Name: Ace
Age: 30
Role: line leader
‘Soft’ skills
Entering the office with her morning decaf cappuccino with oat milk, Ace decides not to attend the team’s people management training. She is too busy and always prioritises client work over ‘soft’ people topics.
Costs
It screams trouble when leaders lack people management skills. This skill deficit will have consequences because Ace will either shy away from situations or deal with them like the novice she has chosen to be.
Delegation, feedback, motivating, sensitive conversations, and nipping issues in the bud are essential, technical and delicate skills, trivialised most by those who lack them.
At best, individual and team performance around Ace will be sub-optimal, and others will be expected to fill the gap. Much more likely, potential will be squandered, and there will be a range of human and organisational costs.
As performance expectations rise and managing new joiners’ needs becomes more complex, cracks will appear, and her shortcomings will cause major problems.
Bad manners
In the corridor, Ace passes associate Adam. He smiles at her – she ignores him. Adam recently spent two months working with Ace, but he is not one of her core team, and her mind is elsewhere. At a deeper level, there is something about Adam that plays on Ace’s envy and insecurities; as a result, she does nothing to encourage him and is prone to having a dig. Adam feels the snub and tells his friends he will do all he can to avoid working with her again.
Costs
Slights convey that someone does not count; neglect is a good example. Digs and discrimination are close relations. The bored and ignored are more likely to disengage from the organisation than any other group.
Expect Adam’s productivity and commitment to drop – he is spending time that could be productive chewing over Ace’s behaviour instead. There is also the impact on the team – stories like this are blots on its reputation. Fuelled by her animosity towards Adam, the in-out dynamic Ace has created is the bedrock of all kinds of strife.
Manners matter. They signify respect and inclusion. I once asked a rising star why she was leaving. “To go somewhere where they say hello to you in the corridor.” What a waste.
Caring only about profit
Ace sits down and reads two emails. The first is an all-leader email from Wolf in the senior management team: ‘External conditions remain challenging. We must focus relentlessly on achieving our financial targets. I will attend individual review meetings to support those who need it as necessary.’ The second email is Wolf’s request for leaders to get involved in championing a diversity initiative. There was a time when Ace used to get involved in such things, but she has been told by her manager to focus on delivery and not to get “diverted by non-core activity.” Now she thinks, “All that matters these days are the numbers”, and presses delete.
Costs
People are guided by what leadership values day-to-day. Suppose a leader’s sole preoccupation is individual financial performance. In that case, many people will prioritise that to the exclusion of everything else to get ahead, whatever the implications for the organisation’s present or future.
Over time, everything non-financial becomes held together by the goodwill of a handful of people. The pressure to achieve a narrow financial measure over everything else also increases the likelihood of personal misconduct and unethical business decisions.
Poor delegation
An important client messages Ace, requiring some work to be done by a short deadline. She messages junior staff member Bea to tell her to contact the client urgently and be available for a call any time over the weekend. Unlike others, Bea’s hours exceed full capacity because she is excellent and, therefore, the preferred choice of several stakeholders. Bea cancels personal plans to work over the weekend, checks her phone constantly, and sleeps badly.
At one point, she panics about what to do – she wants to call Ace but is afraid to do so because of her intimidating reputation. In a panic, Bea makes a mistake – she meets the client’s deadline but the mistake could cause a major issue in future. Bea worries about what she did the following week but is afraid to say anything. Ace does not check in with her or give the matter another thought.
Costs
Systemic problems often squish people. Here, the work allocation process punishes Bea for her high performance, with risks to her health, to the client, and to the organisation.
Without adequate controls, leaders are free to dump on people and disappear with impunity—Bea’s understandable fear of getting on the wrong side someone fearsome compounds the problem.
In some sectors, Bea could be in regulatory trouble. If investigated, Ace and the organisation will be hoping no one will ask questions about why a junior was overloaded, unsupervised, exhausted, and afraid to ask for help.
Say-do gaps
Associate Cam asks Ace for her opinion on something that is troubling him. Cam is working for a client that produces a controversial product. A complaint has been received from a member of the public saying that the product has made them seriously ill, and their situation is desperate. The client has asked for Cam’s opinion on how to respond. Cam wants to take a transparent approach – to engage with the problem openly, find out the facts and address any issues. Ace smiles at what she sees as Cam’s naivety. She instructs him to advise the client to play for time, not to engage with the complainant seriously and, if necessary, threaten them. Cam feels uncomfortable and asks how such an approach aligns with the organisation’s value of ‘acting with kindness’ and worthy statements about environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Ace snaps that it is business and Cam needs to be more “commercial”.
Costs
Covering up bullying, harassment, and discrimination. Facilitating tax evasion. Rewarding poor performance. Biased investigations. Aiding wrongdoers. Abusing victims and keeping things from the authorities. There are countless examples of leaders and their advisors facilitating questionable behaviour.
Most organisations and leaders love to talk about their values and ESG commitments. Virtue signalling plays well on the conference platform, social media, and when hiring. Still, the decisions made secretly about money, reputation, and people are the acid test.
Even if time does not judge Ace, Cam will, and all the people he will inevitably tell. Dodgy past decisions have a habit of coming back to haunt those who made them. In an increasingly transparent world, leaders would do well remember that what is said behind closed doors may not stay there.
Weak feedback skills
It is the deadline day for contributing feedback for performance evaluations. Ace has little time for such nonsense. Of 15 requests to provide feedback, Ace completes two – Danni’s and Eddie’s. Ace’s feedback on Danni is, ‘Needs to be more responsive and manage expectations. This will demonstrate the required commitment.’ Danni first hears this when it is read out during her review meeting. She is offended and confused – she has no idea what it is about.
Ace’s feedback on Eddie is ‘He is doing well and is on track.’ Eddie is a member of Ace’s core group. It has been decided that Eddie is too error-prone and will not progress further. This has never been discussed with him, and he is known to be sensitive to criticism. After a spate of resignations, Ace cannot afford for Eddie to leave, so she pushes hard to ensure Eddie receives a top performance rating and special bonus.
Costs
Ace’s assumption that ‘feedback’ means criticism is a common mistake. Starving people of the information they need to gauge their performance is the root of so many problems I have dealt with. Confidence is eroded. Opportunities to change are lost. Insecurity increases.
For feedback to be useful, it must understood and accepted. Ace’s feedback on Danni fails on both counts. It will be rejected as unfair, damaging her trust in Ace and the organisation.
Throughout my career, I have fought against the, “You’re fabulous, you’re fine—oops, now you’re fired!” approach to performance management. It does not sit well with claims of a high-integrity, high-performance culture. Then there’s the waste. Over-rewarding performance is a waste of resources and demotivates genuine high performers.
Another issue stems from allowing a significant gap to appear between how the organisation sees the individual and how they see themselves. I am not the only lawyer or person in HR to have received a call that goes like this: “Sam is useless, always has been. He has not done any meaningful work for ages, and we decided a few weeks ago they need an exit message at tomorrow’s appraisal. Of course, there is no record of any of this, but anyone could have read the signals. One trifling detail, barely worth mentioning, but they just told us they are [DELETE AS APPROPRIATE: stressed-depressed-anxious-ill-pregnant-recently come out-filing a complaint-feeling bullied and victimised]. Send me a script.” If you can’t stop this, brace yourself for a bumpy ride.
Solutions
The keys for underperforming line leaders are to improve their:
Awareness of themselves and their effect on others.
Ability to manage themselves and others.
Accountability for their behaviour.
