Being a manager today requires a different mindset as well as a different skill set than even ten years ago. In a digitally transforming world, bosses need to know their spreadsheets—they have to be adept at managing people using all the data at their fingertips. At the same time, they need to lean away from the numbers so they don’t lose the story side, the qualities that build human connection. If they fail to empathize and inspire, for instance, they might as well be managing robots.
If you’re a boss, you might think that combining spreadsheet and story is relatively easy. It’s not. As you’ll discover, numerous factors favor managing by the numbers, discouraging the types of interactions that cause people to be engaged, energized, and creative.
It’s not that bosses had it easy in the old days. Being a good boss has always been a challenge. It’s just that today the degree of difficulty is higher because many managers have become overreliant on data and it colors their relationships—especially with their direct reports.1
To find the right balance between spreadsheet and story, bosses need to be aware of the factors that have had a profound influence on their management style and substance.
Seismic and Interconnected Forces
If you think of boss types on a continuum, on the extreme left are the touchy-feely managers. They manage by instinct and experience, and they encourage their people to come in and talk to them—their door is always open. On the far right are command-and-control bosses, and they follow orders and expect their people to follow them in turn—they believe strongly in being authoritative and decisive.
Both types have positive attributes, but being only one type is no longer feasible in our changing world. Let’s look at some of the major, interconnected changes that are affecting how people manage in organizations.
Mindset Diversity
Generation Z turned twenty-one in 2018. Forty-six percent are not Caucasian, and none of them recall a world without mobile phones, search engines, and social media. Members of this generation are joining companies whose most senior leadership is still primarily white men that used to work with typewriters rather than computers and who had to search for information in libraries rather than online.
It’s not just technology that divides older and younger employees, but also mindset. And it’s not just the difference between baby boomers and younger generations. Generation Z is showing startling differences in mindset from millennials in that they are far more risk averse, having borne the brunt of a serious economic downturn, student debt, and other generation-specific issues.2
On top of all this are the more obvious differences created by a more diverse and global workforce. As a result, bosses can’t manage all their people the same way. They need to adapt their style to meet the needs of a range of mindsets and preferences.
Globally Interconnected, Flexibly Structured
The combination of a global workforce and flexible work environments (e.g., working from home) demands a new style of management. How do you motivate people you rarely see? How do you connect and communicate with people in different countries, on the road, and in open work areas?
Data Intensity
I’ve discussed the availability of and dependence on data in previous chapters, but think about it from a “noise” standpoint. How do bosses get their people to listen when they’re constantly receiving messages from mobile devices and social media apps? How do leaders convince them to follow a path that isn’t dictated by the data, that flies in the face of information they’re receiving?
Velocity
The global workforce is always working somewhere day or night, is equipped with social and mobile tools, and possesses computational abilities to monitor and measure every heartbeat of the business. All these factors allow us to accelerate work on projects. Should bosses feel free to engage with their people at 2:00 a.m.? Should they expect them to work far harder and faster than in the past? Should they impose deadlines that require breakneck work speed?
Here’s the result of all these workplace changes: the best bosses have learned to change their own behaviors. Specifically, these changes have had the following effects on managers:
• Negated the command-and-control style. When the workforce is diverse, spread out, and moving fast, it is difficult to shout out orders. People no longer respond well to bosses who tell them what to do, who act like they know everything. They are much more responsive to bosses who know how to influence—who suggest ideas and steer people gently.
• Mandated fast decision-making. As the metabolic rate of business picks up, so does the need to make decisions quickly. Slow decisions are often decisions in themselves since it means you decided not to decide.
• Motivated big-picture thinking. We live in a connected age, and if you can’t step back when you manage and see the links between dots, you’re not going to succeed. Bosses need the vision to see far and wide and then help their people make connections between disparate ideas and information.
Given these effects, you need both spreadsheet and story abilities to be effective. Let’s look at a story-side capability that many traditional bosses underuse.
