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"I Don't Know" Leadership |
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Contributed by Curt Wehrley
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Friday, 28 October 2005 |
Are you the kind of person who expects your company's leaders to have all of the right answers? It's a common expectation among those who are led, so it's no surprise when the one who becomes emperor of their domain feels the need to project certainty and confidence at all times. Unfortunately, we all know that an excess of either trait can lead to the equivalent of the proverbial “ emperor has no clothes” scene. Next month's issue of Business 2.0 magazine includes a one-page article which makes a good case for periodically pulling the “I don't know” card. Columnist Jeffrey Pfeffer explains his theory on the origin of the I-know-I'm-right syndrome:
Nowadays there's great pressure to come off like a know-it-all. Maybe that's due to the additional scrutiny that comes from living in our media-drenched, blog-happy age. Or maybe it's a result of increasing job insecurity: People think any display of doubt or weakness might cost them their jobs.
As you might have guessed, the know-it-all can subject his/her organization to undesirable consequences. Pfeffer continues:
[The] habit of projecting certainty in uncertain situations can be quite harmful to an organization. Most important, not admitting to yourself and others what you don't know usually precludes asking for help, advice, and relevant information.
[C]ommitments that are not open to change can leave an organization operating in fantasyland...If you become so attached to your course of action that proving it right becomes more important than your overall success, chances are you are not going to succeed.
The best approach? So-called fact based management: (1) Stay connected to reality as best you can; and (2) admit what you don't know and ask for time and the means to find out. As Pfeffer notes, “That's what good scientists do every day of their lives.”
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