Power and Reconciliation

Sometimes problems require creative solutions. 

The role of “leader” can be a formally appointed position or one that is assimilated to naturally, such as the leader of a friend group where everybody recognizes that they are the leader but nobody discusses it. 

I have been in both positions throughout my life and each has posed unique challenges. 

Today, I am going to focus on challenges in formal leadership capacities. 

I am currently a manager and as such get to take on the sometimes challenging duty of assessing associate performance. 

There are many interesting challenges that can come up with these assessments. Sometimes you find a dissonance between performance and perceived performance. This can swing in favor of the associate or out of favor. You then get to broach a challenging topic by setting proper expectations. 

I have learned that if you want it more than the person that you are trying to coach, you can’t will them to success. You can’t force them to live up to the potential that you see in them. Sometimes, even with continuous accountability, you just can’t get them to get out of their own way. 

In times of leadership transitions, you get the joy of figuring out what differences in expectations you have from the previous leader. 

I find that this happens no matter how good the previous leader was. While we try to have uniform expectations for our associates, we are all ultimately individuals which means we all have differing approaches to how we lead our teams. 

This ultimately leads to some degree of friction when there is a changing of hands. 

Eventually, this leads to a challenge that you have to find an ideal solution. 

This solution isn’t always easy to find and it can’t always be addressed in one conversation. 

There are times where this approach is appropriate and there are times where it is best to step back and let yourself think on it. 

Ultimately, you have to find the cause of the friction and find a way to add lubricant to reduce it. 

While this sounds fundamentally easy, you must remember that in working with humans - reactions aren’t always predictable. Sometimes the outcome goes exactly as expected. Others, you will find yourself in law, in the wake of a large learning opportunity. 

I am in the midst of a situation in which there is plenty of tension and I am attempting to find the best solution. 

I believe that I have found it. 

While I won’t share the solution nor situation (I’m sorry - I get annoyed by this too) - I will share that the solution addresses the potential difference in expectations in a leadership opportunity and offers choices to the associate to return some power to them in a situation where they may have been made to feel powerless. 

This choice is an olive branch that I rarely extend but one that I am willing to given the context of the situation. I want to empower this individual whilst communicating the new expectations so they have an opportunity to undo the perceived transgressions and partner with me towards a solution. 

As this is ongoing - I don’t have a solution but my logic feels sound and like it could potentially help remedy the situation. 

Unfortunately, I am blindly throwing a dart at a dartboard to provide a solution as they didn’t clearly present opportunity areas nor the differences in expectations that caused them to feel wrong. 

My hope is that they will be willing to share this when I offer this solution so we can avoid the same issue down the road. 

Understanding you have no context surrounding the situation, imagine that a leader in your organization wronged you and gave you options to attempt to repair how they wronged you. They share their perspective on the situation and try to connect with you to understand where you felt wronged. How would you respond?

Having been on the other side of this situation and having had to handle situations like this in the past, I am trying to provide a solution that I would have found satisfactory as the associate so it feels like this approach could be viable. 

The only way to find out is through another difficult conversation.