Leadership Lessons From The Fastlane
Six Questions Every Leader Should Ask
By Deborah Collins Stephens

Deborah's Two Cents on Leadership:

Our assumptions about people, work, and human motivation govern our actions and determine the types of corporate cultures we build and the styles of leadership we adopt. Explore and understand these assumptions with these tips.

Employees report levels of dissatisfaction in the workplace between 60 and 70%, revolving mostly around the human side of the enterprise. Moreover, surveys show 4 out of 5 employees are not engaged in their work.

Human creativity has become the primary source of competitive advantage. Managing it calls for a whole new set of assumptions for leading and managing.

"Everyone has the motivation to create and to work. We have the questions wrong. We should be asking why do people 'not' create or work? What stops these motivations which reside in everyone?" - Abraham Maslow

I met a true pioneer named Andrew Kay. Andy invented the first personal computer, named it the "Kaypro" and shipped his first order from an industrial park in Southern California, ushering in the beginning of the digital age. Andy also gave the world something as impressive as the personal computer—a contribution to what would ultimately become a sea change in modern management thinking. In 1960, new management theories were beginning to find their way into corporations, and the two men behind the theories, Dr. Abraham Maslow, the ‘father of psychology’ and Dr. Douglas McGregor, the ‘father of modern management’ had never met but were brought together by Andy Kay on the MIT campus. In a tiny office, Maslow and McGregor began the great debates of human motivation and leadership that form the basis of most human resource practices today. Maslow penned a set of journals that proved to be so far ahead of their time that their significance was lost to all but a handful of business leaders.

In what I describe as a Celestine Prophecy meets the Harvard Business Review kind of moment, Maslow’s daughter gave those journals to me in the spring of 1997. Thus, began my journey into enlightened management. I went on to publish those journals in two books: Maslow on Management and the Maslow Business Reader. I later joined esteemed leadership expert, Dr. Warren Bennis in bringing an unpublished journal by Dr. Douglas McGregor to a new generation of leaders in a book we titled: Revisiting The Human Side Of Enterprise. In these unpublished journals, I discovered the six questions I believe all leaders must ask.

How can six questions be of value to leaders today? Consistently, I’ve discovered that our answers give insights into the assumptions we hold about people, work, and human motivation. Our assumptions govern our actions and determine the types of corporate cultures we build and the styles of leadership we adopt. Yet, it is a rare individual who takes the time to question their assumptions. The six questions and a leader’s answers tell me more about the type of leader you are or will become than any scientific assessment tool that I have discovered. I’ve come to believe that one’s answers affect everything you say and everything that you do as a leader.

The Six Questions Every Leader Should Answer and Ask

1) Do you believe that people are trustworthy or must they be watched and measured and managed to do the right thing, get the right result?

2) Do you believe that people seek responsibility and accountability in their work or only seek a paycheck, benefits and security?

3) Do you believe that people seek meaning in their work or see work as simply a job and meaning to be found outside the workplace?

4) Do you believe that people are expendable or that talent must be nurtured, developed and not taken for granted?

5) Do you believe that people don’t resist change but they resist being changed?

6) Can you articulate at least 4 reasons why people should follow you?

Your Answers Affect Everything You Say And Do

"Leadership is not a series of mechanical tasks but a set of human interactions." -Thomas Teal

In the digital age that Andy Kay helped launch, trust became a form of currency. If leaders don’t believe people are trustworthy, (employees as well as customers) they will tend to build an organization filled with managerial practices that are run by rule, bureaucracy, and an endless amount of performance metrics that can disillusion and stifle the most gifted employee. If we don’t believe that people seek meaning in their work, we might be compelled to build an organization filled with incentives tied only to dollars, forgetting about the universal human need for meaning in all that we do. If we believe that employees are not self-motivated and have to be coaxed, cajoled and controlled, odds are we will build a culture that reflects our beliefs. Research shows that such systems often kill creativity and innovation - the very qualities we need to succeed in today’s global environment.

Today, employees in all industries report levels of dissatisfaction in the workplace between 60 and 70%, and the majority of dissatisfaction revolves around the human side of the enterprise. Surveys show that 4 out of 5 employees across a broad spectrum of industries are not engaged in their work. When we dig a little deeper and ask why, employees intend to jump ship, not for more money but often for more meaning and better management. Against this backdrop, it is truly the enlightened leader who understands and can articulate why she is the type of leader to be trusted in the age of uncertainty, to be followed in a time of disillusionment with leaders in corporate America and government.

An odd thing happens when you’ve asked as many leaders as I, these six timeless questions. Their answers lead one to believe that the majority of organizations operating today are approaching what management expert, Jim Collins calls "a Copernican Revolution of work and society—a place where all employees reach their potential and customers are incredibly loyal!" Yet, one only has to look at the latest research to discover that what we SAY we believe about employee motivation and human behavior versus what we actually DO inside of organizations provides for a very large gap between our ‘talk and our walk.’

Change Your Assumptions

"How one thinks will determine what one measures" -Albert Einstein

The digital world has forever changed the way we work, but our management practices, for the most part haven’t kept pace. Today, human creativity has become the primary source of competitive advantage, whether you are making computers, creating genetic engineered drugs, making diapers, or directing a Broadway play. Managing human creativity calls for a whole new set of assumptions for leading and managing. Don’t be surprised if it also doesn’t call for a significant change in you as a leader. A change might well be a major overhaul in your thinking or, for some, a validation of what you’ve always believed in your gut about great leaders but could never confirm. How does one become an enlightened leader? The type that brings out the talent inherent in most who work?

Here are some suggestions that have been valuable to many of the leaders I’ve worked with over the years:

1) Take the six questions and analyze your answers. What do you truly believe? What is your theory for motivating those you lead?

2) Why should people follow you? Write out your answers and build them into a personal mission statement. Let those you lead know what you stand for.

3) Using the six questions, can you identify three procedures, processes or programs in your organization that spell a lack of trust, a lack of understanding of what motivates, that violate what you say you believe?

4) If you lead a team, take the six questions and have your team answer them. Have a dialogue over the answers. What changes can you make internally in the next 30 to 90 days that are more reflective of your assumptions and beliefs?