Mastering "takeaway Leadership"

Mastering "Takeaway Leadership"

Effective managers remove obstacles for employees -- and then step aside to let them do their jobs

The recent flurry of CEO firings (Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) Carly Fiorina, Merck's (MRK) Raymond Gilmartin, Boeing's (BA) Harry Stonecipher) has again raised the issue of leadership.

It's tempting to ask: Has the job of CEO for a megacompany become too complex to handle? Is it asking too much of just one person to expect him or her to build fruitful relationships throughout an industry and the financial community, deliver revenues and earnings that excite the stock market, launch ambitious initiatives for the long term, and avoid product, financial, and sexual scandals -- all while presenting a perennially pleasant personality?

The answer is no, it isn't expecting too much, in part because all of that comes second to a CEO's paramount responsibility. That should be to shape the organization's goals, to communicate them through many levels to the people who are charged with getting the work done, and to demand -- and reward -- behaviors that demonstrate the company's ethical values and standards. This is one of those "simple, but not easy" tasks, and it's a critical one to master. Often, CEOs get credit for everything good that happens in a company when, in fact, their greatest impact comes from influencing the people who report to them.

OBSTACLE REMOVER. I had a boss, John, who understood this well. I haven't heard a better description of leadership than the one he shared with his team at an offsite meeting. He said: "As your president, I'm here to help you be successful. You already know the company's goals and how your job fits into that picture. If any of that is unclear, I'll expect to hear from you. My job is to take away any obstacles that keep you from succeeding. Then, it's just you and the goal line. If there's an obstacle between you and any of our targets, I need to know about it."

What sorts of obstacles was John referring to? Things like red tape, office politics, hierarchical nonsense (a vice-president won't return a director's phone call, for instance), disagreement about direction, territorial disputes, and so on. John's speech was short, but it left three critical impressions:

1 Everyone knew that the usual complaints and excuses (the guy wouldn't call me, I couldn't get the information, I was held up by HR) wouldn't fly in John's organization.

2 They also understood that they had a powerful advocate for simplifying and clarifying the process of hitting the group's goals and every individual's targets.

3 Everyone understood that their enemies were all outside the building -- and that the focus was on Us vs. Them, not Us vs. Us or Us vs. Those Horrible People in Accounting.

DELEGATING RESPONSIBILITY. Thinking about leadership in terms of removing obstacles, rather than of piling on demands, makes the CEO role seem more useful and more humane. "You already know what to do" is a powerful message. It reassures managers that they needn't scurry back to the boss for further instructions every week, month, or quarter.

It also positions the leader as the person who really needs to know when artificial (man-made) blockages are keeping employees from hitting their marks. Imagine that -- a boss who wants to make my job easier!

In a subtle sort of way, this style that I'll call Takeaway Leadership also shifts responsibility to all the other managers: No longer can they say nothing when confronted by an obstacle, then complain that it kept them from succeeding.

SECOND THOUGHTS. A CEO who takes this approach can make corporate veterans uncomfortable: You want me to tell my lofty boss about some petty political incident? Well, yes and no. You should tell the boss if the petty politics were keeping you from being successful. And yet -- is it possible that the prospect of explaining to Mr. Big that Jane is touchy or that Javier won't share his research might motivate you to try one more time to work things out with them? Yes, I thought so.

Or say your new marketing idea sounds nifty to you, but you can't sell it to sales. Do you bring that problem