LESSON: If you step back and make the space to deliver through others – in a way that empowers and inspires – then you will be able to deliver something really outstanding.
YULIA WAS NEWLY APPOINTED to help head up a global cosmetics company’s push for faster growth. She had worked for the company for over a decade, working her way up through the sales department to her new role as country CEO. She was bright, driven and intensely client-focused. Nonetheless, the company felt they were taking a risk with her appointment. Would she be able to adjust to being a manager of other business leaders rather than just a manager of managers? The company was organised on classic matrix principles. Finance, IT, HR and legal sat at the centre, under Yulia, but the company’s brands were run by Brand MDs who reported to Yulia, but also via a ‘dotted’ line to the global head of each of those brands. Traditionally, these people were given quite a lot of autonomy.
This assignment was a little different. I had been asked to design some intense transition coaching for various people at Yulia’s level who had been promoted to be country CEOs across Western and Eastern Europe in a shake-up driven through by the new Group CEO. In the desire to bring in fresh blood, there was a fear that some people had been promoted slightly prematurely. I put together a programme that built on the assessments they had all done a year or so before. Yulia was the first person to go through the programme, and I flew out to her offices to spend two days with her. On the first day we went through the existing report, updated it, and drew out her key strengths and development areas. After lunch we spent another two hours focusing those development areas into a couple of clear goals. Then, the next day, we spent another two hours working on how she could make the attitudinal and behavioural shifts necessary to achieve those goals.
What became quickly apparent during our first few hours together was that Yulia knew what she needed to do, she just didn’t know how to make herself do it. Three months into the role, she was too involved in the detail of what was going on. Indeed, the first thing she told me was that she had spent most of the weekend before I arrived in the office working with one of her teams on a pitch to a national retailer. I went for the jugular:
‘What would have happened if you’d been ill and couldn’t have come in?’
She looked surprised.
‘Look, I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t. How do I know? But I want you to start questioning the use of your time.’
‘Well, the team are a bit inexperienced and I have done that kind of thing for years, so …’ She trailed off.
‘So?’
‘I never really thought about it, I just did it.’
‘So let’s think, what would have been different …’
She laughed. ‘Not a lot actually.’
‘Really?’
‘Maybe the pitch was stronger. It’s hard to say.’
‘Why is it hard to say?’
‘Well, I … I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.’
‘Exactly.’
There was a pause.
‘How do you think Erik (the Brand MD) felt about you being there?’
‘He seemed OK with it.’
‘He may have been, he may not. It doesn’t really matter. Look, people will often like you being involved. They get your experience, your ideas, maybe they don’t have to think too hard. They’ve got their backs covered, right? I mean, who’s accountable for that pitch now? Whose fault is it if it goes wrong?’
‘Mine, I guess.’
‘Yes. Whose fault should it have been?’
‘Erik’s,’ she said without a second’s hesitation.
It was time to talk to Yulia about a key concept I use in almost all of my coaching assignments. It is a simple model that you can apply to all sorts of scenarios in your own life. I call it ‘Third Space’.
‘Third Space’ is one of the key models that I use in my leadership consulting practice. The idea is drawn from the work of two psychoanalysts. D. W. Winnicott wrote of ‘potential space’ as a place where inner and external realities mix, and where one can explore new ways of seeing and being. Thomas Ogden, a contemporary psychoanalyst and an admirer of Winnicott’s work, writes about the ‘analytic third’, which builds on but is not the same as ‘potential space’. Ogden defines the term as ‘a third subject, unconsciously co-created by analyst and analysand, which seems to take on a life of its own in the interpersonal field between analyst and patient.’
I refer to the Third Space model in the vast majority of the assessments and coaching that I do. My colleagues joke about finding it scattered through our offices, endlessly scribbled on whiteboards, flip charts and even bits of scrap paper.
First I draw the simple diagram on the next page.
The ‘other’ can be a particular person we are discussing (e.g. one of your direct reports), a whole team or group, or even an entire organisation (e.g. your company). The space in between, which is co-created by you and the other, is not a simple mix of the two. It is something entirely new. A non-work example would be a marriage. This third space, ‘the marriage,’ is something different from either partner, or a simple amalgam of both. That is why, incidentally, it is so hard to understand marriages from the outside, even if you know both people, as individuals, really well.
