A Leadership Imperative:
The concepts of caring and ruthlessness seem justifiably incompatible. They actually contradict each other. Ruthless literally mean lacking compassion, even demonstrating cruelty. But as a function of leadership it makes perfect sense. The capacity to care ruthlessly is one of the critical qualities that define exceptional leadership.
Most people understand the concept of “tough love.” While it can be challenging to resist being compliant with the demands of people we care deeply about, the risk of enabling unhealthy and especially dangerous behavior amounts to being compassionate. Parents, spouses and friends eventually come to understand we not only risk causing harm and even physical injury to those we enable – but realize that there are often other potential innocent victims that we must remove from harm’s way.
Tough love often means making painful choices that require courage and a commitment to discipline tied to a clear sense that we are not just doing something good – we are doing what is necessary.
Leaders face similar challenges. You may find yourself enabling behaviors of employees that are self-destructive in terms of their personal growth and professional advancement – and harmful to the organization.
Whenever you tolerate poor performance – or make excuses for incompetence – you are not only risking harm to the performance of the business – you are actually depriving those employees of the opportunity to become competent performers. How much of the dysfunction within your business is a result of the poor performance you tolerate?
Your role as a leader is to guide and support the performance of others – so that they can contribute to a greater good.
Leadership is not lining people up into position. It is getting people to perform in a way that serves a defined collective purpose – by choosing to get themselves in line.
This is a balancing act that helps people choose to behave in service to a greater good rather than for their own personal needs. Studies (and common sense) show that people actually perform better when they are willing to contribute to a shared purpose. Exceptional leadership causes people to feel inspired to perform conscientiously and stretch themselves beyond the point where they begin to feel uncomfortable.
The passion and perseverance that Angela Duckworth describes in her best-selling book “Grit” is most observable in organizations where there is the presence of exceptional leadership.
When you see someone who demonstrates grit – you might correctly assume that it is just their constitution or their personality. While there are people who don’t require any outside intervention to get themselves to perform to their highest potential, it is safe to say they are not the majority of people working jobs.
When we see a group of high-performers working effectively as a team – you can be assured – that team wasn’t assembled by accident. You can also be confident that leadership of that group had something to do with their performance. High-performers tend to be competitive – and not necessarily strong team players. While they typically do not have much patients for engaging with poor performers – or anyone who interferes with their ability to go about their business – they don’t tend to effortlessly gravitate into the company of other high-performers.
But they are attracted to leaders who recognize their capacity to perform and ensure that their accomplishments are both meaningful and valued. The highest performers, those we consider true virtuosos tend to be especially independent. Their inner drive for improvement creates a sense of self-satisfaction that is more gratifying than external rewards. It takes exceptional leadership to harness this energy – and focus it on accomplishing extraordinary things that would be otherwise impossible.
Leadership is especially critical to teams of high-performers. Not just for direction and cohesion – but for the performance of the team itself.
A close examination of teams of high-performers clearly shows that the team’s performance is dependent on their being effective leadership. Navy SEAL teams in training are a clear example.
In their book, “Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win,” Jocko Willink & Leif Babin describe that during “hell week” where candidates are tested in teams under extreme stress have demonstrated that failing teams can be turned around by replacing the team leader. In other words, leadership matters even when dealing with elite talent.
How Should Leaders Demonstrate That They Care?
The answer depends on how you understand what it means to demonstrate caring.
Everyone cares about something – but not everyone cares about the same things. It’s also not what you care about – but how you express it.
If by caring you mean a leader should exhibit warmth and compassion – the evidence suggests the answer could be no. There are countless examples of highly effective leaders who were predictably harsh. There is also strong evidence suggesting that leaders who get too friendly with those in their charge may be compromising their authority or undermining their appearance of fairness by exhibiting favoritism towards their friends.
Being a tyrant, or a boor will not make you a better leader – but choosing to be tough – even if it means appearing to be unfriendly might – provided you can demonstrate a combination of empathy and emotional intelligence.
Many successful leaders deliberately avoid being warm and fuzzy, instead posturing themselves serious-minded and determined. But posing with a tough exterior doesn’t mean you can’t also possess genuine empathy. You don’t need to hug people, pat them on the back – or soothe ruffled emotions to show you care.
Often caring takes the form of being honest, direct when necessary and consistent. Sometimes the best medicine for people who are struggling or foundering is a strong dose of reality. When the prescription is delivered callously the treatment might just make things worse. But people who demonstrate empathy and manage their emotional intelligence get through to people without enabling the behavior that allows people to get in their own way – and stay there.
You must distinguish the difference between caring for – and caring about someone.
Ruthlessly caring is an art. It requires that you understand hat caring about and caring for people are actually two very different things.
Caring for amounts to taking care of the physical needs of others. (The snow monkey carrying her young for example.) Caring about people is an emotional imperative. Caring about people is based on feelings we have – while caring for people can be a simple, unemotional transactional relationship. The problem leaders face is when they conflate the two kinds of caring.
It is not unusual to develop feelings for people we care for. Empathy is a function of emotional intelligence – and a natural tendency for most emotionally healthy people. This is not to say that it is always the case – as it is also quite common for people to grow to resent people we are forced to care for – especially if we see that the ought to be able to care for themlseves.
We have a duty to care for people that cannot care for themselves: infants, the elderly and the infirm. Most any ordinary person with any compassion feels this way. Anyone who doesn’t or can’t would be considered a sociopath.
