Failure to Lead (what your team will never tell you)
By: Craig Janssen
Tags: Careers, Entrepreneurship, Leadership

Photo by Olga Doganoc on Unsplash

You have the title. The experience. The authority.

But no one is following you.

You are supposed to have influence, but instead you find yourself relying on carrots and sticks to make things happen. Why is that?

Why do others lead effortlessly while you battle? After all, you’ve done well. Risen to a level of success. What’s keeping you from having a larger role in leadership?

Chances are, it’s because you are relying on the talents that got you where you are now, rather than focusing on what will take you to the next level as a leader.

It isn’t that mastery of your craft isn’t important — it is. It’s just that leadership is about people, not production. And it doesn’t matter how big of an expert you are in your field, mastery isn’t the same as influence.

But wait! I get paid based on being an expert.

Of course you do. And it’s perfectly fine for you to stay an expert. But if you want to become a leader, it requires a different skillset, and here is where so many of us get stuck before we figure it out…

Mastery, output, and control

Mastery of a craft implies control of the output.

The weird thing is that it’s this mastery of output that frequently lands us in leadership positions. After all, you can’t scale output by yourself. You need a team. (And the usual thinking is that the person who is best at producing the thing is the best person to lead the team to produce things, so here you are.)

The problem is that the people on your team aren’t you. Not only are their strengths and talents different — their output is different.

So, you wind up putting controls in place. Little legislative actions to drive behavior and make sure the quality of the output is the same level that you would produce. With controls in place, you go back to focusing on your output — after all, that’s what has made you successful.

If you are particularly good at what you do, there is a chance that you often perform the highest value tasks yourself because you know the quality of your own output. Delegating is a gamble. (Sure, you put in way too many hours, but you’d rather it be done right the first time than have to correct it later.)

Of course, this process makes you frustrated. So, you tweak the controls you have in place to try to legislate better output — from both yourself and others. But there are limits to how well this works.

And when you look at your output and that of those around you, it’s hard not to feel frustrated.

Why isn’t everyone else working as hard as you are?

You lock your frustration down to hide the me vs. them vibe because you are a professional. Right?

The link between trust and influence

You already know the path of frustration, control, and handling everything yourself isn’t sustainable.

Would it surprise you to learn that your focus on output is misplaced?

But wait! You might say. I’m responsible for the output. Am I just supposed to let things get sloppy?

In the short term…yes.

Here’s why…

When it comes to people, controls are temporary in their results. They don’t create loyalty or a following.

Not only that, but the controls work against you because by their very nature, they make people feel as if they aren’t trusted. Which means they won’t trust you back.

And that lack of trust is a huge limiter on your influence.

David McNally writes in Training Magazine, “Fundamental to being influential is the ability to build deep and lasting relationships founded on trust. If someone has earned your trust, he or she has the potential to influence you. You have the potential to influence those who trust you.”

Trust has to be given before it is received, and there is no influence without trust.

But if that’s true, then why do so many organizations rely on control to produce output?

In short, because control is far easier to achieve than influence.

The seduction of control

Think about control like sugar. It’s easy to get. It’s addictive. It’s tasty. It feels good and feeds our ego. It provides instant rewards — so we often ignore that it’s not a long-term strategy.

Besides, control is a quick fix when it comes to output. Is it any wonder that we reach for it when production demands are intense?

If control is sugar, then influence is more like protein. It’s full of the building blocks for muscle. It takes time and consistency to build. But it also has more strength and staying power.

Here’s the thing: There is way more power in influence than in control.

Control is limited. It takes a lot of energy to pull off and there are limits. Influence can go beyond you having exponential impact on outputs — within your team and beyond.

But moving from one system to the other can be messy. And just like making changes to your diet, it takes discipline.

It starts with you

You are the only one who can shift your focus away from production to building influence with your team.

To date, your value has been in what you can produce. Your personal output.

You have to release that for the higher goal of building a team who can produce better output than you can.

As long as you are evaluating yourself on your personal output, you will never be able to build the influence you need.

Why? Because your ego will get involved any time someone outshines you. You will feel stepped on whenever your controls get pushed aside. As a practical matter, you will be way too busy to notice other people’s strengths or to be able to help them grow to bring their best to the team.

But when your focus shifts from your own output to leading a team, your lens changes. You start to notice other’s gifting. You begin giving away your knowledge and sharing your network to make them better.

Make no mistake, there is a cost to this. Building a team means you often lose your place in it as the “expert.”

But the reality is that we control less than we think we do, and we influence more than we are aware — for good and for ill.

If you want to rise up in an organization — or lead a small team to do great things — give up control and focus on influence. Your impact as a leader will become exponential.

About the author: Craig Janssen is an expert in design for spaces where thousands come together to share an experience. An international facility strategist serving architects, venue owners, and developers, Craig leads Idibri — a multidisciplinary team of technology designers, acousticians, and theatre planners. Check out Craig’s TEDx talk, Will Future Generations Want What We Build?