Who tells you no?

Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric.

If you want to be a thought leader, a great way to start is to furrow your brow, cross your arms, and make a distinction about "management vs leadership." It helps if it's pithy. Management is doing things right and leadership is doing the right things. That kind of thing.

When we start programs at RSG, one of the first things we do is dispense with all that. In most cases we use the terms interchangeably, and mix in others like "boss" as well. Because in practice the terms overlap almost completely.

You aren't an effective leader if you don't understand how to coordinate effort, communicate change, encourage constructive disagreement, and prioritize. You will be a mediocre manager (at best!) if you can't situate work within a broader context, motivate a team of individuals, and foster a shared sense of purpose.

Yes, there are purely managerial tasks. And yes, there are leaders with no management work to speak of. But in almost all real situations, good leaders understand management. And good managers understand leadership. The overlaps matter more than the edges.

Except when they don't.

So you've abetted and bankrolled a coup

Last week's shit in the US was a mess. What else can you say? It was a mess, and the failures of leadership there are so bright they're impossible to ignore.

We may have more to say in this newsletter some time about the failures of elected leadership. Or the failures of military leadership. Or the failures of law enforcement leadership. There are certainly things to be said. But there are the failures of tech leadership, too. And those are the ones in our own backyard.

In the aftermath of January 6, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Shopify, and a handful of others de-platformed the President of the United States. At least a little bit. And some folks wanted to talk about what a show of leadership that was.

We don't pretend that it's easy, kicking off a sitting US president. We suspect that a lot of very senior, very loud, government officials were calling these companies to demand reversals. That was probably hard.

But. Any account of the leadership these companies showed on January 6 needs to include the leadership they failed to show leading up to it, too. Facebook and Twitter shut down Trump the day after the attacks. But Facebook and Twitter are where those attacks were planned. Out loud, in the open.

YouTube took down some videos after conspiracy theorists stormed the capitol. But YouTube is where those conspiracy theories were hatched. Shopify took down Trump's merch store. But Shopify is the economic engine for every hate group clever enough to keep the N word off their mugs. At time of writing you can still buy "black lives maga" t-shirts and actual fucking Hitler Youth knives from Shopify stores. And the company still takes a cut of the purchase price every time someone checks out. Despite their leadership.

How did we get here? These leaders can see why violent and hateful rhetoric is a bad thing, right? That's why they made the decisions they did on January 7? So then why didn't they make them months, or years ago?

The higher the fewer

We have this idea that the hard decisions get easier the higher you go in an organization. That by the time you're a VP, nobody can tell you shit. If a call is the wrong call, you've got everything you need to speak up in the moment.

For some VPs, that's true. But for many folks, the same dynamic that kept them from speaking up as an intern is still playing out years later. Concern about sounding stupid. About getting labelled as negative or problematic by their colleagues. The feeling that their seat at the table is precarious in the first place.

The worry that your job is on the line if you say the wrong thing doesn't go away when your salary increases. If anything, the stakes are higher. The people making those decisions are peers now, not far-off executives. There's a sense that you're supposed to toe the line publicly. And sometimes, lazily, you end up doing that privately, too. You shut up and nod along. We know this because we've done this.

We meet so many bosses who lament that their organization is moving in a direction they don't support. Our first questions are always the same: "Do they know? Have you said those words out loud?"

Most of the time, the answer is, "no." No, I don't agree with a set of decisions happening within my organization. And no, I haven't spoken up. 😞

"No" is important feedback

We teach leaders how to give effective feedback to their own people and at the end of every session, someone raises the money question.

"Hey, so, how do I get my people to give me feedback?"

We love this question. This is a leader grappling with their own power. And tucked underneath this question are at least 63 other questions. How do I honour that power differential? Why would someone tell me their honest opinion when they know they might get fired? How do I, as a leader, create space for people to tell me to fuck off if they think we're heading down the wrong path? And do I even want that?

A lot of leaders don't want that. But most of the folks we talk to do. In particular, we hear this from CEOs. They want a senior team that challenges them and makes them better. They are paying executive salaries. They want executives in those seats. Not bobbleheads nodding yes all day. But that's what they've got.

What gives?

The single worst brand in organizational development

Psychological safety couldn't have a worse name. We've talked about the concept here before but we always start with a disclaimer. Psychological safety isn't a workplace full of snowflakes who are too sensitive to get real feedback. It's not about coddling your people. And it's expressly not about avoiding hard conversations.

Psychological safety is the opposite of that. It's, "I know what's expected of me." The systems of evaluation are clear - I get what's in bounds and out of bounds both in regards to the work but also around how the work gets done. It takes the implicit elements of work and makes them explicit. And because I have that clarity, I'm able to take chances. My creative energy goes toward the work itself. Not guessing whether I'll get fired for disagreeing.

The short answer for those CEOs is that no one will tell you no unless they're safe to do so. They see risks in your business. They have information you need. But if you don't create an environment where it's safe for them to bring that to you, they won't. If bobblehead leadership is what's rewarded in your org, that's what you'll get.

We're seeing this play out all over the news right now. Leaders, surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear. Reacting, flatfooted, to things that were obvious the whole way along to anyone paying attention. Obvious, we should note, to their staff, too. A sea of people who could have told you no, and made you a better, more proactive leader. If they felt like they could.

And if, as a leader, this is getting you curious about how to cultivate psychological safety. If you want tools for building diverse teams of engaged, active participants who push you and themselves. Well. That's management. And it's a toolset every leader needs.

- Melissa and Johnathan