"good Leaders Aren't Perfect"

 

The key is: Be willing not just to talk, but to listen to employees. Ask them what they want out of life and work.

INC: Will workers be honest with managers who ask that kind of question?

Maccoby: That's up to the manager. You can't sit down and say: Now Joe, what do you want out of work? I know, of course, you want to make a lot of money and get promoted, but what else?

You've already destroyed the conversation at that point, and you'll never get honest answers. There are many subtle ways in which people pretend to have a conversation but show very clearly that they've already made certain assumptions, that they really aren't interested in listening.

A lot of entrepreneurs have gotten ahead precisely because they didn't listen to other people, as I said earlier. Often, in fact, an entrepreneur is the kind of person who is accustomed to selling himself all the time, so it can be awfully hard to get through to him. If he really wants to hear what people have to say, he's got to work at it. It's not enought to simply give employees the opportunity, because very few are going to have the quickness and aggressiveness to hold their own against him.

INC: Aren't you asking managers to play psychologist?

Maccoby: If you're an engineer or scientist, you recognize that you've got to work with the nature of materials. You can't change or mold plastics or metals as you'd like; you've got to do it within the limits of the material.

What I'm saying is that the human material you have to work with now is different from what it was when our society was based on a craft ethic, or an entrepreneurial ethic. The better you understand that material, the better you can work with it and the more effective an organization you can develop.

The current change in your human material is not just a fad or fashion. When we moved from a society of small businesses and farms to a large organized society, where less than 10% of us are self-employed, that meant a shift in emphasis on what's important for success: away from independence and toward flexibility and cooperation.

At the same time, technology began to demand new skills. Brain work has been replacing physical work, and brain work requires more educated people. More education means more diversity in the way people think. That, in turn, is encouraging a value system that says: No authority has the right to tell me what to do without giving me a good reason.

These changes are deeply rooted. Unless you take account of them and understand them, you're not apt to inspire employees, especially younger ones.

These people are oriented much more to self than to a craft or money-making or winning. Why? Because the whole modern organization of society has made it a problem for people to develop a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging somewhere. For many people, it just doesn't happen naturally, the way it used to.

INC: Are you suggesting that we're moving away from from the independence and individualism that lead to self-employment? Aren't others -- for example, members of the Reagan Administration -- saying just the opposite?

Maccoby: Yes, to both questions. There's been a great deal of romanticism, which isn't supported by the evidence, about a new entrepreneurial revolution. The question I think we must ask is: What percentage of our population is willing and able to succeed as entrepreneurs and small business owners? My own answer is that the percentage of self-employed will hold fairly level, at around 8% of the total work force, or decrease.

We no longer can look forward to the unlimited growth that spawned the great entrepreneurial era when we were building this country. Now we have a very complex, interdependent society. Nothing is simple, nothing is unlimited. I think entrepreneurs will continue to thrive in areas of business where there's no economy in scale and in new areas like software, genetic engineering, and other high-technology fields. The latter are open to only a small segment of the population, though -- the highly technical, highly educated, and unusually energetic. We're kidding ourselves if we think self-employment is realistic for the vast majority of us.

Yet, it's true that many people want their own businesses. They are not going to be able to succeed at them, however, and that will lead to a great deal of frustration. That frustration is one reason we're going to need such good managers; these people will have to be managed so they'll feel productive and challenged, not like losers.

At the same time, I think we're starting to see a waning in the desire to be self-employed as part of the new social character. People don't want to put as much of themselves into their work as it takes to run your own business. In The Leader I cite studies that show even currently self-employed people are less satisfied than they were 10 years ago. They're unhappy with the insecurity, the risk, the long hours.

This has some serious implications for society, which we should deal with realistically, not by painting romantic pictures or lapsing into pessimism. Any social character has both positives and negatives, and this one is no different. The positives are that more people are concerned with developing and improving themselves. More people are experimental and tolerant, and want to participate in what they consider an equitable and meaningful enterprise.The negatives are a tendency toward selfish escapism, flexibility so extreme it becomes prostitution to whatever comes along, and a lack of respect for authority that can mean getting as much, and giving as little, as you can in order to beat the system.

Which set of attitudes do you get? I think it depends largely on what kind of leaders you have, whether in a company or a country. Never before has leadership been so crucial, in fact, because never before has the social character been so flexible and volatile.

I believe that leadership in the work-place is absolutely essential in terms of how people choose to lead their leves. You have so much opportunity: either to manage the same old way and create the cynicism that results in people saying, "All I want to do is draw my paycheck," or to really involve people and bring out the best in this new social character.

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