Mike Myatt is the chairman of N2Growth, a global leader in providing leadership development services to Fortune 500 companies. He has worked directly with more than 150 public company CEOs, is widely regarded as one of America’s top CEO coaches and is a best-selling author. His new book, “Hacking Leadership: The 11 Gaps Every Business Needs to Close and the Secrets to Closing Them Quickly,” offers a new approach to leadership development. Smart Business spoke with Myatt about how leaders can create a culture of leadership within their organization and help drive exceptional results.
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How do you address what someone perceives as mediocrity from leadership in a productive, constructive manner?
There’s a term out there that’s been thrown around for the last couple of years called managing up. I think when understood properly, it can be a very healthy thing. Understood improperly, it can be disastrous. If you believe managing up is just trying to get what you want out of the person, that’s manipulation. Playing a bunch of mind games is probably going to get you in a lot of hot water.
If you view managing up as trying to help your leader lead better, it can be extremely productive and greatly appreciated. Each leader is different and you can’t use a one-size-fits-all methodology for how you bring issues to leaders, but there’s a path to every leader. If you study it long enough and desire to create an outcome that not only serves the enterprise but also serves the leader, it will be embraced.
How do you shift the conversation from a management culture to a leadership culture?
If you have managers in leadership positions that don’t understand the difference between management and leadership, you’re going to have problems. Let me give you a couple of examples — what I call The Old Paradigm vs. The New Paradigm.
The Old Paradigm is managing culture. The New Paradigm is leading culture.
When you’re managing culture, you have a leader. When you’re leading culture, you create a culture of leadership. When you manage culture, you invest in tools.
When you lead culture, you invest in people. Management culture follows best practices. Leadership culture develops next practices. Management culture discourages independent thinking. Leadership culture embraces descending opinions. Management culture has a plan. Leadership culture has a purpose.
How do leaders find their blind spots but make sure they’re getting an honest response from people around them about their blind spots?
If you want an honest response from people, you have to give them the permission or space to do so. If you’ve been harsh with people, if you’ve been punitive with people, if you’ve been retributive in your actions towards people, you will find it difficult to get an honest response.
Managing expectations is gamesmanship, aligning expectations is leadership. If people don’t know what’s expected of them, you have no right to those expectations. Your job is to make those expectations clear. When people see that you honestly, not disingenuously, want the feedback and will do something productive with it, they’ll give it to you. ●
