How to Maximize the Feeler-Leader on Your Team
The best way to maximize talent is to first understand their motivation.
Comparison:
- Feelers care about getting things done with people. Think relationships.
- Dreamers care about what’s next. Think progress.
- Doers care about getting things done the right way. Think process.
Motivation:
- Feelers connect and protect.
- Dreamers love making things better.
- Doers organize and check things off the list.
Everyone has all three motivations. You’re great at one. Average at another. And weak in the third.
A Feeler-Leader:
I know the founder of a multinational organization who is a feeler/dreamer/doer. He’s great with relationships. He dreams of connecting people. Organization isn’t his strength.
Papa bear:
The ‘Feeler-Leader’ (FL) isn’t weak.
The founding Feeler-Leader (FL) told me a story about hiring a speaker for a relationship-building leadership retreat. FL was frustrated with the speaker because he left the group to play golf one afternoon, rather than connecting with the participants.
FL met the speaker on the 18th hole and told him he could go home. “We don’t need you anymore.”
Feeler-Leaders honor and protect relationships.
Frustrate:
Never tell a Feeler… (Well, almost never.)…
- It doesn’t matter how people feel.
- Relationships aren’t important.
- Conflict isn’t a big deal.
- Be aggressive and meet this challenge head on.
- Work on your own. Feelers enjoy meeting needs and working with others.
Results:
You don’t have to choose between results and relationships to deliver results.
Successful leaders deliver results through relationships.
Doers and Dreamers are more inclined to pressure people. “Just shut-up and do it. We’ll have time to feel good after the work is done.”
Leaders with heart change lives. Leaders without heart may get things done, but they often step on people in the process.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Feeler-Leaders?
What value do Feeler-Leaders bring to organizations?
Most organisations I’ve been in are uninteresting in people’s feelings – feelings are considered unnecessary, because feelings aren’t quantifiable. Also, despite (or possibly because!) of the work of Ryan and Deci, most employees aren’t motivated by the feeler/dreamer/doer model at work. They’re motivated by money, which allows them to do the things they are intrinsically motivated to do outside the workplace.
Thanks Mitch. Sad but true. Perhaps one day we’ll realize that emotion is an invitation to action.
I hope that the past two decades of work on emotional intelligence will also help us in this area.
It would be great if we could bring our hearts to work. 🙂
By the way, since writing on this, people have pointed me to McClelland’s work on motivation theory. His ideas fit nicely into the doer/dreamer/feeler framework. His work suggest we are motivated by one of three things. Affiliation-Feeler, Achievement-Doer, and Power-Dreamer.
Dan, I’m not familiar with McClelland but I’m off to read up now! I’ve read around Deci and Ryan a lot around both work and fitness. Deci and Ryan use the relatedness, competence and autonomy model, which do have useful parallels in work. What the models all largely don’t consider is that there is an element of obligation around work – most of us wouldn’t go if we weren’t being paid! Another thing is that those organisations that want passion from their staff want their staff do be driven by passion around effort and delivery (stay late, “go the extra mile”), but to be absolutely content with the letter of their contract when it comes to reward. Odd, that…
Mitch999, Google “Needs Theory” and you will find a plethora of references to David McClelland’s work. Obviously, Google David McClelland. Enjoy.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Feeler-Leaders?
Strengths – put their people first…celebrate the small accomplishments…nurturing and bring teaching when something goes wrong.
Weakness – may try to avoid conflict so not to upset anyone.
What value do Feeler-Leaders bring to organizations?
They may have more of a “family” atmosphere in their organization. Giving people a sense of belonging…a sense of “I matter.” This would be a great asset and help to motivate team to do their best and invest their lives more into this organization. If team feels good about themselves and one another then a safe, creative culture can be cultivated which will profit everyone in the long run.
Dan, I wonder how this concept of feeler, doer, & dreamer plays out in a cross-cultural situation. Would the same principles hold true but the expressions of them be culturally conditioned?