The Notion of Emotion
In diverse, data-centric, fast-moving cultures, bosses must balance their natural cognitive reflexes with less familiar affective responses. Or, put another way, in a world of machines, people long for the human touch. The last thing they need is a robotic boss who provides them with all the information they need to do their jobs but none of the honesty, empathy, humility, inspiration, and vulnerability that help them do their jobs better. These five emotional qualities will help bosses communicate with and motivate their people more effectively.
Honesty
The basis of any relationship is trust. If you cannot trust your boss, nothing else matters. Trust is about honesty. Will your boss tell you the truth to facilitate your improvement even if it hurts? Will your boss level with you about your chances for a promotion?
In today’s fast-moving and highly competitive environment, the less time people spend worrying about what a boss “really means,” the more likely they are to succeed. Rock-solid trust between leaders and their followers not only saves valuable time but provides insights about how to improve and achieve goals. I often say that “trust is speed.”
The honesty of bosses also has a cumulative benefit to the organization. In a world where a breakdown of trust has occurred, people yearn for transparency and authenticity. The more honest bosses an organization has, the better its reputation. Remember, it’s not companies that are inherently dishonest or immoral; it’s the people who work at these companies. When the majority of leaders and managers possess integrity, the odds are that their institutions reflect these qualities. Today, when trust is a key factor around the world, bosses with integrity are crucial.
Empathy
Most often people quit bosses, not jobs. While they might not like their assignments, they can tolerate boring or routine tasks for a period of time as long as they have a boss who empathizes with them. In stressful, challenging environments, people need bosses who get what they’re going through. The unempathetic boss who, when a direct report complains about a difficult customer, says, “I don’t care that he’s difficult; figure out how to deal with him,” crushes the spirit of the direct report.
People want to feel that their bosses “get them,” that when they’re having problems at work or with family, health, and other challenges, their bosses demonstrate understanding of them both as a person and a professional.
Humility
To understand an employee’s needs, bosses must be both approachable and willing to look beyond their own self-interest. Humility makes these two essential actions possible. Humble bosses recognize that success is a team effort often driven by the people whom they coach and delegate work to. This ability to share the spotlight and promote others attracts talented people who want to make sure that their achievements are recognized.
Humility also fosters learning and growth. When bosses recognize that the company is bigger than just them, they are more willing to manage people in ways that help the company rather than build their own egos.
Inspiration
This is a powerful driver to unleash employees’ potential as well as provide the energy to overcome challenges. Inspiration is about being a motivating role model, but it’s also about reminding people of their potential and ability to thrive regardless of circumstances. It’s not just a bright, glowing star to steer by but also the ability to stoke passions and ensure that the spark of potential produces achievement and action.
Vulnerability
Bosses are people too, and like all people, even the best of them feel unsure and confused and feel out of their depths at times. Brené Brown has written about how vulnerability is a sign of leadership.3
These five emotional qualities are soft skills in an increasingly hard world; more than ever before, they drive great organizational performance. For more than fifteen years I worked closely with two of the most successful people in the advertising and communication business: Maurice Levy and Jack Klues. Both were honest, empathetic, humble, inspiring, and vulnerable, but they were also intensely competitive people who hated to lose. They understood and drove financial results and made one hard decision after the other. They held people to impossibly high standards and drove themselves and their teams hard.
What differentiated them from other hard-driving leaders, though, was their willingness to sit and listen, their straightforwardness, their ability to motivate. Working for them, I always appreciated their emotional openness and intelligence, even though they were focused on quantitative results. They didn’t shy away from difficult client conversations, nor did they put themselves above the company—they loved being flag bearers for the company’s traditions and practices.
As busy as they both were, they always made time for me when I needed their help. Yes, they were capable of kicking me in the butt if I messed up, but they also gave me the flexibility I needed to explore what I was passionate about and reduced my workload if I had personal issues that needed addressing. And I never worried that they would undercut me or fail to deliver on promises. All of this made me intensely loyal to Maurice and Jack and work harder to achieve our goals.
