Be a “Do” Leader
As a part of the Craft of Mentoring series at the ExCo Group, I sat down with my colleague Adam Bryant to talk staying close to the work without micromanaging, among other things. For the complete article, read more here.
Bryant: What to you is the secret sauce of effective mentoring?
Bradshaw: When you first get into a mentoring relationship, it’s usually under the auspices of helping someone who has just moved into a new role or helping them get ready for a promotion. Often, you find that people at these senior levels have a strength that is overplayed–they are really good at execution, for example, but they need to be more strategic.
That said, you have to really dial into the most essential part of someone and peel back the onion through mentoring to help them understand themselves better. I always say that I seek truth and I speak truth. So I try to create an environment that is comfortable and safe enough for my client to be as truthful as possible.
Do they really want the promotion? What are they seeking in their lives right now? Understanding their “why” then drives the rest of the mentoring engagement. Why people are the way they are, and even the way people think about why they are the way they are, ends up being the work itself.
Bryant: Is there a difficult conversation that you had to have with a client that ultimately landed in a good place?
Bradshaw: Because life doesn’t stop for our clients, I’ve had a few who didn’t make the time or space for coaching because they are so busy. So I’ve had conversations where I’ve had to say to them, “This is one of the few hours in the week that’s entirely yours, and it’s a chance for you to step back so that you can step forward. You can decide to continue to be the hero and make every meeting and hop on every plane, but you’re not going to be seen as the hero. You’re still going to be dinged for these things that you need to work on.”
That tends to help them understand the need to make our time together more of a priority. As a leader, you can’t just be reactive. You have to protect your time to do the deeper thinking.
Bryant: What’s the wisest thing you’ve read, heard, or said in the context of leadership?
Bradshaw: It’s essential to stay close to the work itself and understand your product and your team. You don’t want to micromanage and get in the way, but you still need to feel the heat of the kitchen. The insights you’ll get from staying close to the work will help you to be more informed in the way you lead.
Another angle of that theme is that I look to hire people who are “do” leaders. I once made the mistake of hiring someone for a vice president role to oversee operations. They had a law degree and an MBA, and I assumed they were smarter and more capable than me. But all they wanted to do was push paper around and manage people. This person just really didn’t understand the idea of getting the dirt under their nails.
There’s something about being in the work that has definitely kept me sharp over the years, and something I encourage others to never lose sight of. It’s a balancing act because people are always telling leaders that they have to get out of the weeds and be more strategic. But I know that I’m at my best strategically when I have insights from doing the work itself. That’s how I lead, and that’s how I encourage others to lead, as well.
p.s. I first wrote about Do Leadership in 2016 on Medium: Do Leadership is the new Thought Leadership
