The parallel dimension of leadership
“ An MBA matters, but… The part that’s most important in an education is how to deal with people. There’s no job I know that you do by yourself (…) In the end, it’s people skills that you need. Whether you remember that Columbus arrived in 1492 or not — a lot of the facts that you memorize are immaterial.”
Indeed. This quote from Michael Bloomberg is spot on. There’s no comparison between what we can do by ourselves and what can be achieved as a team. In the longer run, being able to help people grow and be at their best is way more impactful than any specific knowledge or hard skill.
I recently shared the post above and got some interesting questions from young managers so I am expanding on the topic. Thank you for all your comments and I hope this adds relevant color to it.
I will not go into developing specific people skills (e.g. listening, caring, empathy, and so on) because I do not believe developing them is the bottleneck for most qualified leaders. The major bottleneck is prioritizing and using them. It turns out we frequently focus too much on the task at hand and forget the interpersonal dynamics present in every human interaction, The Parallel Dimension in Leadership (if you would like to explore people skills and have not yet read Dale Carnegie’s 1937 classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, I highly recommend it — despite the somewhat corny title).
Think of your meetings and how focused on its goals (e.g. solving a discrete problem) you usually are. One hundred percent? Great right? Not necessarily. While achieving the meeting’s goals is important; as a leader, you should also always be aiming at improving your ability to influence/lead the team. At the end of the day, it is what enables you to achieve strategic objectives in the longer run. If you put all your energy in problem solving alone, you run the risk of alienating team members, which will seriously hamper your ability to execute in the future.
In every interaction I have with our teams, I currently (this has varied with the maturity of the company) invest on average 50% of my energy paying attention to people’s successes that I can genuinely praise, to improvement opportunities that I can pencil down for future feedback sessions, and to any red flags in team culture that can compromise anyone’s individual contribution. The other 50% is dedicated to the actual business task itself. If I feel there is a trade off between completing the business task and improving my ability to influence/lead the team, I pick the latter in 90% of the time. It is much easier to set aside more time, refine a plan, or run additional A/B tests than to regain your ability to inspire and engage the team.
Awareness of this parallel dimension is just as important in our personal lives. Say you are playing board games or having a political conversation with your colleagues. What matters most to you: winning the game/debate or increasing your ability to influence that group going forward? Picking the movie/restaurant or consolidating the harmony between you and your partner?
Being aware of this ever present parallel dimension is the first step in prioritizing and therefore using your people skills. Frequently, our hectic schedules and never ending To-Do lists overly direct our focus to task completion. Fight that, add a perennial “remember the parallel dimension” item to the top your To-Do list until it becomes a habit to you. My bet it that you already have most of the people skills you need, it is just a simple matter of remembering their importance and putting them to use a little more often!