In a world where everything is measured and compared—especially salaries—companies should understand that money and other financial incentives are only short-term tactics to keep people in place and working hard. To create sustainable employees, companies need lots of bosses who are like Maurice and Jack.
While they had been my bosses for nearly twenty years, they had been preceded by many other great bosses, including my first full-time boss, Kathryn Milano.
KATHRYN MILANO
Let Your Direct Reports Shine
Some managers boss by numbers. I’m not just referring to managing by using data but to being a stereotypical boss: issuing orders, failing to offer much support, taking all the credit. These bosses get stuck in a box that narrowly defines how they should act instead of managing authentically.
In 1984 I was a media buyer and planner on the Allstate Insurance account reporting to Kathryn Milano, who in addition to being an amazing media thinker was besotted with all things Jane Austen. Initially I believe the only redeeming quality I had in her eyes was that I had read Jane Austen and so was seen as civilized compared to many of my Western-trained colleagues who were not familiar with the author. Kate always wanted to ensure we used language well, even if we were describing and making math cases.
From day one Kate would take me with her to bosses’ and clients’ offices and note that I had worked on the project that she was presenting. Once she had socialized me to them, she began having me present the work that I had done under her guidance. After a while, she would review my presentations before the meetings and often have me go by myself.
My counterparts on other accounts were flabbergasted and wondered whether Kate was planning to leave; they couldn’t believe that she had moved so far from the boss norm and was allowing me to present on my own.
Kate had explained that once she was comfortable that I could handle these tasks, she wanted me to present for clients because it would make my work more rewarding, and I would grow and learn faster. Her motivation, though, wasn’t completely altruistic; freeing up her time in this way, she could tackle bigger and more difficult assignments that would prepare her for being a director. She became known as a great trainer, which attracted more talent and let her offload more work and take on more of her bosses’ work.
Kate taught me how to shine a light on people who work for you. Many other supervisors have their buyers do a lot of the work and then present it to their bosses and clients themselves. Kate didn’t care that her managerial approach wasn’t like that of most other bosses. Instead, she saw the value of sharing the limelight and the credit. She didn’t boss by the numbers, and through her actions, she allowed me to avoid working by the numbers.
Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that the best bosses let others shine. As someone once told me, if you see a lot of bright, shiny planets all around, there must be a star in their midst.
The Problem with Bad Bosses Today
While bad bosses have always been problematic, they are of special concern in today’s business environment. As we’ll see, their behaviors drive employees into full-spreadsheet mode; they create fear, and fear leads their people to seek refuge in data to cover their butts and justify their actions.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. To grasp the impact of bad bosses today, we need to identify their distinct types and how they affect their people. Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”4 Similarly, each bad boss is terrible in his or her own way. Nonetheless, I’ve managed to group all these “unique” terrible traits into the following four categories:
THE NARCISSISTIC GOD. These bosses believe that only they know the answer, only they are capable of handling the major meeting, and only they should get the credit for their teams’ success. They often believe they transcend the company. In many instances, they create a godlike cult that worships their every move, using public relations and social media to spread the word.
Their people worship them by following their commandments. Direct reports lose their own individuality when they’re working for Narcissistic Gods; they also lose their ability to draw upon their own experiences and skills to solve problems or capitalize on opportunities. Their story gets lost, and they become mindless followers.
THE MICROMANAGING FIDDLER. These folks are terrific operators—they know how to get things done—but as managers, they retain their obsessive detail orientation. They tell their people what to do and insist they check in with them at every stage. They are insecure and can’t let go of anything. They often manage via spreadsheets or the need for slavish following of systematic procedures. Micromanaging Fiddlers fail to understand the outside world since they are constrained by the cell of the spreadsheet or slaves to historical procedures.
