Don't be the Boss, Be the Leader

When you just jump right into your day, racing to be productive, getting your head down you’ve inadvertently enacted ‘boss mode’ where god help anyone who slows you down, has a question or doesn’t produce at the speed you need them to. You have set your expectations for the day. Frustration and anger follow when those expectations aren’t met and they will NEVER be met all day.

When you start your day proactively, you have mapped out times when you can be of assistance to other, you have no expectations around other people’s problems but rather the expectation of sharing where they are and what they need. Then you are being a leader and building a tribe for the future.

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You are in BOSS MODE, ironically and perhaps counter to popular opinion when you declare that open door policy. You are in ‘boss mode’ because each action the boss takes creates an unwritten rule of how things are to be done ‘around here’. That open door policy is a message that other people’s agendas trump your own and that interruptions are welcomed. In ‘boss mode’ you follow the fashion rather than what’s true, what’s effective and what’s practical.

You are being a leader when you recognise that you have a team that needs support and so you make specific time available to connect with and support them. You are being a leader when you are equally as respectful of their time and you both schedule in advance.

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You are being a boss when you schedule meetings but those meetings descend into listening to each others voices, getting excited about the future you haven’t achieved yet or complaining about those who our currently out of favour because you haven’t taken the time to understand their perspective, and then parting ways with no new direction.

You are being a leader when meetings are called with a specific problem to solve, the collective brains are supported and utilised to create a strategy, the strategy is agreed upon, a reporting system and time frame is agreed upon and each individual goes away with ownership of a task and has explained their plan of action. The leader ensures that these things happen and that the meeting is kept brief and on track.

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You are being a boss when you’ve got caught up in problem solving mode. You’re telling everyone how to solve their problems and what to do because it seems faster and you are pressed for time and want to get back to your own work. What you’re actually doing is creating dependents and teaching them that they aren’t up to the task. You are seeing incompetence because you are training them to show it.

You are being a leader when you realise that your job is to help them to fix their own problems, to use exploration, then guidance until they find the outer limits. (Only then do you teach)

A leader teachers people that THEY have the answers if they are willing to experiment and willing to dig for them while risking uncertainty.

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You are in ‘boss mode’ when you’re chastising failure and showing frustration. Ultimately there is NOTHING in it for you or them. In fact it makes them MORE likely to hide mistake, LESS likely to try anything new, MORE likely to fail, MORE likely to become dependent and MORE likely to quit.

When you are being a leader you are showing them how to think. EXCELLENT you failed, what did you learn? How will you make this failure or mistake LESS likely in the future? How can you make the next person who does your job less likely to make this mistake? Now you’re being a leader, now you’re teaching them to be independent, now you’re empowering them, now you’re creating freedom for both of you. You’re in the process of create PERMANENT redundancy from each problem.

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When you’re sat down, at your computer at midnight preparing to send that internal email *pause* there is a story that will accompany this email. That story is ‘I care, I want us to be successful’ but that’s a given. The story is, ‘I don’t have my shit together, I’m overwhelmed, I’m a workaholic, I’ve lost perspective’ and the worst part... ‘I expect the same from you dear email recipient’. You are unquestionably in ‘boss mode’.

This isn’t about the emails of course it’s about the consideration of the impact of your words and actions. That’s what makes you a leader, to understand that those in your charge are taking cues from your actions to decide what is expected of them and how safe they are in the organisation. The leader might work into the night on occasion of course, I’m not trying to create a false image of the world. But a leader asks, is this what I want from my life? It’s certainly not what your team wants. A leader brings the team together and says, let’s put our heads together because the way we are working right now, isn’t working.

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When you’re in ‘boss mode’ you expect people to read minds and know exactly how you would do it or exactly what decision you would make. When decisions are made that don’t align with what you think you are frustrated, annoyed and want to take away that persons decision making responsibility, or everyone’s. If only I could find people who think like me you think. I’ve been there.

When you’re in leadership mode you recognise that running a company is like running a country, people are looking to you to show them what behaviours we value. The more explicitly you communicate the companies values, the opposite of those values and the process that constitutes alignment with those values the more you will empower others to make their own decisions. The leader recognises that misalignment with those values demonstrates that they are not yet explicit enough (or that they are stressed / overwhelmed) and their is an opportunity to improve in order to grow.

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When you’re in leader mode you’re demonstrating the behaviours you want to see. You are looking after your health, protecting your boundaries so that you can get your work done, support others and have a life. You understand failure and support others to do their best and grow in their position.

When you’re in ‘boss mode’ you are, as I teach my clients, ‘out of your mind’ where you are expecting others to mind read, to sacrifice their lives for their job to help others at any time while also doing their own work and to never fail.

Boss mode is a recipe for failure both for you and your business. Don’t get me wrong, every leader ends up here from time to time. But it’s clarity around which is which is a powerful aid in alerting you to when you’re in ‘boss mode’ rather than ‘leader mode.’