A business example would be those companies which were founded by complementary duos, the best example being the two Steves at Apple. Jobs – the tireless, demanding visionary – and Wozniak – the hands-on technically brilliant engineer. On a much smaller scale Darren and Tom in Chapter 7 are also examples of this complementarity. When this works, the ‘third space’ created is more than the sum of its parts. But it can work the other way, with the symbiotic relationship between two people ending up being less than the sum of the parts.
It therefore becomes vital to understand what role you have in creating this third space. Do you tend to fill the space? Are naturally dominant? Speak first? Get to the decision more quickly? What effect does this have on the other? Are they be grateful for such clear, decisive leadership? Relieved because they don’t need to think as much? Feel pushed aside? Undervalued? Bored? There’s no universal – or right or wrong – answer. The model allows you think about what is happening in any particular circumstance, and adjust accordingly.
In most cases, I use it in coaching to help a good leader see why they are not a great leader. People who are clever and quick, and, in a sense, natural leaders, will always underestimate the extent they fill the third space. While this can be welcome to others, it can also be off-putting and, ultimately, disempowering. What kind of people will you attract to work with you if you fill so much space? One key part of understanding all this is realising that the style of domination matters less than you might think. It’s easier to see how an arrogant, loud, domineering (usually alpha male) type can eat up the space and leave others out. It’s harder to see, but just as deadly, if it’s done by someone who sounds gentle and collaborative. To make the point, I often joke to coachees: ‘It doesn’t matter if someone fills up your bed with dead rats or sweet-smelling roses – you still can’t get in the bloody thing.’
When looking to create more space in your life, this is a key concept to bear in mind: you should be managing the third space around you in a thoughtful, self-aware and strategic way. Otherwise others will fill it for you. Or, if you are a leader, you will be filling it too much yourself.
*
In Yulia’s specific situation, we needed to look at what was happening in the third space between her and Erik.
‘There’s you,’ I told her. ‘There’s “the other” – Erik, in this example, but it could be anybody, right? Then there’s this, “the third space” – which you filled. Without even thinking about whether you should be, or why.’
She stared at the board. Then she stood up and walked over to me, and took the marker out of my hand. She started to scribble all over the ‘space’.
‘It’s what I do. All the time. I fill this space.’
She stopped scribbling. The whiteboard was covered. She handed me back the marker, then showed why she was, in many senses, a natural leader. Staring me straight in the eye, she said: ‘OK. Got it. Now, what do we do about it?’
The following coaching session was two hours of intense work. We covered several overlapping areas: how this ability – of taking charge, filling the space – had, up until now, been a huge strength for her and underlain her exceptional performance. I said I would send her a synopsis of The Leadership Pipeline by Ram Charan, Steve Drotter and Jim Noel, the book that best explains the notion of leaders constantly having to evolve.
We also talked about how she thought she might feel if she didn’t take up the space. Was there a fear there? I asked her to imagine a situation where she hardly ever gave answers and, instead, asked questions, probing the other person, and coaching them to the answer.
This led us on to the next ‘breakthrough’ moment. We started to talk about what price she would have to pay for making this change. I think this is the most important moment in helping someone think through his or her behavioural development. It’s too tempting to see it as all upside: the client will be freer to do more ‘leadership stuff’, which they’ll thrive on, and their team will step up to the plate and exceed everyone’s expectations. In reality there will be benefits, but there are also costs. What might these be for you? What were they for Yulia?
As we talked she suddenly blurted out: ‘I’m going to be fucking bored.’
Jackpot, I thought.
‘Tell me more.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘what I love is thinking, solving problems, fixing things, driving things forward. I see the benefits of stepping back and creating all this space for others, but what about for me? Not only is it hard, but it’s cutting off what I’m best at – deciding things, telling people what they should do…’
What should a coach do in this position? Rush in to reassure her that it wouldn’t be boring? Not in my opinion, or at least that’s not my style.