Obviously, direct reports are driven to spreadsheet thinking by these managers. If they deviate—if they suggest risky ideas or do things their own way—they face censure or worse.
THE OSCAR ASPIRANT. These types emote, loudly and dramatically. Erratic and unpredictable, they are a roller coaster of emotions. They greet bad news with histrionics and good news with hyperbole. These drama kings and queens are tolerated by management because they can be effective in certain roles—they can present well and even inspire others with their visions and speeches.
At the same time, they make their people crazy. People are expected to praise the boss’s performance or to raise their spirits. More to the point, these managers only want one story told, and it’s theirs. As a result, direct reports aren’t allowed to bring their own ideas, experiences, and views to the group. The story of the boss overwhelms everything and everyone else.
THE DOUBLE AGENT ASSASSIN. While the previous three types are expressive in their terribleness, Assassins are soft-spoken, well-behaved, and self-controlled. Behind closed doors, however, they take credit for other people’s work, create animosity by speaking ill of people to others, and find ways to trip up others and make them fail. They are like Reese Witherspoon in the movie Election: smiling and ruthless. They win people’s trust and then undermine them.
People working for Assassins become guarded and monitor everything they say and do for fear that it will be used against them. They carry out tasks with little creativity and take little risk, knowing that even a minor slipup will give the Assassin an opportunity to target them. They are driven to spreadsheet thinking because they fear for their work lives—keeping a low profile and cleaving to their tasks is the only way they can escape the Assassin’s bullets.
All four bad boss types know that if they deliver their numbers and meet their objectives, they can continue to exist in most organizations. This is especially true if these organizations have spreadsheet-dominant cultures where measurement is constant and meeting quarterly numbers is the highest priority.5
Bad bosses are the enemies of balance; they provoke extreme reactions from their people. If the employees don’t leave the company, they work in fear or expend all their energy on managing their managers. No doubt you’ve witnessed employees go into survival mode to deal with a bad boss. They become obsequious, robotic, and myopically focused on their boss’s every action and reaction. As a result, they may be able to carry out assigned tasks effectively and help their bosses meet their numbers and objectives, but they are loath to take risks or deviate from norms. At a time when innovation is crucial, they fall short because innovation requires behaviors that bad bosses hate. The balance is tipped heavily in favor of playing it safe.
Bad bosses unbalance companies in another way: they force people to face inward instead of outward. Whenever I hear people speak more about what their bosses have done or how to manage their idiosyncrasies, I remind them that they were hired to listen to the marketplace and customers.
In the advertising and marketing world to which I belong, clients need people to bring them outside perspectives and to keep the customers in mind. Our real bosses are the people we wish to develop relationships with and sell to—not someone in our organization or even our clients’ organizations. The best thing we can do for our internal bosses is to make sure our external bosses do not fire us. Which is why looking outside and seeing tomorrow versus looking inside and being nostalgic for yesterday helps provide balance. Bad bosses keep us staring at our shoes. Good bosses encourage us to lift our heads and look around.
The Best Bosses Apply the Story to the Spreadsheet
Great bosses think about how to maximize not only the outcome of the job but the impact of the employee. By growing the skills and confidence of the employee, they double and triple the results of the short-term, self-aggrandizing boss. They seek balance—between the internal and external, between the short term and the long term, between team outcomes and internal employee growth. And between the spreadsheet and the story.
Great bosses impact the spreadsheet through stories:
• stories that inspire;
• stories that teach;
• stories that resonate; and
• stories that motivate.
They share their own stories of failures as well as successes. These bosses encourage their people to talk about their own experiences and offer their perspectives. They believe in ongoing dialogues, whether in person or through various devices. As long as they get their people engaged and thinking widely and deeply, they’ve done their jobs.
And it’s not that they fail to hold their teams accountable to deliver results and meet goals. They set and deliver deadlines. They leverage facts and data to feed decision-making. In these ways they are left-brained and spreadsheet-driven.
