The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin*, the more star systems will slip through your fingers - Princess Leia, Star Wars Episode IV
The ability to understand, talk about and, crucially, accept trade-offs in work and life more generally is, IMO, key to making good decisions and setting good expectations. Paradoxes can sometimes be resolved, of course, but in general, most actions have equal and opposite reactions - e.g. if you want to put your prices up above inflation and don't offer additional value to match, then your CSAT is probably going to take a hit. You can demand from your team that CSAT doesn't fall if you want, but you really shouldn't be surprised if it doesn't happen.
COVID-19's Impact on Leadership Strategies
In the same vein, a very apparent paradox / cultural tension playing out in the workplace, the news, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor, is the clash between the more people-oriented legacies of the pandemic/'great resignation' era and the more autocratic, top-down decision making that is trending in since the economy tightened.
This is the transition of many leadership groups and leaders away from promoting adult-to-adult relationships to going into parenting mode. It's a combination of the following, I think:
- Returning to a preferred style for many (I'm taking back control)
- A knee-jerk, hero mentality reaction (we're off our numbers, only I can fix this, I need to review everything)
- Taking advantage of the reduced options that employees have (what are you gonna do about it in this market, really?)
Leadership vs Surveillence
This isn't just about work location, because god knows there's enough about that on LinkedIn, but it's the easiest and most accessible shorthand for the dynamic I'm talking about. During and immediately after the pandemic, employees who were told that they were valuable and trusted, were oftentimes asked to come up with new corporate values and chose things like "empowerment" or "care". Many of those same employees are now being told that they need to be in the office as many as 5 days a week and if they don't like it there are other jobs out there. Again, you can try to pull that transition off if you want - and I'm someone who believes that some face-to-face is essential - but you can't be surprised when people don't like it.
The same goes for putting multiple levels of control on hiring tickets, travel, pay raises, promotions, or social events so that even senior-level people, operating within their budget, can't get those things done without going and groveling to someone. It makes people feel powerless, like a child.
The reason, I think, that the much meme'd Spotify advert above is so powerful is actually the use of the word 'children', not because of the remote work element. It taps into something that's broader than WFH issues. An Accenture poll found that 51% of millennials agreed with the statement “I try to avoid situations where people tell me what to do”. You can be pretty sure that Gen Z feels even stronger about that.
They don't want to be parented or to be part of a followership culture at work, they want to be led but also given the space and opportunity to find their own way to lead at the same time. Leader-Leader, rather than Leader-Follower (hat tip L. David Marquet). That means being able to make some decisions themselves and those decisions may well be different from the ones their bosses would make. Which, for the avoidance of doubt, is not just okay but pretty essential for a healthy culture.
Short-Term Control for Long-Term Resentment
Stopping that Leader-Leader evolution process, putting more controls in, and reducing decision-making authority across a business, becomes a trade-off of short-term control for long-term resentment. Because yes, most people don't have the privilege to leave without something new to go to and may well not be able to do anything about it for now, due to a lack of opportunities elsewhere. In the medium/long term though, when the market inevitably improves, they'll make different decisions and leadership teams will be forced to either stick to their guns and limit their hiring pool or row back on previous dictates.
Dos & Don'ts for Leaders
So my advice/noise into the vacuum for leaders - especially those who won't be walking off into retirement in the next few years (and therefore won't feel the pain that is coming) - is this: if you're feeling out of control then work harder to find the trade-offs that give you the right ability to direct and influence your team without parenting your team and removing all their decision making authority.
That might mean (non-exhaustive list):
- Using your influence to accelerate/unlock the strategic blockers in the business that make Life hard for your team
- Increasing the level of specificity on goals and expectations on timing of delivery
- Putting your brain and experience into collaborative, problem-solving workshops
- Upping the number of skip 121s or site visits or team playbacks/retrospectives that you do
But it definitely doesn't mean (also non-exhaustive):
- Demanding 'line by line' reviews or decision papers on every little thing you don't immediately understand
- Telling your team how to do their jobs, in prescriptive detail, when they haven't asked you
- Over-reacting to immaterial distractions just because there's some political noise
Ultimately, if you successfully keep yourself in a place where you are an adult leading other adults, and treating them as such, then the ones you want to stay will stay; treat your team like children, and not only will the adults eventually leave, but you'll be left with a remaining team who have become entirely reliant on you for all direction, trapping you forever in line by line reviews and hiring approvals all the live-long day. No one wants that, do they?
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