‘You know, you’re right,’ I said. ‘It may seem boring. At least at first. You’ll be having a meeting and you will be gently encouraging the discussion and some people – maybe people not as sharp or quick as you – will be mumbling and stumbling towards a solution, and you will have the answer, right there, on the tip of your tongue. But your job isn’t to give that answer. It is to create the space for others to get to that answer.’
I then told her one of my favourite stories, about another CEO I worked with who was brilliant at all this stuff. He said to me that 75 per cent of the meetings he went to were a waste of time. He could have made the decision himself or he could have told the meeting what to do in the first five minutes, but he didn’t. He sat there, exuding an enthusiastic and encouraging demeanour but keeping largely quiet while his team found their own way to the answer. Why? I remember his rationale clearly:
Because that’s the way to build a team, to empower people to stretch themselves. Also, I may go to four meetings that bore me, where I have to bite my tongue and then in the fifth one, if I keep quiet, the discussion will lead to someone piping up with an idea or a thought that has the potential to be truly transformational. Someone who might not have spoken at all if I’d dominated or even led the meeting my way. That’s the point of it all. To create the space for that one thought that your own style, unchecked, would have killed at birth.
I also told the story of another senior manager who shared with me her agony when, on a Friday afternoon, she could see someone on her team struggling and where she knew she could leap in and solve everything. She had learned to resist doing that, living with her guilty feelings as she saw her colleague slouch off towards a weekend full of work and worry. Why? Because that process, of taking on the responsibility, of feeling it weigh heavily on your shoulders, is part of what develops people into strong leaders. Rescuing people, propping them up, may seem like kindness but it is actually – taken too far – disempowering and, ultimately, demotivating. My old psychotherapy supervisor in Berkeley, Peter Silen, had a great phrase for it: ‘The helping hand strikes again.’ Now, I should stress that both of these examples are slightly exaggerated to make a point. I often do this in coaching. Moving someone’s pendulum is very hard, so I like to give it an almighty swing in the other direction so it might, when the developmental dust has settled, end up swinging back, but not entirely back to where it started from. I will often be explicit about this, and sketch out this diagram to show what I mean:
The Pendulum of Change
While I gave these examples, Yulia was listening carefully. She then got up and went to her desk and came back with a bound A4 notebook. She threw it down on to the conference table.
‘It’s all in here, look,’ she said, pointing to the book. ‘Before every meeting I write down what I think, and at the beginning of the meeting I will set it all out – before anyone even speaks!’ She paused. ‘Whoosh goes all the space. Gone.’
We sat silent for a minute.
‘How do people seem to react to that?’
‘Well, I’ve never thought about it, but actually, thinking of it now, I don’t think they mind. In fact they expect it. They sit there …’ She paused, blushed a little and laughed quietly.
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s a terrible thing to say but I just had an image flash into my mind.’
I waited.
‘They sit in the meeting, like a load of sea lions, with their mouths open, like in the zoo, waiting for fish.’
‘… and you are the zookeeper with your bucket.’ I gestured to her notebook. ‘Full of fish.’
Again, we sat in silence.
‘You know, some people don’t mind a boss who is always feeding them. It makes their life easier. But eventually the more talented people feel stuffed, and get sluggish, and yearn to feel a bit of hunger, and start wanting the buzz and challenge of going out to hunt their own fish.’
‘Jan,’ she said.
Again I waited.
‘Jan, he’s Erik’s peer, manages the other big brand. That’s what I can feel coming from him. A frustration. I didn’t get it, but you’re right. For some reason, Erik wants the fish; Jan, he has almost started to turn his mouth away. That’s what it’s felt like these last few months.’
She was pensive, maybe a little sad. I gave her some time.
‘Well, that’s the cost to Jan, what about the cost to you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘What doesn’t get done because you are doing all this other stuff?’
She laughed. ‘Well, I know the answer to that. I don’t get time to think, not really deeply, about the future, about the more tricky stuff. Plus, of course, I’m working all hours God sends.’
Her gaze went to the wall behind her desk where two childish drawings were pinned up. The only slight bit of scruffiness in her pristine, minimalist office.
‘You don’t see the kids enough?’
She sighed, ‘No.’
‘Well, a more sensible work-life balance should be a key part of what we create space for. But at work, here, as well as that time for strategic thinking, what else might you be losing?’
