Connecting Stewardship and Diversity
One of the biggest errors a leader can make is to hire team members who are direct reflections of themselves. Yes, it can be temporarily convenient to surround yourself with people who always agree with you, or who share your own perspectives, but in the long-term, this type of hiring behavior will hinder growth, innovation, and forward momentum. A balancing act all leaders must grapple with is the short-term benefit of moving fast with minimal drag from a personally curated “Team Yes,” versus the long-term satisfaction that comes from building a diverse team that will simultaneously challenge, support, and push the boundaries of your current state positions and thinking.
“Team Yes” can certainly be fun to work with, and it’s easy to get lulled into a false sense that you’re doing the right thing by nurturing colleagues who will follow your lead without question. “This whole business leadership thing will be a heck of a lot easier if everyone looks, talks, and thinks like me,” the rationale goes. However, over time, it can become exhausting to always be the smartest person in the room with all the answers, all of the time.
Can you really be the smartest person in the room all the time? The answer to this question is an emphatic “no.” The belief that you’re the smartest person in the room is akin to having a fixed mindset. With a fixed mindset, you’re not open to other opinions, and as a result, are not open to growth and change unless you’re the architect of said growth and change. Worse yet, if you’re the only one making decisions because all decisions have to pass through you, the likelihood that you’ll make a poor decision increases relative to an environment of collaboration and constructive conflict.
Alternatively, by surrounding yourself with “Team Diverse,” (the opposite of “Team Yes”) you are sending clear signals to yourself and the rest of the business that you know success in business is challenging. You know that there are no shortcuts. You know that the Staples® “Easy Button” is a mythical device. You’re sending a signal that you’re open to feedback, possess a growth mindset, and that your ego is not fragile.
Business is hard no matter how you cut it, so as a leader it’s best to be realistic, authentic, growth-oriented, and appropriately vulnerable versus the alternative leader persona of being a directive “boss” with all the answers and a tight grip on information and decision-making.
In “Team Yes,” everyone on the team knows that you’re not the smartest person in the room but they’re reticent to challenge you or any of their colleagues directly. So in “Team Yes,” on the surface it appears the team is trusting and cohesive because everyone is hypothetically aligned. But in reality, mistrust and passive aggressive behaviors lurk just below the surface.
So, if you self-identify as a directive “boss” who’s surrounded by “Team Yes” and want to make a change, congratulations! Having this level of self-awareness is half the battle. The question then becomes how to make the shift from directive boss to a strong, growth-oriented leader. In my own leadership journey, this shift became possible when I started to think of my role as being one of a steward of the business. Businesses are going concerns and can hypothetically last forever, but our human experience is finite.
Adopting a stewardship mindset shifted my perspective away from my personal ownership of the business - which is, by definition, finite because I am finite - and toward the viewpoint that the business is a going concern that will outlive me. Since the business will outlive me, I have a responsibility to build teams that will work to maximize long-term value to all stakeholders - employees, shareholders, and customers. Loads of research supports the notion that “Team Diverse” outperforms “Team Yes” across myriad metrics. Building “Team Diverse” and viewing the world through the lens of a steward makes good business sense.
Oh, and I can attest that my life changed for the better when (a) I started thinking more about “we” than “me,” (b) I owned up to the fact that I’m not the smartest person in the room, and (c) began seeking out colleagues who challenged me and had a high likelihood of one day surpassing me.
