What Matters Most

Thanks to Sharon for this blog topic, provided via comments.  I love comments.

One of the most common mistakes leaders make is losing sight of what matters most.  Unless you are a business owner, even though you are a leader, you still have a leader that you are accountable to.  While it is important to keep your leader happy, focusing up can destroy your ability to be a leader of happy people.

From my perspective, the two most important groups are your employees, and your clients.  You can look at your leadership as a client, and that is probably the best way to keep that relationship healthy.  When a leader is all about growing their career, that becomes the objective they focus on.  Healthy organizations are focused on organizational goals, and help their work group or team see how the work they are doing support that larger organizational goal.

Leaders who are working on their career, as opposed to the organizational goals create instability in two ways.  One, if you are focused on looking good to your superiors, you can lose sight of the larger organizational goals.  When that superior changes, you may have left your organization in jeopardy, because the contribution your organization is making to those goals may have eroded.  Two, when leaders are about keeping the person they work for happy, instead of focusing on real contributions to the organizations goals, there is a good chance a change in leadership at the next level will result in your removal.

In my 35 years and 3 months of full-time employment, I had 16 different first-level leaders, and at least another 30 second-level leaders, in addition to the leaders I provided service to who were not in my line organization.  I can say with complete honesty, in all of that time, I only had one leader that I would never want to work for again, and that leader was focused on looking good and getting ahead, not on organizational objectives.

The 16 leaders weren't neatly spaced either.  I had a couple of long-term relationships, three leaders for three years each, two leaders for 4 years each, another for 6 years (because that was a GREAT leader - six of the best professional years of my life).  In those times of leader transitions, the best asset I had was the strength of my goals and the alignment of my goals to the success of the organization.

I'm not advocating that leaders have adversarial relationships with their leaders.  What I do advocate is holding your leaders accountable to stay aligned with the organization.  It is totally acceptable to ask how an initiative supports the larger organizational goals.  It is also appropriate to challenge when goals change with a leadership change.  Keep the focus on alignment.  Don't confront - solicit understanding.  An opening like "This seems to be a different direction than with the previous leader.  Can you help me craft the message to my team as to how this direction better supports the organization's goals?"  or "I'd like to understand how you see my team supporting the organizational goals.  Here is how I see it, are we in alignment?" You may end up working for someone who is so focused on working on their career, they don't care about alignment to organizational goals, and only care about you and your team in how you can make them look good.  When confronted with that reality, your job is to find out how to protect your people, and carefully craft your messaging so that your people don't lose hope.

There is always a way to be inspirational for your people.  When you focus on your leader, or your career, it is almost impossible to be inspirational.  Inspired people are happy people.  Happy people are productive people who are a joy to interact with.  Do everything you can to preserve your team's joy.