Choosing Who NOT to Help
I thought leading was getting people on my team. But, leading is getting on their team; grabbing their oar. But whose boat and whose oar?
Whose boat:
Leaders can’t help those going in the “wrong” direction. By wrong, I don’t mean morally wrong. I mean wrong for the organization. Get out of boats going in the “wrong” direction or you’ll dilute your leadership and the effectiveness of your organization.
Focus your energies on boats
going in the “right” direction.
Every organization has people rowing in the wrong direction. Don’t ignore them. Work to align them. But:
Never neglect those rowing in the right direction
for those rowing in the wrong.
Harder than you think:
You work with anchors, critics, nay-sayers, detractors, or those with personal agendas. Ignoring them is challenging, perhaps perilous, especially if they have connections with top leadership. Stay connected. Jump in their boat and talk but don’t grab their oar.
Direction:
Choosing and clarifying organizational direction identifies the “right” boats and whose oar to grab. Effective leaders:
- Clarify direction.
- Align the boats within the organization.
- Get on teams most aligned with organizational direction.
- Hamper or eliminate teams who refuse to align.
Think of your organization as a collection of row boats. Your job is getting them rowing in the same direction.
Ask the people in your organization, “Where are we going?” If they can’t identify the destination, they’ll never get there.
You can’t talk about direction too much.
Honesty:
Grabbing an oar in someone else’s boat isn’t a dishonest ploy to trick them into getting on your team. Getting on their team fails if it’s not honest.
Permanent:
Leaders always grab oars in other people’s boats. Leadership always centers on others. There never comes a time when leadership centers you. Even when you take care of yourself, do it so you can take care of others.
Do the people around you believe you are on their team?
How do you determine whose oar to grab?
Nice one. Never grab the oars. About the most deviant and difficult boats…don’t even discuss the oars. Instead, change the conversation, i.e., don’t argue about who’s right…never wrestle with a pig – the pig enjoys the wrestling and you get dirty.
What is Permant?
Great blog. I enjoyed the metaphor. It caught me eye and kept me interested.
Thanks for the heads up on the typo… 🙂
Wow. I have worked hard at building relationships and vision casting with my team, but I have failed to ask them, “where are we going?”
We must always remember that leadership involves dialogue. Thanks for the reminder Dan.
You spoke eloquently on two of my favorite subjects: 1) Pulling towards a common goal, which involves purpose, direction, effort, and deliberate rejection of distractions (think of Nehemiah and the wall) and 2) Selfless leadership focused on being stewards of the organization, rather than asserting primacy.
Thank you very much.
Dan –
THAT is really funny because I just finished posting up a blog article on my blog that used my rowing shell analogy and was titled, “Teamwork, Peer Support and the idea of Dis-Un-Engagement”. Guess we are thinking along some of the same lines, for sure…
Check out http://performancemanagementcompanyblog.com/
I keep returning to the same idea that workplaces are actively de-motivating and dis-engaging people and that involvement and ideas and peer support can help make changes and improvements more engaging and motivating.
The reality, though, seems more like a Demolition Derby, maybe done on one of those figure-8 tracks where you keep going by the same way, over and over, than a well-organized Olympic-style rowing race. Not likely that many of those teams will stay in their own lanes. A friend of mine builds miniature warships with electronic bb guns that are capable of sinking the other guy’s balsa-wood boat. Maybe that would make a better “water warfare” metaphor, ya think?
Have fun out there, all y’all.
Dear Dan,
While reading the post two things came to my mind strongly. Boat and oar, and between these which is more important and why. I think boat provides platform and oar provide direction. By this example, organizations provides support/platform and our skills and knowledge provide us direction. In the organization, goal is generally fixed but we need to find out direction. Leaders use oar/knowledge to achieve that goal. But leader has to take all the people together in the mission. And for that, trust in utmost necessary. Therefore, you are right that people should believe one another is in the team. So, whose oar to grab is determined by this people belief in leader, leadership abilities and personalities.
I support your opinion that we should not help wrong person. And I also believe that we should not help someone whose motive and intentions are not good. The person who wants to utilize others to make his end meets should not be helped. We should the larger interest in helping others. Sometimes even the wrong person with good motive should be helped. So, rather than the person,who should focus the intention behind the help.
Sometimes it is hard to notice when you’re on the wrong boat but I agree, rowing into the right direction definitely helps!
Picking up on Ajay’s comments, and adding to my own thinking, the rowing shell might contain a single rower with two oars or two rowers with two oars each or one oar each. Some have coxswains and others are “uncoxed.”
Rudders and lanes provide the steering and limitations, while the oars provide the power. The boats for one or two people are 27 to 34 feet long (and weigh amazingly little and are very narrow) while the Eights have a cox, one-oar each and are 62 feet long (and amazingly light!). The Eights can pull a water skier (practice your French while watching the speed record (2009) on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3WaYopsA0M)
Power comes from the oars, but the efforts must be synched and the effort coordinated and timely for anything to work. One slipped oar and the whole boat can capsize — pretty darn embarrassing.
