Chris Kolenda, founder of SLA, helps principled business owners who want to drive their growth at the right time, with the right team, in the right way.

How the best leaders avoid being Prigozhined

Frustrated by the Ukraine war, the Russian military’s incompetence, and reported efforts to dismantle his Wagner mercenary group, warlord Yevgeney Prigozhin took over the Rostov-on-Don military headquarters and sent columns of loyalists toward Moscow in what appeared to be a coup to overthrow Vladimir Putin or capture senior military officials. After a day of drama, Prigozhin stood down and accepted exile in Belarus, where he’ll need food tasters and to avoid tall buildings with open windows.

In business, many leaders fear being Prigozhined – having a subordinate stage a coup that takes your job and sends you packing.

To prevent being ousted, fearful leaders surround themselves with weaklings and sycophants, pit subordinates against each other to create rivalries (they can’t band against you if they are fighting each other), and eliminate anyone who might one day become a threat.

It’s the weak leader playbook. Kiss up and kick down, promote pathetic lickspittles, and transfer, fire, or throw anyone who makes a mistake or might outshine you under the bus. They hide this behavior well, so it’s hard for leaders to recognize a Putin subordinate.

There’s one tell-tale sign that helps you cut through the smokescreen. Strong, confident leaders develop their subordinates. Weak ones don’t.

Weak leaders fear strong subordinates and strong subordinates cannot stand weak leaders. Knowing this prompts weak leaders to surround themselves with weaker people and to keep them down by never developing them.

Strong, confident leaders, on the other hand, surround themselves with strong, confident people and develop them. They see their direct reports as part of their legacies and want them to grow and succeed.

Former GE boss Jack Welch gets a fair share of criticism, but one thing he did well was develop a cadre of subordinate leaders who soared to new heights in GE or elsewhere. The best NFL coaches do the same, and the talent they’ve developed uplifts the entire sport.

These strong, confident leaders provide their subordinates with three growth ingredients: development, coaching, and experience.

Leader Growth Model

Development and coaching without experience create ivory tower solutions that don’t work in the real world.

Coaching and experience without development produce a hamster wheel effect, where you aren’t stretching people’s imaginations.

Development and experience without coaching lead to poor implementation and time wasted in trial and error.

Combining all three builds people’s capacity and shortens their paths to success; they gain confidence through challenging experiences that position them for increased responsibilities. 

Do you have Putins living in fear of being Prigozhined? The quickest way to tell is by looking at their professional development programs. They won’t have them. 

They’ll complain about lack of time, insufficient resources, too much on the plate, and “I’m training them on the job,” blah, blah, blah. Frankly, you are better off without them.

Your strongest subordinate leaders, on the other hand, will have robust professional growth programs. They are the ones to promote to more senior positions because they will help your company soar to new heights.

Do you need help with leadership, culture or strategy? Schedule a Call with Chris Kolenda here or view the list of programs offered by Strategic Leadership Academy here.

Optimize your workplace

Just because you can do something does not mean you should do it. Optimization creates unintended consequences that can undermine your business.

Baseball may be the most data-mined sport. Ever since the championship Oakland A’s Moneyball, big data has dominated the game. 

Big data told you where and how to pitch the ball to a given batter, and how to shift players to take advantage of a batter’s tendencies. The strike zone narrowed to give the batters a better chance against 95+ mph fastballs.

Pitchers and batters tried to tilt the odds with mind games – the between-pitch rituals, preening, adjusting, pointing, and glaring.

The result: total boredom. A nine-inning game dragged on for longer than three hours on average. Exciting balls-in-play became fewer; many at-bats ended up in strikeouts, home runs, or outs.  

Baseball analytics optimized the chances of getting the batter out and winning individual games, while losing fans and the soul of the sport.

Changes this year include a pitch clock, a batter clock, and no major shifts. The games are back to 2.5 hour average, with more balls in play, and more fans in the seats. [I saw the Brewers beat the Pirates 5-0 in two hours and fifteen minutes!]

Businesses that seek to optimize the ease and speed of communication offer tools ranging from chat and IM to email, workflow programs, and task organizers, to video and voice calls.

Communication speed and volume are higher than ever, while communication quality could be worse than ever. According to a 2022 Harris poll, managers believe their teams lose an average of 7.47 hours per employee per week due to poor communication. 

Nearly a full workday each week evaporates.

In a 2000-hour work year, you lose 400 hours; the equivalent of 10 weeks per employee. Ouch!

