Some bad leadership habits follow us home.
I was talking with my wife early one morning a week or two ago. She was discussing her social work call schedule. She mentioned that there was primary and secondary call, and that she was generally on “second call.” From my frame of reference as a doc covering intensive care units I wondered how often the person on second call was actually called in. It became my “bottom line” question and I almost interrupted her several times as she spoke about her concerns regarding training for call to get my question answered. I came close to the exercise of a bad leadership habit: the drive toward “BLUF” – bottom line up front. Only it was my bottom line I was interested in, not hers.
But I caught myself. And I allowed her keep talking. She needed to process her experiences. And I needed to hear what she had to say. The experience reminded me of a leadership lesson I have had to repeatedly learn; one that I know I have mentioned here before and I think is related at least in part to having a temperament of extroversion.
I have often found myself as a hospital leader being briefed by subordinates, paging through the briefing slides to see where the briefing was going and then cutting to what I thought was the main point without allowing the argument to be built. It was a bad but perhaps learned behavior. Once while I was briefing a very senior Army general about our hospital construction as we drove to the site in his vehicle, he cut me off at the third slide and asked, “Bottom line doc: is it on-time and under budget?” Well not exactly, Sir…
I know we are busy and that this is a technique to keep things moving and our schedules manageable. But perhaps we are missing opportunities to develop leaders at work. We are certainly selling ourselves short in missing opportunities to expand our own perspective. And at home when listening to family and friends, we need to take care that we don’t allow efficiency to replace empathy.
On the savanna among our ancient ancestors, the leader was often the first one to move. We need to remember that the leader’s courage to move has to be balanced by the willingness to “be moved” by those whom we lead.
It happens through careful attention and intention to their need to know they’ve be heard and listened to.
Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front https://henryv43.wordpress.com/
Henry V 4.3 