Leaders ask hard questions, create problems

The man in charge of a financial-services center was faced with a conference room full of concerned managers. A new fad was spreading among the line workers — Mohawk haircuts. What are you going to do about it? his middle managers wanted to know. The executive looked at each of the earnest faces in turn, then said, ‘‘If you need me to make your decisions, why do I need you?’’

As soon as the boss left, I suspect those managers were soon grumbling, ‘‘Well if we make all the decisions, why do we need you?’’

Which brings us to the topic of the day: What is the true purpose of upper management? Is it to:

• Help middle managers by answering their questions and otherwise solving their problems?
• Check up on them?
• Offer them glimpses of the private jet to spur them on to want to achieve upper-management status?

One of the common complaints of managers is that they can’t get any work done because there is a line of employees outside the door, waiting to have their problems solved. They are like those people who complain that they spend their days letting the cat out, then letting the cat in, then letting the cat out. Who’s in charge? The cat, of course. Likewise, if you spend your days taking employees’ problems from them, then you have defaulted on your job as teacher and placed them in charge of your work

So if the role of leaders is not solving problems and answering queries, what is it? Could it be that it’s creating problems and asking hard questions?What got me thinking about the roles of the levels of management was discussing consensus with one of my favorite gifted bosses, Rick Hamada. He’s just been promoted to COO of Avnet, Inc., the $14 billion electronics and computer-products distributor (who, by the way, is proud of not owning a corporate jet). Hamada started in technical support, was so good with customers he was pulled into sales, and has risen through the company by being the sort of leader who makes you want him to succeed, while making you want to accomplish more yourself. Which brings us neatly to the topic of the day.

Hamada says this of goal-setting with group leaders: ‘‘In my experience, if you simply ask the people in charge of different contributions what they think they [and their teams] can achieve, they will generally set targets they have a high confidence in achieving — plus a bit of cushion, ‘just in case.’ The more closely you link compensation to reaching or surpassing these goals, the more incentive you might be providing to create this leadership challenge.’’ And why not? It’s human nature to choose a game you know you can win.

Hamada adds: ‘‘If we, as a company’s leaders, are just asking, ‘What can you do?’ And then saying, ‘OK, go do it,’ then what are we contributing? Is that leadership? When you help someone — or a lot of someones — get to a place he didn’t think he could get to, that’s leadership.’’

Following Hamada’s lead, we can arrive at two conversations that upper management can choose to have.

The consensus conversation:

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT: ‘‘Here’s what we can do.’’

UPPER MANAGEMENT: ‘‘OK, go do it.’’

The problem with consensus is that it turns executives into pollsters. Your goal becomes finding goals with which everyone is comfortable — cushioned certainty, management from the Barcalounger.

Leadership, by contrast, offers the excitement of heading into the frontier, putting exploration ahead of comfort and certainty and leading to this:

The leadership conversation:

UPPER MANAGEMENT: ‘‘Can you do it?’’

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT: ‘‘I can’t wait to find out.’’

Dale Dauten is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at dale@dauten.com.