To be Liked or Respected: The Lovable Slacker

Featured image source: Valeriy Kachaev

Brad, the “like me” leader

Peter was a popular member of the Accounts team. He had a good sense of humour, was warm, enthusiastic, and rarely displayed signs of stress. He had an excellent relationship with his boss, Brad, who valued Peter’s energy and ideas to improve workplace harmony. This lightened an otherwise serious work environment Brad had always found challenging. They had worked together for a few years and considered each other as friends.

While not officially Brad’s deputy, Peter had been in the team the longest. He felt with that tenure, on top of his great relationship with Brad, he had some entitlement to act more as a supervisor than an actual collector of overdue accounts.

Brad was aware of some office rumblings about Peter’s work performance. His effort to meet regular deadlines was inconsistent. This meant others in the team (including Brad) picking up Peter’s slack. Brad did get frustrated at times when reviewing Peter’s work, as his accuracy was below the standard expected of somebody familiar with their job. Brad did feel Peter was capable of better output but was prepared to offer him grace given the contribution he made to office dynamics.

At times Brad felt he might need to have a conversation with Peter about his performance, but then he would see Peter’s strengths at play, and put those plans on hold.

Around the same time Brad had a performance discussion with his boss, Sue. She had been receiving feedback about Brad’s team, that general standards had been slipping. She produced data that demonstrated average collection days for Accounts had increased by 10% over the past quarter. The slippage was evident across his team. This was putting a drain on company cash flow. Brad joked “Things have been a bit chaotic, but that’s how we roll”. Realising Sue wasn’t buying that, Brad committed to personally fix the situation.

Brad was displaying several of the characteristics associated with “like me” leadership. He put a heightened focus on being liked and would take on more work to keep the peace, rather than delegate. It took a conversation with his boss before he acted to fix a core function of the team, all the while knowing things weren’t operating as they should. Above all, Brad found ways to delay a performance discussion with Peter, fearing this would de-motivate his friend, potentially raise conflict, and create discomfort for an ally.

Reflection Point: What do you think some other impacts of Brad’s behaviour might be?

Sally, the “respect me” leader

A few months later, Brad was replaced as Team Leader of Accounts by Sally. She had come from another team in the company and was well regarded for her humility and developing others. Sally had no previous Accounts experience, but saw this as a good opportunity to broaden her skill set.

Sally’s first step was to speak individually with members of the team. She asked them what they liked about their roles, what they would like to fix within the team, and how much career development they had undertaken. She was most shocked to find there had been no structured training for at least 12 months. The team members said that when they approached Brad about training opportunities, he always said he would get to it “When things settled down”.

When Sally spoke with Peter about his role within the team, it became apparent Peter was operating without any distinct role description. There were no metrics relied upon to measure his performance. Despite outstanding accounts increasing, Peter was still rated “Satisfactory” at his last review, which appeared as a “tick and flick” exercise with little rigour. Peter told Sally that Brad’s approach to performance management was that everyone always received the same rating, because he said “Accounts is pretty boring work, and if anyone got upset and left he would find it hard to replace them”.

Sally was shocked at this response, but was starting to see the true picture of the team she had inherited. Wanting to build trust and earn respect, she began to map out how she would approach her new role.

Knowing she did not need to become an expert at accounts, Sally still wanted to generate a sound working knowledge of the function. She asked the team members lots of questions. When she struck something she found unusual, she chose to ask coaching questions rather than tell the team what they should do. Sally was pleased to see a few changes made as a result of this. The team members were just happy somebody was listening to them.

Sally developed a simple weekly dashboard that tracked operational performance, assigning a “traffic light” system that left no doubt how each metric stood. Around this time Sally engaged her HR Partner to develop a new set of performance scorecards for the team, covering financial results, process improvements, and professional development. Though she felt some initial hesitation at the rollout, some members of the team soon quietly confided in her and said “Thank you. Now we have some direction”.

