nagging doubt. I guess I’m afraid to lose that handle. This process [especially the affirmation of his talents and track record] has helped me to understand I don’t have to be quite as driven that way. It’s given me the confidence that if I get into a situation that doesn’t go well, I’d still have value and I’ll still be okay. I’ve been able to accept it. It’s stayed with me. That’s taken off pressure, a lot of pressure.
The point here isn’t that Glen transformed himself; he didn’t. He took a step in the right direction, and the change was in the direction of making better use of other people.
The Primary Development Task for Enabling Managers
Being too much of a force amounts to calling upon one’s own talents and resources to the point where one disables other people. On the other hand, being too enabling of others amounts to disabling oneself to some degree. Enabling leaders place great faith in others and need to develop greater faith in themselves. The trick is to make use of both one’s own and others’ capabilities.
In the months following his feedback, Bill Borden, who was a bona fide high achiever with impressive credentials, began to move in the direction of greater forcefulness and self-confidence. He held back somewhat less and did more to make his presence felt. Subordinates used the following words to describe him: “sense of urgency,” “more demanding,” “greater accountability,” “more decisive,” “more aggressive,” and “more directive”—in other words, more forceful. Bill said,
People are commenting on my decisiveness. I’m asking them. The decisiveness is coming out in staff meetings, which used to lack a clear agenda and lack closure. Now the agenda is sent out ahead, and the meeting goes quickly and smoothly and we make decisions. It’s not perfect though. I still procrastinate on some things.
The net effect is a stronger sense of Bill as the leader.
In general, development for enabling managers is in the direction of a greater presence, intellectual force, force of will. One subordinate of Bill’s described the change as a “leap in recognition as the leader; people are getting more confidence in his determination and his vision.” Another saw “more self-confidence, more drive, less patience with the way things are.” Confidence was in fact an issue. On the Executive Roles Questionnaire he had been rated as not confident enough.
Bill had to overcome a reluctance to make demands on other people. He explained, “My expectations—to be perfect, to gather 100 percent of the information—have always been mainly of myself and not as much of others.” He had been working eighty hours a week, partly because he found it more comfortable to do some tasks himself than to ask other people to do them.
A theme running through the data on change in Bill was that he was learning to speak up more. He was doing more “communicating of his own views,” rather than facilitating other people in expressing their views. Bill reported,
In the last three to four months I’ve been more open with my feelings, expressing my feelings. I realize I have been reticent about speaking my mind—giving people the benefit of what I know, from years of experience. A lot of it has to do with the barriers that grew up in my mind.
With the increased willingness to speak out came a boost in self-confidence.
There is more of a confidence factor than several months ago. Sometimes in the past there was an unwillingness to say my piece, but I think I’ve done a good job of changing that. I don’t have the hesitancy—with subordinates, peers, superiors. I overcame a barrier in my mind: If I have something to say, say it. So I’ve overcome somewhat of an inhibition to say anything to anybody. I feel very good about that. I don’t think I’m kidding myself. I can feel it. It’s visible, tangible. It was an awakening so to speak. Something was missing and I’ve found the key. I probably have felt better than at any other time of my life. More at peace with myself. My wife has noticed it too.
If this testimony is hard to believe, consider that Bill Borden was a searingly self-honest person, to a fault. He had talked as vividly when he had struggled with these issues. And he recognized that he would have to continue to work on this set of issues for a long time.
He explained that for him to say something it had to be “perfect.” He was experimenting with being more direct about performance problems, and to his relief and surprise, he was finding that his fears about how people would react proved unwarranted. In fact, subordinates, including those he confronted, appreciated him more for his candor. His increased openness and directness was also showing up in his taking more stands and in being clearer about what he expected. Bill said,
It takes courage. There would have been some fear in the past of saying, “Here are my expectations.” Did I know 100 percent of the ramifications of what I was saying? It comes back to that perfection aspect that I’ve lived with all my life.
It could be said that Bill Borden’s development comes down to learning to contribute more himself. Out of a lack of confidence, out of a fear of failure, out of fear that his assertions wouldn’t be perfect, he had suppressed his own personal contribution. His boss had been telling him for some time that he wasn’t working up to his full potential. Bill noted,
I have been aware of not using all of my talent. I see that I have underestimated my contribution and what I can do. So there isn’t a reason to hold back.
Holding back is the operative term for overly enabling executives. Bill was in the process of learning to overcome that tendency.
Bill’s term for his reformed approach to leading was assertive enabling. Others saw evidence of the blend. A subordinate made the observation that “without compromising his values he’s a tougher leader. And being tougher doesn’t mean he is no longer a nice guy.”
Bill demonstrated his increased potency by personally leading a significant organizational change. It was his idea, one that he had had for some time. But now he swung into action. He presented it to his boss and to the board and received a full endorsement. “I’m discovering support out there I didn’t know I had,” he said. Enabling executives like Bill Borden learn to empower themselves. They discover their own power.
The total development task for managers with a strong leaning in either direction is to place greater emphasis on the neglected side and to take away some emphasis from the preferred side. Dealing with the entire two-sided system—simultaneously taking one side out of the shadows and taking the spotlight off of the other—allows the relative emphasis to shift. Gestalt theory defines development in terms of resolving polarities. The dominant polar quality ceases to thoroughly dominate the foreground and the other polar quality is no longer so obscured in the background. According to Erving Polster and Miriam Polster (1973, p. 62),
The task in resolving the polarity is to aid each part to live to its fullest…. This reduces the chance that the one part will stay mired in its own impotence…. Instead, it is energized into making a vital statement of its own needs and wishes, asserting itself as a force which must be considered in a new union of forces.
To put it another way, managers can become, on the basic forceful-enabling leadership polarity, less one-dimensional and more multidimensional. Another word for one-dimensional is rigid. In becoming less one-dimensional, managers gain flexibility. They have more choice in how they respond to situations. They are no longer locked into one predictable set of responses. They learn to make more discriminating use of their favored attributes and they gain greater access to attributes that have been out of favor.
There is no formula for changing, but managers who increase their versatility do tend to move through two phases. The first phase is a kind of conversion experience in which they see themselves in a new light. This is the reason for providing managers with extensive feedback. A conversion experience is the necessary precondition to internalized change, change that has a chance of being integrated into the person and of being sustained.
The second phase consists of putting the self-realization into practice through an interplay between two interrelated activities—trying out new behavior and managing one’s beliefs and feelings. Trying out new behavior is an attempt to produce behavior that the individual found difficult to exhibit in the past. This means not only doing more of what he or she had done too little of but also doing less of what had been overdone.
Managing one’s beliefs and feelings goes hand in hand with the effort to act differently. To change is to break old habits not just of acting but also of thinking and feeling. Managers must free themselves from inhibitions or compulsions. In the process of changing they will often say, “I catch myself.” They gradually become aware of the fork in the road where they can take the old direction or a new one. They learn to recognize the triggering emotion, usually fear in one form or another, including the physical cues such as a dry throat or a tense neck, that send them in the old direction (R. Henson, personal communication, June 1995). They become more objective about their fear. It is almost as if they can hold their fear in their hands like an object and thereby gain a measure of control over it. As part of becoming aware of the triggering feeling, managers may return to their past to identify the early lessons that still drive their behavior.