But these bosses also realize that the spreadsheet is the scoreboard and not the ball or the player. They keep an eye on the ball, which is the market and their customers, and on the players, who are their employees. Like great coaches they goad and inspire, push and commiserate, and speak to the unique strengths and vulnerabilities of each player. They empathize, and they keep things in perspective.
I referred earlier to Jack Klues, my boss between 1999 and 2013, who connected the story and spreadsheet better than anyone else with whom I’ve worked. Jack was driven, understood numbers and spreadsheets, and held people accountable to high standards of performance and behavior. This helped him go from running $100 million of revenue in 1999 to nearly $4 billion of revenue in 2013, relying on the combination of double-digit organic growth and skillfully integrating a series of mergers and acquisitions.
But for all his business acumen and delivery of the numbers, he understood that success would be driven through motivated and inspired teams of people with diverse mindsets. Jack surrounded himself with different types of people from different cultures and backgrounds who shared his drive to excel. He supported these people even when they disagreed, listening intently to people with fresh thinking as well as ideas that opposed the current plans. In fact, he often put me in the role of chief provocateur, encouraging me to question his thinking and decision-making.
Despite his seniority and sterling track record, Jack never forgot that he was one person in a company, and the company and its long-term success mattered more than any individual. He was always approachable and willing to fight for what was right—even if it meant angering a client.
While I have described what good bosses and bad bosses are, the reality is that all of us have within us the ingredients of being a good or bad boss, and we must be aware and resist the bad tendencies while feeding the good tendencies.
In addition, we need to be aware and fight against two additional forces that detract from being a leader with soul.
Resisting Screen-and-Process Management
First, the legal department and human resources are driving the documentation trend. Not only do they want to minimize the emotional messiness of dealing with people (e.g., the anger and tears when people are passed over for a promotion, terminated, etc.), but they are scared of lawsuits and regulatory bodies. By documenting a process to make a decision and by reducing the numerical ranges and variables to make qualitative calls, they can more easily justify their decision . . . and if it comes to it, make their case in court.
In our litigious society, bosses need to be aware of the possibility of legal action, and they need to follow processes that ensure fairness as well as protect the organization. At a certain point, however, following process and procedure hamstrings managers. It prevents them from responding to employees as individuals. It stops them from using their knowledge of and relationship with an employee to provide direction and explanation. They become the equivalent of telemarketers, forced to follow a script.
If a boss can’t personalize conversations, what’s the point of developing manager–direct report relationships?
Again, balance is the solution—a balance between story and spreadsheet and, more specifically, between personalization and process. Document rules, procedures, and expected behaviors. Be transparent on what is and is not acceptable. Create clear performance metrics and spell out criteria. Identify and report issues. Involve HR up front and when necessary in meetings where things may turn unwieldy. This is the scaffolding that not only protects the company but telegraphs fairness.
At the same time, give bosses room to empathize, customize, and personalize by recognizing that each employee is unique. They have different skills, dreams, concerns, and constraints. They and their careers are stories, and at any given time they are in different chapters of their growth. Accept that some interactions can and should deviate from the norm. The best bosses are insightful about their people and empathetic about their issues. Organizations should encourage all bosses to use these insights and empathy to help their people learn and grow—and give difficult feedback when necessary.
Second, technology that makes “remote” management possible is also a force that can become an obstacle. By remote, I’m referring both to the geographical distance between manager and direct report and the emotional distance. It’s now possible to work with people with whom you have little or no daily, weekly, or even monthly contact. You can monitor their performance via the data they enter into the system and communicate with them through text, email, and video conferencing. Even when a boss meets in person with a direct report, they can both be staring at screens, the conversation centering on charts, reports, and other digitally displayed data.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon has at his beck and call more data than probably any other businessperson on the planet, and if he wanted to, he could run his global company from his office, relying on technology that allows him to give direction to his people through various devices. But Bezos flies to his many markets and walks around the offices he visits. He continuously learns and spends a week every year at TED.