Imagine what you could achieve if your employees got half that time back.

Here are some ways to reduce communication fratricide.

  1. Establish protocols for channel usage. HINT: don’t use chat or IM for anything complex.
  2. If the matter is not resolved in three back-and-forths, get in person, on video, or on the phone to talk it over. In these cases, written cues are not communicating sufficiently, so you need to add verbal and non-verbal cues.
  3. Let people set their messaging engagement times and deep work times. Don’t let perpetual distraction rule the workday.
  4. Set boundaries. Topics like religion, sex, and politics should be off-limits in most workplaces. Ditto goes for disrespect.
  5. Reduce the volume of information emails. Set up a common info-sharing portal where people can make routine updates. This step will reduce the length of meetings, too.

More broadly, consider the tradeoffs before you bandwagon onto a new tool. 

Are you looking to improve the optimization of your business? Consider joining one of our programs or schedule a call with Chris Kolenda. 

D-Day shows how the best leaders respond. 

General Dwight Eisenhower could not control the Nazi High Command, but he reinforced their biases that General Patton would lead the main attack at the Pas de Calais. The deception enabled the Allies to secure the Normandy beaches and move inland. 

The Germans assumed for six more weeks that Patton would make a more significant landing at Calais. Eisenhower’s deception plan (Operation Fortitude) worked better than he imagined.

Eisenhower could not control the weather nor how well the German military units reacted to the invasion. He postponed the invasion for a day due to bad weather and made a risky call that the seas would be calm enough for the June 6 landings. 

In the quiet hours before the assault, he wrote a letter taking responsibility if the invasion failed.

Eisenhower recognized that he could influence events to a certain extent and that he could determine how he responded to unfolding circumstances.

Brigadier General Norm Cota landed at Omaha Beach with the second wave. The German fire was so intense that the first wave’s survivors crouched behind a retaining wall. German artillery began to take its toll.

Omaha Beach, looking up to the high ground where the Germans dug in.

Cota knew that the troops needed to get moving immediately or get ground down. Individually, each was safer staying put; collectively, they were safer moving forward and attacking the German positions. 

Cota adapted to circumstances and said, “Follow me,” taking the fight to the enemy. Soon thereafter, the Americans broke the German defenses. Cota influenced events by adapting to circumstances.

D-Day, which happened on June 6 79 years ago, holds myriad examples of the interplay between influencing and adapting.

The best leaders recognize their limited control of external factors and exclusive control over how they respond. They are response-able, to use Stephen Covey’s term. 

In so doing they:

  • Refrain from blaming subordinates for outcomes outside their control
  • Resist the temptation to promote people based on good luck
  • Innovate to seize emerging opportunities and mitigate risks
  • Maintain perspective
  • Challenge practices and beliefs that are no longer fit-for-purpose
  • Avoid self-delusion.

The chart below shows the importance.

People who believe they have so much influence over external events that they never have to adapt have spent too much time watching “motivational speakers” and believe everyone else must join their comfort zone. Examples include Twitter mobs, Stanford Law students, bigots, Luddites, and Sears and Blockbuster executives. Such people refuse to adapt; they approach every issue with an open mouth and closed mind. 

By contrast, a person who believes that they cannot influence or adapt are victims adrift in the world.

Someone who believes they cannot influence anything but can only adapt to the forces buffeting them about are like old-school Calvinists who believed in predestination. In business and life, they are the people trapped on the hamster wheel, feeling they can only govern how fast or slow they go and not whether they can get on or off. 

You find people at work who blindly follow orders and fixate on “that’s how we’ve always done it.” They don’t innovate, they stay in the ruts others have made for them because they don’t believe they can make any difference.

Leaders who believe they can influence, not control, events but can control how they respond are response-able. Like Eisenhower and Cota, they innovate, seize opportunities, and avoid blame games. 

Amazon could not control information technology, but they adapted to the new realities and drove Sears out of business. Netflix did the same to Blockbuster.

Understanding what you can and cannot control leads to sound judgment.

What is your top takeaway from this article? Write a comment, DM me on LinkedIn, or email me at chris@strategicleadersacademy.com.

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Wisconsin Red Cross Brave Hearts award gala.

I recently attended the Wisconsin Red Cross Brave Hearts award gala, grateful to receive the military award for last fall’s 1700-mile Fallen Hero Honor Ride.

The stories of the award recipients were extraordinary. I met a 9-year-old girl who saved a friend’s life at school using the Heimlich and a sixteen-year-old who engineered a blood drive after last year’s Waukesha tragedy. 