She thought a while.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘I think you are using up the space that you could actually use to develop your leadership skills across a wide range of areas.’
We took a look at the DEEP Potential Model (outlined on p. 60), to explore Yulia’s own Personal Potential Profile. She was strong across the spectrum but she could use the space she created from delivering through others (rather than by herself) to develop each area further. She would have increased space, for example, to become more strategic or more creative. The area where she was weakest, though, and where she should prioritise her learning, was around P – People skills. She didn’t have enough awareness about how her leadership style affected people and that made her a less empowering and inspiring leader than she had it in her to be.
By this time, we were near the end of our time together. I felt that Yulia had gained significant insight into how her overly directional, micro-managing style came at a heavy cost both to herself and her team. The remainder of our work that day consisted of drawing up these insights into clear goals. I left her for ten minutes to articulate these, in her own language, on the whiteboard. When I returned, she had written:
Yulia needs to go from a leader who is taking decisions to a leader who is giving directions on how to make decisions.
Yulia needs to go from a leader who is conquering decision-making space to a leader who is creating decision-making space.
Now, this wasn’t exactly how I would have put it but it was how she saw it. Besides, it was 80 per cent there. I try to practise what I preach, after all, and it was definitely good enough. (I might have added something explicit about being empowering, but in the interests of doing exactly that for Yulia, I kept quiet.) We talked some more about how she could achieve these goals and came up with the following that she could try:
1. Not making any decisions for a whole week, but passing the responsibility on to others.
2. Not giving answers in her weekly meeting, but only asking questions.
3. Share what she was trying to do with her team, and ask for their support.
At the end of our time together we agreed next steps. We would speak on the phone in a month’s time to see how she was getting on, and then again, a month after that, perhaps surveying her team, and others, to measure progress. Finally, three months after the session, we would meet again, review how things had gone and think about any further work we needed to do together.
As she tidied the room a bit and I gathered my stuff, we stopped for a moment and smiled at each other. Her PA opened the door to announce that my taxi would be here in ten minutes. We looked at each other. Was there a need to use up that time, to fill it? We both seemed to think not.
‘A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.’
Lao Tzu
Delivering, as outlined in the previous chapter, was Yulia’s signature strength. But hitherto her executing had been centred on delivering by herself, rather than delivering through others. Left to her own devices she could fix any problem and drive any issue forward. What she wasn’t so used to (or good at) was executing as a leader rather than as an individual contributor, and that is where her growth lay – in the vital lesson that for leaders, the heart of execution involves empowering others rather than doing things yourself – even if you’re the ‘best’ person to do them.
Our work on her Personal Potential Profile and not filling the Third Space was about Yulia working out who she needed to become. For many people new to leadership positions, this can feel very daunting. Growing into this next version of herself required Yulia to go through an uncomfortable period of holding back and allowing mistakes to happen. She had to let go of the reins and of who she had been up to now, and that process is rarely comfortable.
In order to succeed in her new role Yulia had to let go of who she used to be and embrace a different version of herself. Her driven, detail-oriented and extremely thorough approach to her work were obviously assets, but they needed applying in a different way in order for her to thrive in her new role. Rather than using those skills to ensure her own work was of a stellar quality, she now needed to utilise her skills to empower the people she was leading. If she had kept on employing the behaviours that until now had served her well, she would have risked the very position they had enabled her to move into. Realising that what had brought her this far wouldn’t take her any further was a bittersweet pill for Yulia to swallow. But if she hadn’t faced that truth and acted on it, she would have risked stifling and, at worst, suffocating the very people she was supposed to be inspiring.
Yulia is not alone in struggling with the transition from doing to leading. High achievers are used to being in the spotlight, garnering praise for their accomplishments, but the shift into a leadership position, where others take centre stage, can be emotionally tough, like a prizefighter becoming mentor and coach to a brilliant protegé. Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford, has said, ‘Leadership is not about me. It’s about them.’ For Yulia this even meant biting her tongue when others made suggestions that she knew she could add value to. As a leader, the risk of adding value to others’ ideas is that you will subtly kill their ownership for those ideas simply because you are in a more senior position – even if that is the furthest thing from your mind. As unfortunate as it is, when you add to your reports’ ideas you run the risk of them no longer feeling the idea is theirs. So it must be done judiciously.