Diversity of thinking is encouraged, but then Bezos gets people to move forward once a decision is made. He calls this “disagree-but-commit.”6 Voice your point of view, build a case, but once a decision is made, commit to delivering.
He also resists the pull of technology management consistently and effectively, unlike Eddie Lampert, chairman of Sears. Having watched Eddie in action, I know that he is a highly intelligent, passionate, and committed leader. At the same time, he seems to revert to remote mode frequently. As an article in the Wall Street Journal observed, “He visited the Hoffman Estates, Ill., headquarters a few times a year, preferring to beam in via conference calls from ESL’s Florida offices, they said. While most retail executives visit stores weekly, Mr. Lampert urged Sears executives to hold video chats with store managers, arguing that they could collect more data, more quickly.”7
Eddie tried to take on Amazon from a distance, depending on numerical spreadsheets and video conference calls with a continuously churning staff. He saw the data but rarely recognized what it signaled. When he saw the signals, he did not know how to go where they were pointing and failed to hire people who could get him where he wanted to go. And if he went in the wrong direction, apparently no one told him to come back since they either were no good or too afraid or reconciled to being always overruled.8
Eddie gave long talks about technology and marketing via screens, and while he spoke with certainty, his on-screen persona was intimidating and unapproachable. Sears has had (and still has) a lot of problems, and it seemed like Eddie had an opportunity to rally the troops. But it’s tough to rally anyone if you’re overly dependent on devices to do so. While screens are great tools to convey data, they aren’t so great when you need to motivate and inspire.
Yet I understand the temptation of managing through screens. It is faster and more efficient. It filters out the messy emotions of face-to-face interactions. It fosters a sense of control and power. But if you’re tempted to make screens your primary managerial tool, consider these negatives:
• You won’t get the whole story. Data is always massaged or flows from the questions being asked. Through firsthand observation and dialogue, you are stimulated to ask additional questions, to engage in spontaneous conversation that often uncovers ideas or information that is missed in pure digital management.
• You won’t motivate your people to go beyond what’s required. You won’t be able to communicate powerfully and personally, causing them to stretch their abilities and think innovatively about an issue.
• You may put yourself out of a job. If your managerial method is to compute and respond to what is on a screen, you can be replaced with an AI bot or tool that can process much faster without any of your biases.
Of course, we’re never going back to a time when screens were a minor part of our management. They provide all sorts of benefits that no manager can do without. So I’m not saying to put your screens and data in mothballs. I am suggesting that you integrate the following behavior into your management tool chest:
Make yourself move and see beyond the screen and the spreadsheet. Running a company by managing teams remotely via a spreadsheet on a computer screen is often like trying to influence the world from a prison. There is a reason that the components of a spreadsheet are called cells! The data captured filters out things that do not fit and filters out the human emotion behind the numbers.
Since data is available to you anywhere, you’re free to be mobile. Get out of the office, walk the floor, travel to different offices and conferences. Discuss their data and their work rather than use their data to determine what to discuss with them. They have stories about themselves and their business that don’t fit in the predetermined cells of spreadsheets. You want a boots-on-the-ground presence combined with all the data that flows across your screen. This combination will broaden your perspective and make you a much more effective boss.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Each of us has worked for good and bad bosses, and each of us has in us the traits of being a good or bad leader. Bosses may be tempted to manage their people via devices, but if they fail to mix in a sufficient amount of personal interaction, they will be leading with too much algorithm and too little heart.
• To ensure leaders accentuate the positive while minimizing the negative, they need to understand whom they work for and how both of them behave in different circumstances.
• Becoming a good leader is a continuous journey, with some detours and dead ends and no finish line. Leaders require continuous learning, from both story and spreadsheet. No matter how successful leaders are and the goals they achieve, they still need to dedicate themselves to learning from screens and from people.