The Feiner Points of Leadership: The 50 Basic Laws That Will Make People Want to Perform Better for You by Michael Feiner

Author:Michael Feiner
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: BUS000000
ISBN: 9780759511378
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2004-06-13T14:00:00+00:00

7. THE LAW OF TELL YOUR CAT!

Gossip, backbiting, and rumor mongering are insidious and destructive. You’ve seen the game. Someone comes to your office and asks if you can keep a secret because they’ve got a corporate bombshell to drop, so they have to tell the one person they trust. This doesn’t cut it—it violates the first rule of confidentiality: If everyone tells the one person they trust, in no time at all the entire firm knows. Do the math!

My advice here is simple, obvious, and extremely hard to follow. Don’t ever traffic in gossip about peers (or anyone else). Keep the gossip until you get home and then tell your cat. If you’re not willing to see it on the bulletin board or in an e-mail, don’t say it and don’t write it.

The inevitable question is, won’t you look like a do-gooder if you don’t engage in this kind of small talk while everyone else does? Or won’t it seem like you’re not part of the crowd?

Not necessarily. One script might go like this:

“Hey, this kind of talk isn’t productive. We all have our gripes—just as people gripe about us. Let’s stick to finding solutions to the problem instead of always personalizing their source.”

If that’s not to your liking, you might try this approach:

“How is it that we always gravitate to character assassination? The speeches usually differ from one person to another but it still sounds like the same kind of soap opera. We’d be less frustrated if we focused on what we can do to address business issues—and left the other stuff to the gossip columnists.”

Again, if leaders don’t uphold values, then no one will.

To finish the story of Chris and the bonuses, I was speechless when he told me that I behaved as though I was always right, and always had to be right. And I’m rarely speechless. I had no quick retort. My mouth was open but no words came out. Was I that difficult to deal with? It was clear that Chris thought so. He waited for my reaction, becoming visibly more nervous the longer my silence lasted.

Finally, I said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t listen when you argue for your people. But that’s because I think your standards are too low.”

“Mike, maybe my standards are too low. Or maybe they’re just different from yours. But if you start out thinking my standards are too low, then you’ll never hear what I’m saying about some of my people—you’ve made up your mind before we ever begin talking.”

Again, I was silent. Chris was right. Deciding ahead of time made our past bonus discussions superfluous. No wonder he didn’t trust me to be evenhanded in judging his bonus recommendations. So I said, after a long pause, “Chris, let’s start again. Tell me why you think these three stars deserve to max out at one hundred and fifty percent.” This was a pull approach I rarely used. Chris went on to talk passionately about why his three stars deserved maximum bonus awards.

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