One of the coaching clients mentioned by Michael Bungay Stanier in his book The Coaching Habit said that he’d learned a very hard lesson about being a CEO of a big company: ‘My suggestions became orders.’ This echoes what Yulia experienced. Without meaning to, she took up too much of the space that should have been available for her team to grow into. In my experience, seeing this and stepping back is often the hardest thing leaders have to master. But to reach the top, master it they must.
All of the qualities in the chapters so far – such as reflecting, deciding, relating and planning – are the bedrock of being a great leader. Mastering them is the pre-requisite of really succeeding.
You can use the ‘Third Space’ model to examine your own style of interacting with others and your wider team. Spend a few minutes sketching out the diagram as I did with Yulia and see what comes to mind. You can use this technique to bring clarity to how you manage the ‘Third Space’ in all your relationships. Try it for your colleagues, direct reports, peers and boss. You can even use it to shed light on your relationships outside work – with your wife, husband, partner, friends and even children.
ASK YOURSELF: Who fills the space here? Is that how it should be? How I want it to be? How do I think the ‘other’ feels? What can I do to step back, or step up?
ASK YOURSELF: Before I set out to lead, have I created space for the basics of being successful?
The simple ‘My job isn’t …, it’s …’ formula offers a practical yet powerful tool for assessing where your next growth spurt might come from. You might want to play with that, first asking yourself, ‘What isn’t my job now?’ and writing down all of the things that you’re good at but which you know your role requires you to let go of. Then consider, ‘What is my job now?’ If you get stuck, try to recall three pieces of feedback you have had in the last month – and if you haven’t had any, stop what you’re doing and go and get some. Ask a trusted colleague or mentor for some input. The goal is to pay attention to what you need to stop doing, keep doing and start doing in order to lead as effectively as possible. One great CEO of a luxury retailer I work with had a cute way of posing these questions, based on four imaginary Russians. He would ask people what they needed Morov and Lessov and what they could Tossin or be Ridov.
ASK YOURSELF: What isn’t my job now? What is my job now? What do I need to stop doing? What do I need to start doing?
One of the key differences between being a manager or leader rather than an individual contributor is that you suddenly have direct reports who you can use to help you deliver. As Yulia found, there is huge potential in the power of real delegation. As leadership expert John C. Maxwell says, ‘If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.’
When thinking about what to delegate, consider the work that needs doing and who you’ll be delegating to. If you tend to feel guilty about adding more to other people’s workloads, reframe delegation in your own mind as an opportunity to help them grow and develop in their careers. Delegate tasks and even projects that will push your team members beyond their comfort zone. Delegation is designed to free up your own time so that you have the mental space to step back and see the bigger picture. It can also allow you to devote time to training and coaching your people. Trusting people to get on with the job at hand tends to bring out the best in them. Without delegation, we risk burning out and demoralising the people who we work with, as was beginning to happen to Yulia’s team member Jan. By not showing our faith in our team, we are implying that we don’t trust them enough to do important and meaningful work.
When working with newer managers (or the many experienced managers who still struggle with the idea), I have a simple four-step checklist that I use to help them think through what they should be delegating and how. Note that actually delegating is Step 4 not Step 1. Take what feels relevant and useful from the following as you hone and refine your skills.
Step 1: Decide whether and what to delegate
When considering whether to delegate, consider the following:
Can someone else do this task, or is it critical that I do it myself?
Will this task (or some form of it) recur in the future?
Could this task give someone else an opportunity to grow or develop?
Do I have sufficient time and resources to delegate effectively? As that could involve having to train, answer questions, check progress and, if necessary, rework.
Does the task have any timelines or deadlines?
What are the consequences of not completing the task on time?
Step 2: Be sure of objectives and outcomes
What are the essential and desirable outcomes of this task or project?
How important is it that the results are of the highest possible quality? Would ‘good enough’ be good enough?
Is this task critical for long-term success or can it afford some sort of failure? (i.e., does it need my attention rather than someone else’s?)
Step 3: Choosing who to delegate to
Who has relevant experience, knowledge and skills for the delegated task?
