The Two Biggest Lies Leaders Believe
Teams suffer when leaders believe lies. Most people won’t speak up when you’re convinced lies are truths.
The worst lies leaders believe are the ones they tell themselves.
The two biggest lies leaders believe:
Lie #1. I am a good listener.
Any leader who always needs to be right gets dumber as time passes.
Listening to learn includes willingness to change. But having authority makes learning and changing a challenge. People in authority tend to believe that position elevates IQ.
Alan Alda put it best, “Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.”
5 commitments:
#1. Choose to show respect. Few acts show respect better than real listening. Respect the talent and perspective of people who live in the trenches.
#2. Adopt a learner’s posture. Listening to learn is real listening. Listening to persuade is manipulation.
Ask yourself, “What can I learn?”
Accountability question: What did you learn today?
#3. Explore what is right, before proving what is wrong.
Leadership is adversarial when the goal of listening is to prove someone wrong and convince them you are right.
#4. Dedicate yourself to curiosity.
Plan your next question, not your next statement.
#5. Devote yourself to the practice of empathy. You haven’t listened until people feel understood.
Leaders often listen to solve, refute, or explain. But when you listen to make people feel understood, everything changes. You explain less and take another’s perspective more.
Lie #2. I don’t have a problem with arrogance.
Humility is pursued, but never attained.
The second lie is at the root of the first. Arrogance doesn’t listen.
Arrogance crouches at the door waiting to:
- Encourage a closed mind.
- Preach self-sufficiency.
- Bolster superiority.
Any leader who doesn’t grapple with arrogance is self-deceived.
If you’d like to experience the power of humility, make the five commitments of a listener.
What lies do leaders believe?
How might leaders navigate the challenge of self-deception?
I think a really big lie is “I matter to the organisation”.
Thanks Mitch. There’s some truth to this lie. In some organizations, people don’t matter.
It’s interesting to think about how much an individual should matter cp how much the organization matters.
I feel like “I think a really big lie is “I matter to the organization” is a loaded statement, it feels perhaps like an aspect of arrogance wanting to be recognized?
An individual or a team matter to any company because they continuously learn and deliver value to whatever the company is about. And remember it’s continuous, yesterdays contribution doesn’t matter for long in todays world.
Your point about listening with a willingness to learn can sometimes be challenging if the listener has a degree of authority. This may be true for some people, but others not so much. Usually many leaders obtain their status through decisions they have made and have learned to trust in themselves in their own decision making. However, a truly honest leader knows that his decisions are not solely of himself, but rather each decision he has made was a culmination of life experiences and influences of others. Even our greatest leaders had mentors. I think the willingness to accept lies, or refuse to listen is within that person, either biologically (not a natural born leader), sociologically (has been influenced heavily by individuals with bad leadership habits), or a combination of both. The tricky thing about having authority, or power, is that it is not inherently bad. The old saying that “power corrupts” is only a half truth. A study of 173 U.S. leaders in various industries found that “the psychological experience of power enhances moral awareness among those with a strong moral identity yet decreases the moral awareness among those with a weak moral identity” (DeCelles, DeRue, Margolis, & Ceranic, 2012, pp. 681). Therefore, your list of “5 commitments” can only be adhered to if the individual leader, himself, is prepared to embrace them. I think every leader understands the basic concepts of good from bad habits. It is their ability to not lie to themselves that keep them on the good path.
The article source I got that study from: DeCelles, K. A., DeRue, D. S., Margolis, J. D., & Ceranic, T. L. (2012). Does power corrupt or enable? When and why power facilitates self-interested behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97, 3, 681-689.