— by John Hawkins
In Its Essence, It’s a Lifestyle
Omar was furious. Why wouldn’t Chris and Cindy do their jobs the right way—the way he wanted them done? No matter how many times he told them, no matter how many times he chewed them out and threatened to fire them, they still just couldn’t get it right.
As director of Human Resources, you would think that Chris would know how to train people to stay in line with company policy. And yet their employees always wanted to get around policy—requests for individual work arrangements were constant. Omar had told Chris a hundred times that the company’s greatest challenge was losing control of its employees.
In Omar’s mind, Cindy was even more incompetent than Chris was. He hired her to be a basic “number cruncher,” and he had expected her to provide simple reports that spelled out the company’s finances. But every month, she had a new chart or analysis that was more confusing than the last. Why couldn’t she just do the standard reports familiar to Omar? On top of that problem, Cindy had a habit of sharing the company’s profit information with subordinates, which really sent Omar into a rage. The company’s profitability was no one’s business but the senior officers and stockholders.
As Omar sat in his office fuming over his latest confrontations with Chris and Cindy, he wondered what had happened to his influence. He used to be revered and feared in the company for his innate ability to get people to jump through his hoops. People stayed in their cubicles, got their work done, and went home glad to have a job. They did their work his way. Now it seemed like every chain of control he had was snapping. What had gone wrong with his workforce?
But Omar knew his problems weren’t just at work. He felt as out of control with his wife and kids as he did with his employees. When he had married Mary, he thought she would be a traditional wife and mother. But when the kids had gone to school, she took a part-time job as a receptionist at a nearby real estate company. She claimed she needed adult interaction and some sense of accomplishment in her life.
Now, four years later, she was the top agent in the office with a work schedule that allowed her to be home in the afternoons when the kids got home from school. Her life seemed to move forward just fine without his involvement or input. Their communication focused on scheduling rides for the kids and investments for their retirement. Neither gave or required much from the other. Their careers and kids camouflaged their marital disconnection.
As Omar saw it, leadership was a lot easier in his father’s day. Back then, everyone knew their place and understood the pecking order. Those days were over! Now, he led employees who wouldn’t follow, was married to someone who could get along without him and had kids that seemed to hate to see him come home. As a boss, a husband, and a father, he held leadership positions but didn’t hold the hearts and commitment of those he led.
Omar’s approach to leadership centers on control and position. It is a grab them by the throat and get them to jump through your hoops mentality. In the short term, it can produce results. In the long term, if the followers have freedom and choice, it doesn’t work well at all. Command and control has a transactional rather than transformational impact, and it fails entirely in establishing loyalty.
A more utilitarian approach to leadership is an economic model where you find out what followers want, and you give them that if they do what you want them to do. If they want money, you give them money. If they want experience and training, you give them that. This is how most US businesses operate. It is often how weekly allowance systems between parents and children work. It can work well both in the short term and long term. But like Omar’s coercion approach, a utilitarian approach does not build loyalty. If the follower has freedom and choice, as soon as someone down the street or across the world is offering a little more, he goes after it. Because it was never about loyalty. It was only about the reward.
Lifestyle Leadership has the best chance of gaining long-term loyalty and commitment from constituents. This approach to leadership communicates to the constituents the following proposition: “These are my beliefs and values. They will guide my speech and actions as I lead you. As I model these beliefs and values, I expect that I will win the right to influence you in your development and in our accomplishment of the goals and vision of our organization.”
Lifestyle leaders focus on modeling the values and beliefs that they see are essential to the organization’s success. They also focus on gaining influence with constituents in their development and performance. The power of lifestyle leaders is not coercion or money but their character, competence and commitment that is aligned with God’s character and God’s word.
At a time in which leaders are viewed with rampant cynicism, especially concerning their possession of moral authority, leaders need to remember that their lives are the most powerful leadership tool they possess. In very short-term situations, command and control leadership is sometimes appropriate. Utilitarian pay them so they’ll work is effective in both short-term and long-term contexts. However, if achieving the organizational mission requires sacrificial commitment, this will be gained by the worthiness of the mission and the leader. This is where Lifestyle Leadership is required.
Joan Maxwell, President and Co-Founder of Regulator Marine, talks about the origin story behind Regulator Boats and Why Excellence Matters