Do they have capacity in their schedule/workload to take this on?
Will one or more of their existing priorities/responsibilities need deferring/delegating?
Who is closest to the task, with the most intimate knowledge of the detail of the work?
How much training is needed, and would the training be related only to this one-off task or could it be beneficial longer term?
Are there any issues to address in terms of the person’s attitude or confidence that might hinder task completion?
What is their preferred work style? How independently are they able to work?
What are their long-term goals? Does the task support these in any way?
Step 4: Delegate
Start with a conversation where you clearly articulate the desired outcome of the task and project. Specify – or elicit from your colleague or employee – an expression of the desired results. Make sure that you are crystal clear about what needs to be done.
Clearly identify how much authority, responsibility and accountability you are delegating to the person and what you remain ultimately accountable for, particularly the first few times you delegate. Discuss whether they should wait to be told what to do before acting or take action and then check in. Depending on their level of experience, you might want them to provide updates regularly or periodically. Discuss in advance the extent of their authority and whether they should act, or ask for your or someone else’s input if they get stuck.
Close any potential communication gaps by being clear and offering guidelines, instructions, deadlines and anything else – especially if you think it is obvious. Don’t assume that the person to whom you’re delegating knows what you know. What’s obvious to you might not be to them.
Focus on the outcome not the method employed to get there – on the results not the process. Not everyone will work the way you do. Your way isn’t the only or even the best way! Empower your colleagues. Resist the urge to interfere. If you do not trust the person you’ve delegated the job to, you have either chosen the wrong person, or you’re not giving the right person a chance. Exercise self-restraint. As David Ogilvy once said, ‘Hire people who are better than you are, then get the hell out of their way.’ Or, in the words of US General George S. Patton: ‘Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.’
If support and advice is needed, you should resist the urge to offer answers; stay in coaching mode, ask questions and help your report find their own answers, even if this takes time. It is at this moment, when your report is struggling, that managers often become impatient (or feel guilty) and take back the task, figuring they may as well do it themselves. This is almost always a mistake. If it was worthy of delegation once then it still is, and if your report needs support then you should give it, not disempower them by taking away their challenge. Without realising it, managers doing this are falling prey to the phenomenon of ‘taking back the monkey’, as explained in Harvard Business Review’s most downloaded article. The manager’s task is to keep the monkey (i.e. the problem) on their report’s back, not let it somehow scramble back onto theirs.
Lastly, give and ask for feedback at the end of a project. Creating the space to reflect on the process will, like delegation itself, save you time in future. Make sure you offer appropriate thanks and even rewards if possible.
ASK YOURSELF: Have I delegated as much as I possibly can? To the right people? In the right way? What did we both learn?
The fundamental change that occurs when you become a leader is exactly the one Yulia had to confront and master. Suddenly, the task is not just creating space for you but creating space for others. That, in a single, simple phrase, is the best definition of leadership I know.
In Part 3 we have explored three aspects of doing – planning, delivering and leading. I hope that this exploration will enable you to deliver what really matters in a more efficient and empowering way.
There are three key lessons. First you need to be crystal clear and disciplined about what you want to deliver – and not commit to delivering too much. Second you need a well thought through (albeit flexible) plan to get there. You then need to develop your own pOS (personal operating system) that brings out the best in you. What environment do you need, physically, mentally and emotionally, to be most productive? Don’t be afraid of trying out new approaches. Sometimes what we think is ‘our’ way is only really our habit and actually other ways would be better for us.
Last, you need to make sure that as you increase in seniority you master the art of delivering through others rather than directly yourself. At the most senior levels, you need to be able to lead other leaders. Knowing what – and how – to delegate is crucial for this, as is consciously creating the space to develop yourself as a leader. We looked at the need for you to pursue twin strategies – your business strategy as required by your role, and your personal strategy as required by your career goals and desire to develop yourself.
Now that we have explored the three pillars of creating space for success – space to think, connect and do – we will step back a little and make some space to look at the more fundamental questions that arise out of our professional endeavours. Questions that relate to who we are, and what we need and want: our dreams and sense of purpose; our balance, sustainability and resilience; and our need to keep growing. In Part 4 we look at Creating Space to Be.