Similarly, only the leader faces forward, so trust is important. But if the boat is moving forward more slowly than the river is flowing downstream, there is the chance that the boat will go backwards over the falls if the rowers are:
— not involved or paying attention
— disliking the leader / cox
— want to see the boat “fail” and fall and get a little more workplace excitement added into things.
After all, us kayakers DO like to drop the falls. (And, we prefer to be in our own boats under our own control and making our own decisions.)
The leaders MUST be in the boat with the Eights, and it is really really hard to coach rowers from the safe confines of the shoreline.
Oh, they also use Ergometers to practice and there are competitions to see who can go “the farthest” while people are sitting on their butts. Maybe that too has some metaphorical linking to the workplace.
Wheeeeeee.
I did something last week that I had not done in over 6yrs, I walked away from an injured worker because I could not simply sit there and watch her self-destruct. For me to walk away from someone in need of help was a painful task. However I could see the “train wreck” she was heading for, I could predict the outcome of the path she had decided to take and I wanted no part of it.
The odd thing is that after I had informed everyone of my decision, they all stopped, I would have expected them to slow down, but stopping all together was not something I had been able to predict.
There has been a request for me to rejoin, but for now I have said that I am happy to give some advise, but as for rejoining the team that is not my intention.
It has been difficult for me to accept my role of “leader”, I have always seen myself more of a “gatherer” of people.
However my work within the workers compensation system is viewed by others as a “leader”.
For me it is difficult as there is no clear path or framework to set things in, what I do every day is set the boundaries for those who are to follow.
I also have to acknowledge that I have no idea if anyone else will ever want to do what I do and accept that I may be clearing the way for no one else and accept that that is also the right thing.
Great post on the how to guid the direction of your team that is going in the right direction and what to do for those going in the wrong. I especially liked the point about “Never neglect those rowing in the right direction for those rowing in the wrong.” This is an extermely valid point and I see it going along with playing to your strengths and not just focusing on your weaknesses. While those wrong way people or weaknesses shouldn’t be ignored, they shouldn’t become the sole focus of your attention.
I have certainly learned this lesson. As a leader I believe I should be equally prepared to help anyone on the team who is equally prepared to help the organization win. It’s a simple formula and available to anyone and everyone. But only if they are aligned to our collective best interests.
If you’re out of synch with the other team members, or worse, trying to row in a different direction, you can’t be part of the team. In fact, you have already stated, through your actions, you aren’t part of the team. I will continue to advise you on the direction we are heading, what’s at stake if we fail to get there, and coach you through what changes you need to make to align to our success, but if you aren’t willing to be part of our team, I can’t then be part of yours.
It does involve making seemingly harsh choices. However, you’re not being paid to be someone’s buddy or to be their advocate for misery. You’re being paid to lead. The coxswain attempts to get everyone up to the right tempo, not the tempo of the least capable, or willing, person in the boat.
Building a bit more of rowing one’s way to success, Alf said: “The coxswain attempts to get everyone up to the right tempo, not the tempo of the least capable, or willing, person in the boat.”
Initially, that made sense. The Right Tempo. It sounds like it has that kernel of truth to it, as if there is ONE “right tempo” to strive for. And I then thought of the crew and the reality that one person in an Eight DOES determine the speed of that boat. That is just reality.
But speed is but one measure and there is the concept of “instantaneous speed” as well as “sustained speed.” And maybe there is a dimension of “final speed.” There is also the issue of acceleration.
Do we wand all Big New Young Guys in the crew, or do we want some more experienced rowers along on the journey? Do we see the race as a 1000 meter sprint or a 6,000 meter race? Is winning the first half of the race satisfying for a new crew or is the only reward for winning the whole thing”?
And, since all the crews represent work teams in the organization, in my thinking around this, HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THE SLOWEST BOAT (or the other losers)?
My issues with organizational incentives is that half of the people in the organization will never see them or even know that they exist (Bersin survey showed only 58% of employees know that an incentive program exists).
So, do we punish the slowest team or simply ignore them? DO we throw out the (weakest) rower on our team and replace them with an unknown performer (and hope?). And what if the old slow guy was the best person in the gym at motivating others on the Ergometer and pushing up their cardio fitness as well as being the confidence anchor for all?
Lastly, is the cox really all that smart? Does the cox make the real overall difference to the crew and to success?
Like Dan, I think we have to align the boats. I think they should all row together so as to keep the “last” boat in the race and rowing to the best level they can. And then we just gotta get them into the gym over the winter… (grin)
I participating in a public speaking competition last week and my topic was ‘What does Active Citizenship mean to you’
We are all leaders and we can all be influential in the area we live and work. And when connection online we can create a lot of power together – that’s why blogs, websites and social media are genius!
Please listen to my speech here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151278086345295
Thanks Dan,
As someone who sometimes helps others at their own expense, this is a refreshing article.
Cheers
Allan
Hi Dan,
What a well written article!
Thank you, for exploring the other side of leadership!
Brenda