One recipient, noting that many clients weren’t getting regular health check-ups, added a doctor’s office to his barbershop to ease comfort and access. Inspiring was the 911 operator who kept a person calm after her car went into the water of a freezing lake until first responders rescued her, and so was the woman who stopped her car after seeing an elderly lady collapse on a busy street, keeping her safe until the ambulance arrived.

A Milwaukee police detective was off-duty getting a bite to eat when a gunman robbed someone and then tried to get into a car with children in the back. The detective distracted the robber from the kids and was shot twice in the abdomen. As he lay wounded in the street after protecting children, he had the presence of mind to call in the vehicle license plate as the attacker tried to escape in another car. 

An image of Chris Kolenda accepting the military award for last fall’s 1700-mile Fallen Hero Honor Ride at the the Wisconsin Red Cross Brave Hearts award gala.
Above: Chris Kolenda accepting the military award for last fall’s 1700-mile Fallen Hero Honor Ride at the Wisconsin Red Cross Brave Hearts award gala.

These are extraordinary examples, and I bet you have people in your company going above and beyond, doing something special for another person, and making people feel appreciated. These people are zappers – they give you energy and help you soar to new heights.

What steps do you take to recognize and appreciate them?

Our minds are so tuned to threats and risks (the amygdala) that we can pass over the everyday good people do. 

When that happens, you miss an opportunity to highlight examples of your values in action. People tune in to what you praise as well as what you criticize. Your employees want to receive appreciation, so they will adopt the positive behaviors you bring to their attention. 

Sadly, many leaders ignore the awesome and treat uncovering a problem as discovering buried treasure. 

You have to nip problems in the bud, or they grow. 

You will have fewer problems and more success when you treat discovering awesomeness as joyful eureka moments and dispassionately dispatch awful behavior.

Who’s been a hero in your company today? I would love to hear about them! Send me an email and tell me more about your hero!

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Strategy vs Plan: 3 Differences to Know.

What’s the difference between a strategy and a plan?

Afghanistan, 2007. We were executing our plan perfectly. All of our metrics indicated that we were on an upward trajectory. We were working hard, creating efficiencies, and consistently improving. We felt good about our performance.

And yet, we were not succeeding.

That was exactly how I felt after the first 60 days as a commander in Afghanistan. We were winning every firefight, but the enemy kept growing. Something was amiss. 

When we begin talking, many of my clients express the unsettling feeling that something is missing – and that missing “something” is creating a gap between high performance and success.

The normal approach to this problem is to stay on the trajectory but work harder, in the belief that this will lead to incremental progress and greater efficiency.  

The problem, however, is that high performance does not necessarily equal success.

This is a difficult truth to swallow, especially for leaders. To admit that is to recognize that the plan is flawed; that factors beyond our control affect the outcome. What we are directing our employees to do, what we are prioritizing, and what we are measuring may all be off-target.

Leaders excessively concerned with execution can begin to drink their own Kool-Aid, believing that blips in performance are evidence of success. This can reinforce the blinders and refuel the desire to do the same things over and over again, but expecting different results. The technical term for this is confirmation bias.

This is where strategy comes in.

Strategy helps you expose disconnects between success and performance, ask the right questions, and adjust as the marketplace shifts under your feet.

Strategy identifies your purpose and direction. A plan details how you execute that direction. The common term “strategic plan” is an oxymoron, like fitness exercise or financial investing.

The upshot of the unhappy strategic plan marriage is that you do both poorly; you wind up with a 5-year plan that has no chance whatsoever of becoming a reality in today’s volatility.

You need both a strategy and a plan, and the latter needs a much shorter timeframe (1 year or less) than more companies assume. 

Here are three critical differences between a strategy and a plan:

  1. A strategy faces outward, first. A plan faces inward
  2. A strategy considers factors you don’t control; a plan focuses on what you do control
  3. A strategy measures success; a plan measures performance

Let’s break these down.

  1. A strategy faces outward, first. A plan faces inward

A sound strategy begins with diagnosing the marketplace and your place within it. This establishes your startpoint. Your mission is your destination.

This context is dynamic. The marketplace is constantly in flux, influenced by factors like technology, social and political changes, government policy, competitor choices, and so forth. Your strategy should identify those factors most likely to affect your outcomes. How you believe they will unfold and shape the future becomes your assumptions.

