Leadership Thought #197 – You Have To Know Your People
Business is primarily about people (and math). Leadership can be a delicate balancing act. You want to push your people to achieve high performance and exceed what they thought was possible. However, you must also appreciate that when you hire employees, human beings show up with all their individual needs for understanding and support. If you push too hard, they resent you and find you harsh and uncaring. If you don’t push hard enough, then you enable mediocrity and stunt their growth. It is not always easy to know where the line exists.
I advise my clients to focus their people development efforts on their direct reports. When you get this right, it can’t help but set an example that will trickle down throughout the organization. To do this well, a leader needs to know the following things about the individuals on his/her management team:
- Their personality type/profile – how they are hardwired as a person
- What makes them tick professionally and personally
- Their unique talents and abilities
- Situations in which they thrive
- The best way to motivate them
- How to give them feedback in a constructive manner
- Identify areas where they need to grow
- Learn about situations in which they struggle and get in their own way
- Any significant personal events/issues that may affect them at work
You cannot manage everyone the same way. For example, some people want feedback in a direct manner. They excel when challenged and pushed. Confrontation is easy for them. Other people wither under too much direct pressure and scrutiny. They require more subtle means to get your point across. Most people tend to shy away from conflict and must be taught how to engage in constructive professional disagreements. Some people are self-motivated, while others require a certain level of peer pressure and a sense of belonging to a team. The list gets exceedingly long when you are dealing with the differences between people.
Leadership is both an art and a science. You need to know the right things to do, but also figure out the best way to get them done given your specific circumstances. Unless you are a solo practitioner, you need to achieve success with and through other people. There is no magic formula for this; just know that people are individuals, and it’s best to meet them where they are than try to change them. Sometimes this means recognizing that you have someone with needs you can’t meet or who is a bad fit with your style or personality. However, if you invest the time and do the work, people will usually respond well to your customized efforts and surprise you with their capabilities.
Related articles
- 7 Steps to Better Leadership (Swipe) (urbanmogullife.com)
- Motivating Employees: Raising the Bar (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
- Avoid These Team Demotivators (brighthub.com)
- What Is the Relationship Between Leadership & Employee Performance? (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
- McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory – Team Management Training (bjconquest.com)
- 5 Ways to Manage Different Personality Types (businessinsider.com)
- Psychologists answer “How do I motivate people?” with an App (prweb.com)
