Nowadays corporate life is no longer as simple as it was before. First we had a boss, who had employees. The boss told the employees what their tasks were and they executed the work. A really simple, straight-forward approach. But now things have changed, the HR experts came, then the coaches, the business consultants, the psychologists, the tribal healers, everyone equipped with the newest trends. What in the past was a simple black and white organigram, became a colorful piece of art. The trends came and went, the professionals were trained, coached, and finally convinced to be a leader, and not a boss anymore.
The boss turned out to be the evil villain of the story. Nobody desires to have a boss and – for god’s sake! – to become one. Being a leader is nice. You work with people who deeply respect you, you feel good about yourself, you are a kind of superhero. But is being a leader good for your career? Continue reading
- A leader looks downstairs, the boss upstairsA leader sees the satisfaction of his team as the key of the success. Because a motivated team has a better performance, the leader will spend a huge amount of time trying to make his team to feel good, empowered and recognized. The boss might care more or less about his employees, his priority is clearly to cause a positive impression at his superiors. Who is closer to being promoted? The boss, for sure! His superiors might promote him or indicate him for another position, but his team will unlikely be able to influence such a decision. Have you ever seen a team going to the streets to claim their leader’s rights? If you have seen it, you probably won’t see it again.
- A leader delegates, the boss concentratesThe leader sees himself as part of the team and tries to share his responsibilities, avoiding to concentrate information. He feels safe, his employees know a lot about the project and in an emergency he can always rely on someone to substitute him in an important meeting or decision. The boss, on the other hand, usually executes important tasks by himself and the whole company goes crazy when he is out of reach.
One day the company is facing bankruptcy or a department must be shut down. Unlikely? Come on, financial crises are expected every five to seven years, it is part of the game. The leader has a much higher paycheck than his subordinates, but they can easily substitute him. So, who gets fired? The leader, of course. The boss might loose his team, but he will never loose his paycheck.
- A leader cares about potentials, a boss cares about factsThe new leadership trend is to discover the potential of your employees and help them to overcome themselves. Maybe it means that you have an employee with great unused talent and you are thrilled about polishing this undiscovered jewel, making him stick to the company. But it is more likely that it means you have some low-average employee that could do a better job.
The boss doesn't care much about low-performance employees and instead of trying to spend time making one a brighter person, he might just get rid of him and hire the right one. It might sound heartless, but it is not for nothing that charity organizations are “non-profit”.
If you have believed all these years on the leadership fairytale you might be very angry now. I know, I know, you are waiting impatiently to say, “The leader’s employees perform better!”. Yes, you have a good point here. The team managed by a leader, with motivated, engaged people, who share knowledge and trust each other may lead to better outcomes. But the question is: who cares?
Nobody does. Well, maybe someone does care about your performance, but not that much. Managers love to talk about results but they rarely make effort to measure it. If you are responsible for an assembly line or for a sales team, you probably have some hard numbers to describe your achievements, but if you leads an engineering team, nobody really knows if you deliver a good work or not.
Having said that, the leader cares about outcomes and tries to get the best of his team, but the CEO, the CFO, and even the CTO does probably have no idea what you are doing. Or even your manager. Your team might make a great refactoring on your framework and getting everything tested, while your managers are only complaining about the time you need to get things done. Or you might build a horrible software as a monstrous collection of bugs and be praised about your record developing time.
Moral of this story: don’t overestimate quality! It might be good for your company, but it doesn’t mean it is good for you.
Sounds crazy? Welcome to the Insanity Corp.
Irrationality is spreading over your company? We help you getting more from your employees and help them getting more from you! Send us an email, we will be glad to hear from you! contact@insanitycorp.com