Once you have outlined the context, you can develop your theory of success – your path from start point to destination. A good strategy process will produce more than one theory of success, so you can choose the one you think is best.

Your plan faces inward. It focuses on how to execute the chosen path.  

*THIS 5-D STRATEGY PROCESS® IDENTIFIES THE KEY STEPS

  1. A strategy considers factors you don’t control; a plan directs what you do control

A strategy is not a crystal ball that foretells how your organization can achieve a desired end-state. Nor is it a blueprint of the bridge from the present to the future. These analogies are too deterministic and self-centered for a dynamic and uncertain marketplace.

A strategy is a hypothesis, a best guess that relies on assumptions about the future and factors you do not control. A proper strategy is explicit about these assumptions, allowing you to monitor them as the future unfolds.

Revising your assumptions is a sign of wisdom. When you do so, you may need to modify your strategy.

*DISCUSS THE VALIDITY OF YOUR ASSUMPTIONS DURING YOUR QUARTERLY BOARD MEETINGS

Now that your strategy outlines how everything fits, you can make an implementation plan to direct the activities under your control. 

*HAVE THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR EXECUTING THE PLANS DRAW THEM UP.  MORE OWNERSHIP LEADS TO BETTER EXECUTION

  1. Strategy measures success; a plan measures performance

Your goals are waypoints between your start point and destination and inform your strategic measures.

Your plan outlines the critical tasks necessary to implement your strategy. Measuring performance enables you to assess the strength of the execution.

Keep your impact and outcome measures separate from your performance measures. This is because impact and outcomes are influenced by factors you cannot control.

High performance on your implementation tasks and poor achievement of your strategic goals indicate that factors outside your control undermine your ability to succeed.

You need to understand these factors and adjust your strategy and plan accordingly.

*MINDING THE GAP BETWEEN SUCCESS AND PERFORMANCE WILL HELP YOU ADJUST FASTER THAN YOUR COMPETITORS 

Back to Afghanistan. Executing our plan was making things worse because our assumptions were wrong. We adjusted our strategy and created a game plan that we reviewed every 90 days. 

Getting the strategy right enabled our paratroopers to succeed in Afghanistan by motivating a large insurgent group to stop fighting and switch sides.  

A sound strategy helps my clients create sustainable growth and impact.

To learn more about the difference between a strategy and a plan (and why a “strategic plan” tends to be a reverse Goldilocks), see our short video “Strategy versus Strategic Plan.”

What is your top takeaway from this article? Write a comment, DM me on LinkedIn, or email me at chris@strategicleadersacademy.com.

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A handshake after a tennis match no matter the outcome

The Bucks and Bruins show why you should not fixate on outcomes.

You shouldn’t compete to win.

The teams with the best regular season records in basketball (Milwaukee Bucks) and hockey (Boston Bruins) lost in the first round of their respective playoffs. Not a single #1 seed in Men’s College basketball made it past the Sweet-16.

Are they failures?

I love Buck’s star Giannis Antetokounmpo’s answer to this question: these setbacks are steps to future success. 

You compete to get better, not just to win. 

WHY IT MATTERS: You cannot control outcomes in most sports or business because other factors are at play. Assessing a season or someone’s job performance based on outcomes makes you prone to mistakes. 

When you judge success solely on outcomes, chances are you reward luck and punish excellence.

You can’t necessarily control outcomes, but you can control the processes you use. You are better off evaluating how and how well your subordinates executed their processes, and consider outcomes as a guide to whether your processes are sound. 

This double-axis chart shows why.

Plenty of people and organizations get good short-term outcomes despite faulty processes. WeWork and FTX are recent examples of luck, good timing, a rising tide lifting all boats.

When the tide went out, everyone saw they were skinny-dipping.

Bad processes and bad outcomes are like someone getting their just desserts. The leaders in these organizations tend to have poor support networks and follow bad decisions with stupid decisions.

The lower right quadrant is most interesting. You can have a good process but not get the outcomes that you want. Sometimes the cause is bad luck. A competitor made a smart move; a new technology arose; a pandemic hit; Jimmy Butler scored fifty points in game 4 and hit an improbable buzzer-beater in game 5.

You also might have a great process that does not work in your situation. When I was doing some work with the Cleveland Browns, one of the coaches told me that he worked at Army in the 1980s when I went to school. We went 2-9 my freshman year.

The head coach got the staff together and said, “this is our fault.” They were using a pro-style offense that worked in other places but not with service-academy athletes. They switched to a better talent-to-offense match, the wish-bone, and went 8-3-1 the next year.

