By John Pearson

In Part 1 of 2, we mentioned several annoying boardroom habits—from the list in the convicting book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break, by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter.

Here are several more:

#9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

#12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

#14. Playing favorites.

#16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

#18. Punishing the messenger.

#20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

There are another 10—equally convicting for some of us.  But here’s the good news: Goldsmith says that these faults are simple to correct. Yet there’s bad news:

“The higher you go [in your career],

the more your problems are behavioral.”

If you’re gutsy enough to read this, you will not get to page 223 unscathed. If you read with a pen, like I do, you’ll have few unmarked pages. As a bonus along the way, the leadership wisdom oozes out:

--Why not listening sends an “Armada of Negative Messages” (page 86) and three things all good listeners do (page 147). Goldsmith says “80 percent of our success in learning from other people is based upon how well we listen.”

--One big reminder about people styles: “You are not managing you” (page 208).

--Why the most successful CEOs and senior leaders often have the best personal assistants (page 196).

--Why people’s common sense gets fuzzy and opaque—when you’re talking about interpersonal behavior, and why leaders often choose the wrong thing to fix (the easy one, not the glaring one). See Goldsmith’s seven rules on the change process, including “Rule 1: You Might Not Have a Disease That Behavioral Change Can Cure” (chapter 13).

--Why you must say “Thank You” when receiving requested feedback—and then stop. Say no more. Nada! (Chapter 11: Following Up and Chapter 12: Practicing Feedforward)

As a Christ-follower, I have one caveat to the book. There is a spiritual dimension missing, as is common in many business/leadership books. For the Christian, behavioral change is a mandate, but we’re not dependent on only bootstrap discipline and frank feedback. Made in the image of God, we can understand and implement real change only from a theological, biblical worldview. It’s not either/or, it’s both. (If I could thoughtfully integrate the practicality of this book with the deep spiritual context of some of my favorite business books, then, wow, that would be the perfect balance.)

Two additional notes: First, Chapter 12, Special Challenges for People in Charge, encourages leaders to write a document: “Memo to Staff: How to Handle Me.” If written with humility and transparency, it’s a brilliant, brilliant tool.

Perhaps—if done well—your CEO and board chair

could trade memos with each other.

Second, the appendix features a “Global Leadership Inventory” that can be used as a 360-feedback assessment. Respondents are asked to rate their leaders on a five-point scale from Highly Satisfied to Highly Dissatisfied. (Example: #44: “Asks people what he/she can do to improve.”) This is worth the price of the book.

QUESTION: How well does your board leverage the strengths of board members—while not putting their heads in the sand when annoying habits disrupt the governance process?

 

This article was originally posted on the “Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations” blog, hosted by ECFA. John Pearson, a board governance consultant and author, was ECFA’s governance blogger from 2011 to 2020. © 2021, ECFA and John Pearson. All rights reserved.