Similarly, most caring people look to encourage those who can care for themselves to learn how to do so. This is core to the responsibilities and probably the nature of parenting: we aspire to see our children grow up to be independently self-reliant – and ideally productive members of society. We heal the wounded so they might return to living productive lives – and even strive to offer as much independence as possible to the most elderly in order to not just provide comfort – but dignity as well.
The principle of leaving no soldier behind is deeply embedded in the U.S. military. Beyond the strategic benefits, the concept is based in a moral sensibility: a duty to those who serve the same cause and take the same risks. In a practical sense – it means that we carry those who cannot carry themselves – no matter the cost.
This is where leadership comes into the equation. The cost of carrying those who ought to carry themselves is far too great. You must carry those who truly cannot transport themselves. But those who can but simply don’t – need to be pushed forward, and those who can but won’t – meaning those who choose not to, need to be pushed aside – or perhaps carried as prisoners, stripped of their right to choose.
We may have a duty to care for those who cannot care for themselves, but we also a responsibility to have those who can care for themselves take ownership of their own needs – and the consequences of choosing not to.
Ruthlessly Caring vs. Showing Tough Love
Both are similar in function. You must be willing and able to place responsibility where it belongs – and not shield people from the consequences of their behaviors or performance.
To be effective, tough love has to be employed on people who otherwise know you love them. In other words, you cannot offer tough love to strangers – or even those you have a professional relationship with – like your employees.
Walking by and ignoring a street beggar is not an expression of tough love. Nor is a teacher giving a failing grade to an underperforming student. It’s only when the beggar grows to depend on your predictable generosity – or that student expects to scrape by without studying – that the purposeful withholding of your support might lead to a positive change in behavior.
Similarly, as a leader, caring ruthlessly will only work if those you lead know you actually care.
Theodore Roosevelt noted that “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” People might look to you for guidance – but will only follow your guidance when they understand that there is common interest between you.
Most employers feel that they have a responsibility to their employees and take genuine interest in their lives. I have actually never met a business leader who has made a point of not caring about the people that work for them. It not only doesn’t make business sense to have unhappy employees – most business leaders find enormous satisfaction and joy in providing good lives and opportunity for others. It’s one of the great benefits of being in a position to do so.
Leaders who ruthlessly care about their people . The recipient may not recognize it as such – at least in the moment – however, without caring about the recipients wellbeing it is unlikely you will have much impact. The saying goes, “you cannot confer a benefit on an unwilling (or incapable) recipient. Your efforts may fail regardless, but to be an effective leader you must make the effort non-the-less.
Being tough and lacking empathy amounts to bullying. When you are in a position of authority or have power over others – exercising that power for your own benefit is not leadership – it is intimidation.
Finally, lacking true empathy – and coming across warm and fuzzy is pure manipulation. It is how con-artists operate. It is a pure violation of the basic trusting nature of people.
Empathy – when combined with an evolved employment of emotional intelligence is the foundation of exceptional leadership.
When people freely follow a leader it is because they trust how they are being led. People can trust a leader that they disagree with – or even dislike. The functional trust around leadership is based solely on the belief that what can be accomplished is worth the sacrifice.
You don’t necessarily trust the leader as a person – but you trust their leadership. It is a function of believing that there is a shared interest being pursued – or that the leader cares about what’s important to you. As General Eisenhower noted, leaders get people to do what you need them to do by getting them to want to do it. People need to be able to grasp what their leader cares about.
People with low emotional intelligence and little to no empathy are considered to be sociopaths. They can sometimes manipulate and bully their way into positions of power. They may amass legions of sycophants as followers who believe they can tap into the source of power for their own personal benefit. This is the process whereby political autocrats seize power – and enlist a privileged class of followers and well-compensated enforcers of that power.
This kind of typically ruthless behavior – is not caring. It is villainous. Moreover, it is a perilous position that stands only as long as the enforcers are kept from overtaking the castle.
Ruthlessly caring bears no resemblance to autocratic control: it is a function of functioning in a state of contribution. It is clear to those being served that the ruthlessly caring leader is operating in service to a greater good – something larger and beyond themselves. Some people refer to this level of altruism as “servant leadership,” where the needs of the organization are placed firmly ahead of the enrichment or aggrandizing of the leader.
A Leadership Imperative:
If you are truly a leader – you already know that leadership is hard work. It is often tireless, thankless and unforgiving. It is now about seeking glory or rewards – there are far easier ways to achieve these things.
Leadership is about making a difference in the world by making it necessary and possible for others to do so. Unless you care deeply about your purpose – and about how other people perform to serve that purpose – you are unlikely to make the sacrifices needed to be a highly effective and exceptional leader.
But if you do have the mettle to lead others you must have what it takes to make people see what is necessary and understand that accomplishing whatever that is – is possible. Moreover, you must help them inspire themselves to make what is possible necessary to them.
When you do anything less than make it necessary for people to perform to this level – and perform to their real potential – you are, as Dr. Lee Thayer would say, allowing people to default themselves – and by doing defaulting on your responsibility to them as a leader.
Learning to ruthlessly care about people is a necessary function of accomplishing what
matters most. The most worthwhile of human accomplishments are always the product of people doing what others believed could not be done. It is not a function of being delusional – but the result of being purposeful and competent.
Do you care enough to care ruthlessly?
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