You might also have some implementation challenges to address.

You’d be foolish to fire someone who executed the processes you approved simply because they did not achieve the outcomes you wanted. 

The upper right seems like the happy place – good processes and good outcomes. The key here is to avoid complacency. Sears had good processes and good outcomes, so did Blockbuster and ToyRUs. They stopped innovating and are now out of business.

You might also have some implementation challenges to address.

You’d be foolish to fire someone who executed the processes you approved simply because they did not achieve the outcomes you wanted. 

The upper right seems like the happy place – good processes and good outcomes. The key here is to avoid complacency. Sears had good processes and good outcomes, so did Blockbuster and ToyRUs. They stopped innovating and are now out of business.

Compete to get better instead of fixating on wins and losses.

Evaluate people on how well they execute what’s under their control and not on external factors they cannot.

Use outcomes to expose gaps and implementation failures in your processes; address those, and don’t overreact to bad luck.

What is your top takeaway from this article? Write a comment, DM me on LinkedIn, or email me at chris@strategicleadersacademy.com.

P.S. Golfers say that a double-bogey is a bad shot followed by a stupid one. The Bucks followed a bad playoff experience with a worse decision in firing their head coach, Mike Budenholzer. 

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challenging assumptions

Assumptions are powerful, often subconscious beliefs that guide your decisions and actions. What happens when these assumptions turn out to be false?

The consequences can be far-reaching and even derail progress toward your goals. therefore, learning the art of questioning beliefs and challenging assumptions is crucial.

The example of butter illustrates this point well. Many people (me included) assume that butter needs to be refrigerated to avoid spoilage. However, the Wall Street Journal notes that butter can last up to a month at room temperature without going bad.

This realization can save you from destroying your toast every morning, and it highlights how our assumptions can limit us.

Challenging assumptions can save your business

In business, unquestioned assumptions can be particularly dangerous.

Consider the case of Sears, which assumed that its big stores and mail-order catalogs would continue succeeding, only to be outcompeted by Amazon. Or, Blockbuster’s assumption that people would always rent videos from brick-and-mortar stores until Netflix disrupted the industry. And Elizabeth Holmes’ assumption that she could fake it until Theranos made it.

These examples demonstrate the need to question our assumptions regularly. A great way to uncover implicit assumptions is to ask, “What must be true” for this plan to work?

This question can help you identify hidden beliefs limiting your options and opportunities.

If you’re ready to re-examine your implicit assumptions, simplify your life, and move your business to new heights, you need the right support.

A coach or mentor can provide an objective perspective and help you identify and challenge your assumptions.

Taking this step can be a game-changer, leading to better decision-making, greater creativity, and improved outcomes. So, why not book a call with me and explore the possibilities.

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recognize awesome

The media is filled with stories of people being awful to each other, and you’d swear we live in an anti-social dystopia.

These stories are true, but they are not representative.

How I was able to recognize awesome

This weekend in Windsor, California I was able to recognize awesome. I was doing a recon for our Veteran’s Day Saber Six Foundation event and participating in a charity cycling ride.

I packed my bicycle in a special suitcase, loaded it onto the plane, and hoped for the best. It arrived intact, but I had difficulty getting the rear wheel back on. It was time for expert help.

I met Ben at the Windsor bike shop. It was a busy day, and he could have told me to come back another time. Instead, he took the bike behind the counter and showed me an easier way to install the rear wheel. He noticed that a part was slightly bent, took out a special tool, and fixed that problem.

Ben asked me about the Fallen Hero Honor Ride, and another customer, Dean, listened. When Ben finished fixing the bicycle, I asked him for the bill. Dean said he’d take care of it.

Why it matters

What you look for tends to be what you see. It’s not hard to find anti-social behavior, rudeness, and entitlement.

Our minds are tuned to detect problems, aberrations, and deviant behavior, so these issues stand out while kindness, generosity, consideration, and other goodness blend in the background.

Your leadership antennae are more tuned to identifying problems than seeing awesome. This helps explain why we tend to give detailed negative feedback but only generalized, positive assessments.

The problem is that people see the generalized positives as empty praise, which damages your relationship.

Action steps

Make a deliberate effort to notice the positive too, and give your employees as much or more positive, actionable feedback as constructive criticism.

“Thank you, Ben, for taking the time from your busy day to help that customer. You’ve made him better by showing him an easier way to install the back wheel. Your attention to detail identified a bent component, and your expert use of the tool got it back in shape without breaking. I appreciate how you treat customers in need.”