Adapted from LeadersToolbelt.com

Through this change, Peter had been unusually quiet. His metrics had improved slightly, though not as much as some of his peers. Sally took Peter out for a coffee and offered some developmental feedback, using the SBI (Situation/Behaviour/Impact) model. She referred back to a team meeting the previous day where Peter had made lots of excuses about why certain customers hadn’t paid their accounts. Sally had made a note of his defensive behaviour, and asked what he hoped to achieve using that approach. Peter thought if he came down hard on his customers, they would stall for longer. Sally challenged him with “You’re a conversational guy. You build rapport easily. Think of the impact you could have if you gave your customers more context. Have you thought about explaining why it matters to them and us to settle their accounts promptly?”.

Peter was taken aback by this, which Sally noted. She explained she was doing this not to be nice to Peter, but kind. Sally could see there was a more successful Accounts Officer in Peter, and wanted to give him the opportunity to demonstrate that. She left him to reflect on that, and made herself available for a follow-up discussion.

The limitations of needing to be liked

Humans have an in-built desire to be liked. Psychology tells us that is because connection was vital for ancient survival, to be fed and protected. If you think of it intuitively, we know that being likeable helps us with social connections, which is great for our physical and mental health. It opens doors and generally makes our lives easier to live.

But the dynamics change when we are in leadership positions, particularly for new leaders. Unsure of their position and often with very limited preparation, there is potential to flip into a state of needing to be liked. We saw that in the example here with Brad. His over-arching desire seemed to be keeping the peace, conflict avoidance and short-term comfort. He certainly appeared friendly, polite and generous, but chose that path over team performance, their development and even his own well-being (taking on the work of others).

Contrast that with Sally. She led with what researcher Ruth Gotian refers to as “power skills”, or human skills. This includes things like the ability to engage, listen, empathise, and build trust at scale.

In her recent Harvard Business Review article “Why Leaders Need Power Skills”, Gotian wrote “Hard skills get you promoted. Power skills keep you there”. We saw Sally demonstrate some of these through her deliberate listening to understand her teams’ problems, not to solve them. She demonstrated empathy by putting herself in the shoes of her team and wondering how they could achieve any goals when they didn’t know what they were aiming for. And she was also prepared to constructively challenge Peter by having the developmental conversation with him Brad was not prepared to have. Sally was motivated to do the right thing, not the easy thing.

What Peter did next

Sally was not surprised when Peter approached her to say he would begin looking for another role. After reflecting on their conversation, Peter realised he was overdue for a role change and had probably felt that way for a while. Without expressly saying it, he knew Brad’s “like me” style without guard rails had created an environment for Peter and others to drop their work standards over time. Sally did offer Peter the opportunity to stay and further develop his skills through a coaching approach. However, Peter knew Accounts wasn’t the right place for him. He thanked Sally for her honesty and knew this decision would be beneficial for his longer-term career.

In conclusion

Ultimately, Sally’s ability to connect with the Accounts team at a different level is what drove the outcomes observed here. Armed with the knowledge the team did not come to work to do a sub-par job, she used her power skills to open their minds to a different way of working. She allowed them to make choices – including Peter’s decision to walk away. Ultimately, every action she took was about performance improvement.

Reflection Point: Is there a “respect me” leader you have observed? What is it about their style you found most effective?

In the next article in this series, I will examine how like me/respect me leadership can influence teams during a time of organisational change.

The story, characters, events and situations described in this article are entirely fictional and have been created for illustrative purposes. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental. The fictional examples are intended only to help explain and illustrate the ideas discussed in this article and should not be taken as factual accounts or representations of real individuals or events.

Lewis Williams is the Founder of Cadence Leadership Advisory, which offers leadership coaching, team leadership development services and strategy and organisational culture support. A former commercial banker with significant experience as a leader of people, he is a certified organisational coach, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and regularly facilitates development programs as Adjunct Faculty with the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM).