Ep 729 | How Do You Lead the Unleadable?

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off Podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I have been thinking a lot lately about a situation I found myself in last week where I was working with a group of people who who are actually great people. They're not bad by any, by any stretch. They weren't hostile. They certainly were not incompetent. But they also did not want what I defined as leadership. They didn't ask for direction. They didn't invite direction or structure. They didn't see the need for any of that. And yet, probably as a result, there was a good amount of confusion. There was drift from, from our objective. There was inefficiency. Decisions were not getting made. Outcomes were not being achieved or were not improving. So, the question became pretty simple to me, even though it's a rather uncomfortable question. The question was, how do you lead people who believe that they don't want to be led? How do you lead people who don't want to be led? Not because they're defiant, but because they don't see leadership as necessary. Now, I'm talking about an experience I had last week in a volunteer organization, but I think for many of us entrepreneurs, you are probably in a position right now, at least with one of your people within your world, that may imply that they don't want leadership, at least as they define it. So, this likely applies somewhere in your world just as it did mine. I think the first realization here is that, or the first thing I should say that you have to accept is this. Most people, I do not believe, resist leadership. What they resist is feeling managed, exposed, maybe even diminished. When people push back it's rarely about control. It's actually more about their identity because their ego says something like, "I don't need this." Their emotions say something like, "I don't trust this." Flat organizations, organizations without an org chart, they say things like, "No one's in charge here." Now, if you misread that or if I misread that as resistance, We likely escalated, escalated things too fast and therefore lose influence. That's actually not what it's about. I think there's a handful of principles that we can run through. First, I think you got to lead through clarity and not authority. Don't mistake leadership with authority. I think we can lead through clarity here. So when people don't want leadership, The fastest way to lose them is to assert it, is to show authority. Instead, though, you could bring clarity when none exists. So you don't say, hey, here's what we're doing, but you could say, here's what's unclear right now, and here's what, what happens if it stays unclear. That clarity feels neutral, whereas authority might feel a little bit more threatening. Order does not come from, from power. What order comes from is actually naming reality more calmly and more accurately. I think that most unleadable groups, they're not resisting direction. They're, they're actually craving direction. I think the next thing we need to look at is to create direction without calling it leadership. What do I mean when I say that? I think here's the truth that, that most people miss. People often reject leaders but accept standards. They actually reject leaders, but they accept standards. What do I mean? They may not want someone in charge, but they almost always want fewer decisions. They want less chaos. They want better outcomes. So, you don't lead by position, you can actually lead by framework. So, you can introduce clear goals, clear constraints, clear next actions, and then let the structure of those clear goals, constraints, and actions, let the structure do the talking. That's the standards. When the standards exist, the leadership becomes invisible. And as a result, the resistance drops. So, I think there's an opportunity again to create direction without actually calling it leadership by setting standards, by using a framework as opposed to aiming to be in charge. I think the next thing that we can consider when leading a group that's unleadable is to influence with questions and not answers. See, unleadable people in my experience and my experience last week, they often have one thing in common, and that's that they don't feel heard. So before you try to move them, I think you have to understand what they think matters. So I would ask questions like, hey, what's not working right now? Or, hey, what would success look like if this actually worked? Or, what's getting in the way that no one's calling out right now. Now, here's the key, I think, to this. You don't ask questions to agree necessarily. You ask questions to surface shared problems. You're the one facilitating the question, so you're indirectly leading this group and changing its thinking. Once people hear their own words reflected back with clarity, they become so much more open to direction. Again, it's a roundabout way of leading a group, without asserting dominance. You're influencing with questions versus answers. I think the next principle to consider, especially when hierarchy is, is flat or unwanted, is the shift from control to consequence. What do I mean when I say that? Don't threaten, don't pressure, just simply connect actions to outcomes. So for example, make a statement like, "This is what happens if we don't decide," or, "This is the cost of doing nothing," or, "This is what we're choosing by not choosing." See, people may resist being told what to do, but they rarely argue with the consequences when they're laid out clearly. So again, you're shifting from control to consequence. You're painting the picture as to what's to happen. You're connecting the actions to the outcomes or the inaction to the outcomes. It's a great way to lead without directly leading. And then principle number 5, the last of the 5 principles I'm giving you: model before you manage. Model before you manage. No surprise, as I'm always talking about, the number 1 thing we could all do to improve our leadership is to model the behavior we expected of others. In environments where leadership isn't welcomed, credibility matters more than title. So, people will watch how you handle tension, how you make decisions, how you take responsibility. So, if you want order, you've got to be ordered. If you want calm, you've got to be calm. If you want accountability, you got to own your part first. Unleadable people don't follow commands. What they do follow are examples that they respect. So for me, here's kind of the reframe that changed it all. You don't lead the unleadable by forcing alignment. You lead them by reducing friction, by increasing clarity, and by letting reality really do the persuading for you. Leadership is not something you typically announce. It's something people feel when things start working better. So a couple actions for you if you're facing this right now. Number 1, stop trying to be the leader and start being the clearest thinker in the room. Name what's unclear, name what, what matters, call out that next step. Stop trying to be the leader in the traditional sense and just start thinking more clearly, being the clearest thinker in the room. And you will become the, the leader by default. You will be leading by default. And then action number 2, replace some directives with questions that surface consequences. So it's not, what should we do? But instead, what happens if we don't? I think that shift alone changes dynamics rather quickly. So, as we close out today, recognize that some people don't want leadership. It's just a function of teams and of organizations. It just happens. Some environments completely reject hierarchy, but that doesn't mean that leadership isn't needed. It just means it has to show up a little bit differently. It has to show up maybe less force and more clarity, maybe less ego, maybe more structure. I think that's how you bring order to some things without asking permission. And that is at least a path that I know that works when it comes to leading the unleadable. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.