In relative terms, you have been successful. You have the title, the salary and the perks that say, “success,” but how much of a performance penalty have your leadership tics and bad habits imposed on your teams, your firm and on your career? 

Some context: most senior and successful leaders have a strong view of their strengths. Ask a senior leader what has helped him/her  succeed over time and you will likely hear a listing of behaviors or attributes they are particularly proud of.

Alternatively, ask about the factors, gaps or weaknesses that have caused them to stumble or leave performance on the table and most will not have much to offer beyond some token, cliché answers.

We are all mostly card-carrying members of the “fundamental attribution error” society, where we attribute our successes to our skills and our failures and stumbles to factors beyond our direct control.

What most/many/all fail to see are the behaviors and leadership tics they have developed over time that leave opportunities for additional performance on the table. This Leadership Performance Overhead (LPO) is costly to firms, teams and of course, to the individuals who have been successful in spite of themselves.

Leadership Performance Overhead in Action:

  • The CEO regularly changes her mind on fully vetted decisions, frustrating her team members and promoting a period of post-decision paralysis as everyone waits to see if she is going to stay the course.
  • The General Manager draws upon his roots as a successful sales executive and frequently inserts himself in the larger sales. Instead of supporting the responsible sales team, he takes over the dealmaking, remaining involved long enough to stir things up only to require the team to regain control once he is off chasing after the responsibilities of his day job.
  • The brilliant product manager regularly bypasses the project team to interact directly with the head engineer—a longtime friend. They make critical product design decisions on their own, leaving team members to discover this news significantly after-the-fact.
  • The COO takes pride in his short-attention span. “If you want to make a point with me, make it fast and clear, or, go back and rethink it. I am busy running this place.”

The examples above and the many more I can cite from coaching work are drawn from individuals who have long lists of accomplishments in their careers. Yet, in each case, the individuals are their own worst enemies, striving to produce positive results, yet imposing a considerable LPO penalty on their activities and interactions.

On a personal note, I have no doubt my own LPO Penalty was much higher than it should have been. I was supremely confident in my abilities to lead in all circumstances. I took great pride in my ability to solve complex strategic problems and I had no hesitancy on tinkering with how I orchestrated my resources in search of the right results. And yes, I liked the power.

In other words, I was a mildly narcissistic pain in the ass approaching benevolent dictator of a leader at one point in my career. Not surprisingly, real success didn’t arrive until I understood the LPO penalty I was imposing on everyone.

It took a strong mentor to kick me in the butt and force me to focus on this part of my performance—because it was in my best interest. While I did not change my nature, I absolutely reined in some of the penalty inducing behaviors. I can assure you, it was both humbling and difficult. Of course, meaningful change is never easy.

Getting Started on Reducing Your Leadership Performance Overhead Penalty:

1. Embrace the reality that your performance can improve. Ultimately, my coach helped me realize that it was in my best interest to tackle the hardest professional development project of all: myself. I had to accept that in spite of my visible success, I could achieve more for myself, my family, my firm and my team by strengthening my own performance.

2. Get help orchestrating a meaningful, actionable 360-degree feedback process. We almost never have enough insight into how we confound and stress our team members with our behaviors. Asking is good, but often, we don’t get the full or real story. And many of our h.r. administered feedback processes are flawed. Work with an experienced coach or better yet, take advantage of a high quality leadership development program where the feedback work is a core part of the development experience. My personal favorite: the Center for Creative Leadership.

3. Tell everyone around you about the feedback findings and tell them you are striving to improve. Seriously. The entire feedback process only works if people understand where you are striving to improve, and IF they are comfortable calling you out on missteps.

4. Ask people to keep you honest on your behavioral improvements. This one only works if you reward honesty and don’t bite off the heads of the people you’ve asked to help you. Shoot one messenger and your program for improvement is in serious danger. Instead, thank people and then strive to adjust the noted behavioral tic.

5. In parallel to the feedback process, take a cue from Clayton Christensen (“How Will You Measure Your Life”) and work on defining how you will measure your impact on those you encounter at work and in life. While this sounds deeply philosophical—it is—it is also a healthy part of the process of evolving as a person and professional. Decide how people will describe what you did for them during their careers and then live it.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The answer to most performance problems in our workplaces is staring back at us in the mirror. It takes a bit of courage to recognize that the best gains might just come from you getting better at the job of leading. Changing your behaviors for the better takes grit.

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Art Petty serves senior executives and management teams as a performance coach and strategy facilitator. Art is a popular keynote speaker focusing on helping professionals and organizations learn to survive and thrive in an era of change. Additionally, Art’s books are widely used in leadership development programs. To learn more or discuss a challenge, contact Art.