Greg Stevenson thought he was an effective leader until his executive assistant told him a graduate named Liz was upset outside his office. He'd given her rapid, directive edits to a presentation, thinking he was being efficient. The moment revealed how his terse, top-down communication demoralizes people and blinds him to his own failures.
I want to tell you about the day I discovered I was a significantly worse leader than I thought I was. I was running a graduate program, and one of the graduates, Liz, had been given a research project. Her job was to produce a presentation for me to present. She'd been working on it for some time, and she came into my office for my sign-off. I went through it quickly— change this, Moved that, took this out, added this in. 5 minutes, maybe less. Then I sent her back to make the changes. In my mind, I'd just done my job. Efficient feedback for her, clear direction, and on to the next thing that I was working on. 10 minutes later, my EA crew came in and told me the graduate was outside, upset.