You’ll find that positive reinforcement is a powerful ally because people will know what you value highly, and they’ll appreciate that you notice awesome.

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intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation is the willingness to devote your discretionary effort to a cause. At work, the intersection of purpose, belonging, and agency give you what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia — the fullest expression of you in your most elevated state.

Why it matters

Intrinsically motivated employees are more likely to have positive attitudes towards their work, higher job satisfaction, and lower turnover. This, in turn, leads to higher levels of productivity (over 20% higher), lower presenteeism, and less drama.

The best leaders focus on purpose, belonging, and agency to foster intrinsic motivation.

Employees are more likely to devote their discretionary effort if they believe in what they are doing — their purpose. Discover what each employee finds compelling and organize their roles around it. Helping people identify their superpowers — their natural traits — enables you to put them into positions they are likely to find joyful.

Purpose does not require transcendence. Some employees love using their natural talents for the joy it provides, others love to create something new or achieve an important goal, and some get inspired by transcendence.

Belonging is the feeling that you fit in. You feel belonging when your colleagues share the same workplace values and expectations. I work with companies to identify the three As: what do acceptable, awesome, and awful look like? This process helps you identify people who are an excellent fit for your organization and those who are not.

Agency is the ability to decide how you will apply your superpowers and effort. The best leaders have a weekly 15-minute one-on-one with each direct employee to ask how they use their superpowers and how they could apply them to even more significant effects.

intrinsic motivation

People need all three to have intrinsic motivation

Without purpose, people will feel that they are drifting (and you can only drift downhill). This feeling is the fast track to disengagement and turnover.

When employees feel like they don’t fit in, the risk of workplace disputes and drama heightens, which increases the emotional tax and erodes trust.

Inadequate agency creates boredom, burnout, and frustration because employees feel like they have no control over the outcome of their work.

Where does your company stand?

According to Gallup, roughly seventy percent of American employees report being unengaged. Imagine the effect if you had seventy percent of your employees willing to give their discretionary effort to your organization’s success.

I can help you improve how your company fosters intrinsic motivation by working with you on purpose, belonging, and agency.

Fostering intrinsic motivation helps you achieve big goals in the simplest way possible.

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psychological confidence

Psychological confidence is the willingness to speak up respectfully, with the confidence of being taken seriously.

Why it matters

Organizations with high levels of psychological confidence have 27% lower turnover, 74% higher engagement, and 50% more productivity. All of this even as employees report significantly higher life satisfaction (29%), lower stress (74%), and more willingness to try new things (67%).

I prefer psychological confidence over psychological safety because safety-ism has become an excuse never to hear anything you disagree with. You have people (many on college campuses) to whom any constructive criticism (or an A-) makes them feel “unsafe.” This condition is psychological fragility and requires therapy.

In psychologically confident companies, employees will report problems before they become crises, share fresh ideas that will improve your business, and challenge facile thinking.

The chart below compares states of psychological confidence. The north-south axis depicts whether leaders encourage or discourage respectful disagreement, while the east-west axis contrasts conflict-avoidant employees versus conflict-comfortable ones.

Psychological confidence

Leaders may encourage disagreement, but employees who are conflict-avoidant will remain silent. The Air France 447 co-pilot knew what to do but was unwilling to assert himself; the crash in 2009 killed 228 people.

False consensus occurs when leaders discourage disagreement and conflict-avoidant employees self-censor. Many college campuses have this problem. The crypto-company FTX did too. Employees knew of problems, the founder did not want to hear them, and investors lost billions.

Conflict-comfortable employees may face a chilling climate when leaders discourage disagreement. Uber’s co-founder Travis Kalanick created a toxic work environment that prompted top talent to leave and report his misbehavior. Uber’s valuation dropped in half, a loss of $35b. Korean Airlines 801 faced a similar situation: the captain ignored the co-pilot’s warning to follow proper procedures. The crash killed 228 of 254 on board.

The best companies have psychological confidence; leaders encourage respectful disagreement, and employees share their views. Toyota is a super example: any employee who sees a problem can pull the stop lever to halt production. Its Kaizen continuous innovation model encourages people to share ideas and try new things. The trick here is to avoid complacency and backsliding.

Where does your company stand?

I can help you boost your company’s psychological confidence if you are not where you want to be, or if you want to avoid complacency and backsliding.

When you get good at getting better, you can achieve big goals in the simplest way possible.

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