Stop Adding Too Much Value

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Leaders often don’t realise that even their most throwaway comments can be interpreted by their staff as directives, with the risk that unintended consequences could mar their organisational ecosystems. Here are a few thoughts on why leaders must choose their words carefully – or even stay silent altogether… 

Whatever You Say is An Order

"I learned a very hard lesson. My suggestions become orders. If they’re smart, they’re orders. If they’re stupid, they’re orders. If I want them to be orders, they are orders. And, if I don’t want them to be orders, they are orders anyway." JP Garnier, former Chief Executive of GlaxoSmithKline

Leaders rise through the ranks because they're good at adding value. Their ideas boost the bottom line, time and again.

But there comes a point when a leader’s relentless need to add value to every discussion becomes a liability.

Several years ago, I had dinner with Jon Katzenbach, the former McKinsey & Company director now at PwC US. Also at the table was Niko Canner, Katzenbach's brilliant protégé and partner. The two men were immersed in plotting a new venture, and they were clearly on the same wavelength.

But something about their conversation was slightly off. Every time Canner floated an idea, Katzenbach interrupted him.“That’s a great idea,” Katzenbach would say, “but it would work better if you...” and then he would trail off into a story about how it worked for him several years earlier in another context. When Katzenbach finished, Canner would pick up where he left off only to be interrupted within seconds by Katzenbach again. This went back and forth like a long rally at Wimbledon.

Ordinarily, I keep quiet in these situations. But Katzenbach was a friend exhibiting classic destructive smart-person behavior. I said, “Jon, will you please be quiet and let Niko talk? Stop trying to add value to the discussion.”

A wasteful fallacy

There’s a big problem with adding too much value. Imagine you’re the chief executive. I come to you with an idea that you think is very good. Rather than just pat me on the back and say, “Great idea!” your inclination — because you have to add value — is to say, “Good idea, but it would be better if you tried it this way.”

You may have improved the content of my idea by 5%, but you've reduced my commitment to executing it by 50%, because you've taken away my ownership of the idea. My idea is now your idea — and I walk out of your office less enthused about it than when I walked in. That’s the fallacy of added value. Whatever we gain in the form of a better idea is lost many times over in our employees’ diminished commitment to the concept.

Suggestions are orders

What this means for bosses is to closely monitor how you hand out encouragement. If you find yourself saying, “great idea”, then tempering it with a “but” or “however,” just try cutting your response off at “idea”. Even better, before you speak, take a breath and ask yourself if what you're about to say is worth it.

Years ago a chocolatier I know in San Francisco agreed to make a sampler box of 12 chocolates for the late designer Bill Blass. They designed a dozen different chocolates for Blass’ approval, which he insisted upon since the chocolates would bear his name. But sensing that he would resent not having a choice, they seeded the selection with a dozen other types that they regarded as clearly inferior.

To the chocolatiers’ horror, when Blass entered the room for the tasting, he liked all the inferior chocolates. The chocolatiers hadn’t expected Blass to be so firm in his opinion. But Blass was a man of great taste, used to getting his way, and he knew what he liked. He needed to add value to the process. After Blass left the room, the chocolatiers looked at each other, all thinking the same thing, “What are we going to do? He picked all the wrong ones.”

Finally, the head of the company, which was a family business that had thrived for seven generations, said, “We know chocolate. He doesn't. Let’s make the ones we like and he’ll never know the difference.”

Blass’ fatal error was not that he had an opinion (to which he was entitled) but rather that he didn’t know how his opinions came across to the people working for him—who in this case were the real experts. He made the classic mistake of many otherwise great leaders:

• They think they have all the answers, but others see it as arrogance.

• They think they’re contributing to a situation with helpful comments, but others see it as butting in.

• They think they’re delegating effectively, but others see it as shirking responsibilities.

• They think they’re holding their tongue, but others see it as unresponsiveness.

• They think they’re letting people think for themselves, but others see it as ignoring them.

What to stop

Over time these ‘minor’ workplace foibles begin to chip away at the goodwill we've all accumulated in life and that other people normally extend to colleagues and friends. That’s when the minor irritation blows up into a major crisis. But this crisis can be avoided—if leaders know what to stop doing.

This insight came to me from the management thinker Peter Drucker. As a ten-year board member of the Peter Drucker Foundation, I had many opportunities to listen to the great man. Among the myriad wise things he said was this:“We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”

How true. Think about your organization. When was the last retreat or training session you attended that was titled, ‘Stupid Things Our Top People Do That We Need to Stop Doing Now?’ When was the last time your chief executive delivered an internal talk, designed to motivate employees, which focused on his negative traits and his efforts to stop this destructive behavior? Can you even imagine your chief executive (or immediate supervisor) admitting a personal failing in public and outlining his efforts to stop doing it?

Probably not.

It’s worth thinking about what we should stop doing. It gets no attention, but it can be as crucial as everything else we do combined.

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Written by Marshall Goldsmith