Leadership – naive or not? Part Two: Domino.

The last piece was about whether the basic assumption of good will is naive or not—and I said no, at least in the context of organizations to which people feel they belong. 

But aside from the logical and rational reasoning as to why assuming good will is, on the contrary, very likely to be correct, there’s another aspect to consider: An assumption we make is like the first domino, which inevitably sets other dominoes in motion.

If you assume that you generally cannot count on your employees’ good will, you must logically conclude that you’ll have to keep a close eye on them. Since your assumption will most likely lead you to adopt a negative attitude toward your employees, you’ll keep an eye on them in a corresponding manner and choose options accordingly: Fundamental mistrust, a tight leash, lots of control => which in turn takes up your time => you spend many hours monitoring day-to-day operations instead of focusing on higher-level tasks => the strategic aspect of your leadership role suffers.

The chain continues: Work slows down because you become the bottleneck. Your basic attitude will most likely lead you to not trust your people much in other areas either => this, in turn, is noticed, because people aren’t stupid => the satisfaction of the resilient employees drops, as does the self-confidence of the fragile ones => this, in turn, impairs performance in an operation that’s already—because of you—slowed down => which, in turn, confirms to you that the workforce isn’t really up to much, and so on. 

Domino Effect: By operating under a negative assumption, you create a lot of problems for yourself and ultimately block the path to growth-oriented, effective leadership. At best, you’ll keep day-to-day operations running with a great deal of effort. Development largely falls by the wayside. Assuming selfishness is the primary motivation is therefore not only usually wrong but also unwise given its consequences.

What cannot be denied is that there can certainly be a temptation to pursue one’s own interests. Whether I actually do so depends not least on the cultural signals I receive. And this is where a company can provide countless cues: from employer branding to the recruitment process, the onboarding experience, and all the way to what people experience in their day-to-day work (especially with leaders), how the company handles things that go wrong, and so on.

Keep an eye on what’s happening in the company? Yes, of course, because good leadership is active and present—but in a positive way, with the intention of bringing out the constructive potential that’s already there: exemplifying goodwill, talking about it, explicitly using it as a guiding principle, highlighting and reinforcing it, rewarding it, and trusting it. And in those very small areas where destructive behavior does occur: intervene decisively and clearly, without becoming aggressive.

What the first domino looks like—the one you knock over—shapes everything that follows. And that first domino lies within you. 

Bill O’Brien, former CEO of the Hanover Insurance Group, put it this way: “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.”

And Walt Whitman put something similar into poetry: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

So which way should it go? Domino.