Dan,
I find survival to be the “key motivator”, one fellow worker once stated, “we have to eat don’t we”? After pondering the statement, I determined it was truly a requirement what we do to survive. I do think Mitchk999, “feelings in the work place”, for “most organizations” seems out of place, many people seem to care until you hit the corporate wall. The feelings go out the door when the Boss/Dreamer has no emotion, “all work” period. Life can be cruel at times with heartless leaders. “If I only had a Heart” so famous, glad most of us do!
I would rate myself in order of “strongest” to “weakest” 1) FL 2) Doer 3) Dreamer. As strongest in FL, I believe people like to be known but only to the degree that is healthy and helpful. For example, what do they like most & least about their work, what are their career plans, and a bit about family and hobbies. At the same time, work needs to be delivered and we need to plan forward. So, to me this is all about the optimum balance of the three necessary to motivate staff and best deliver the business. Using only one or two of the three may not be successful over the long term.
Dan, having been trained by David Burnham, a close colleague of David McClelland at Harvard, in McClelland’s Needs Theory (Power, Achievement, and Affiliation Motivations) and applied it to numerous clients over the years, I believe management/leadership in corporations and government are beginning to face an entirely new species of employee.
The plethora of research in the area of motivation has revealed that Feeler Leaders or leaders motivated by Affiliation have been shown to be reluctant to monitor their employees, show favoritism to certain employees leading to others feeling they are being treated unfairly, are overly obsessed with being liked by their employees and others, reluctant to deliver negative feedback or place restrictions on their employees, exhibit very poor decision-making capability and when forced to decide do so worrying more about hurting employees’ feelings versus what is good for the organization, in other words, they do not like to make tough decisions, especially ones involving people, and they go out of their way to avoid conflict and when faced with conflict will tie themselves into a pretzel and often freeze when it comes to making a decision. Often, Feeler Leaders are easily manipulated by Dreamer Leaders or leaders motivated by Power (in particular, Personal Power) and when Feeler Leaders figure out they have been manipulated they often exhibit a very volatile and vindictive temper, which obviously surprises the hell out of their employees. Hence the reason they will avoid hurting anyone’s’ feelings.
With the advent of university administrators and professors, which have become nothing more than surrogate “Helicopter Parents” of their students, acquiescing to their students demands for “safe spaces,” addressing “microaggression,” injecting fear where fear does not exist with respect to the campus rape frenzy, assaulting First Amendment rights, etc., managers/leaders in organizations are going to be saddled with revisiting their motivational approach to stimulating productivity from their new hires.
During my 40+ year career, leaders motivated by Power (both, Institutional and Personal) and Achievement were the ones that advanced in the corporation, in that order. Back in the day, work was pretty straight forward as far as delivering daily productivity to ensure the corporation remained profitable and grew. Over the years we have seen an explosion in the size of HR departments and a multitude of social engineering-type job titles focused on every variation of human sociology one can imagine in a corporation.
My prediction, as these newly minted employees graduate from university, senior corporate leaders will possibly look to managers in their companies that exhibit Feeler Leader motivational skills to manage and hopefully shape these new hires into productive employees for their first couple of years of employment to soften the transition into the “Real World.” New hires will not necessarily put up with a Dreamer or Doer Leader based on their motivational management style. Hopefully, the surrogate Helicopter Parent model will not transfer to the corporate world based on the belief this is the only way to retain newly hired employees.
As a sidebar, Dan, I understand your use of the terms Dreamer, Doer, and Feeler instead of Power, Achievement and Affiliation, but I think you would agree, your terms of art are far more “gentler” than McClelland’s terms of art for motivation. Another example of softening our words to make everyone “feel” happy and not threatened.
As I have said before, I am so glad I am retired.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the Feeler, Doer, Dreamer series. As i’m not in a leadership role (yet) it is giving me insight as to the type of leader I want to be and the types of leaders that I will cross in my future.