I have my strengths—my ability for introspection, intense imagination, creativity, and funnily enough, time management. And I have places where others easily beat me. One of those weak points is around aggression.
I never liked team sports. I always favored sports like gymnastics where you’re basically competing against yourself, trying to do better than you, personally, did last time. Sports like softball always caused me anxiety. I would go as far into the outfield as possible. I wanted to be in the spot where I was least likely to have to interact with the ball and others.
Fast-forward 35 to 40 years later, and I sort of feel the same way. I don’t want to have to push aside, or maneuver around another person to get what I want. This is a liability in a corporate organization filled with those who relish angling around and passing others.
Training to Recognize a Self-Serving but Flawed Pitch
The challenge for an executive is recognizing when you’re being manipulated by an employee who is adept at pushing aside their peers to put their own projects and needs first—even when it doesn’t make sense for the profitability and well-being of the department overall.
For example, in a department with several publications, the one that gets the Website redesign first could be the one with the most aggressive editor-in-chief, not the one that has the greatest advertising net. This can happen when the executives overseeing the department have not been trained on how to respond to manipulation. They don’t know how to differentiate between a real business need for the department as a whole and the personal-gain-based need of an aggressive employee.
Teach Executives How to Respond
Leadership development programs have an opportunity to anticipate these situations and prepare new executives on how to respond.
A well-trained executive might respond: “Kathy, you make some great points. And I must commend you on your passion and how proactive you have been about pinpointing exactly what your publication’s Website needs. However, I have to say that though you make excellent points and your site would, indeed, be improved vastly by this redesign, the return on investment is likely not there. Your sister publication has far greater potential for advertising sales, with its much broader coverage and wider audience. Its leader hasn’t been as proactive as you have been in advocating for her site, but that doesn’t change the fact that’s where this investment you’re pitching should go.”
This is a blunt response, but if it is the truth, then an executive with a well-run department must be honest and put the investment where it will generate the greatest return. They can’t allow themselves to be manipulated by a forceful employee into putting it in a place that benefits that employee, and their project, more than the department as a whole.
Train Managers to Heed Quieter Voices, Too
An executive who is not trained well enough to avoid being bullied by the most aggressive and loudest voices in their department also fails to be an ally to the softer voices they manage. Those softer voices may need a supervisor who works with them to draw out the greater investment needed in the businesses they manage. The executive also must learn how to develop these less-aggressive employees so they can become more forceful in advocating for what their businesses need.
Not everyone—even those who are otherwise great employees—intuitively know how to “lean in.” They may express business needs to their supervisor in such a subtle way that an executive may miss what they are saying entirely.
“Jill, it sounds like what you’re trying to express is that your publication is underperforming at least in part because your site’s design and technology is outdated. Am I right? Tell me specifically some of the things you’d like to see changed, and we can work together to come up with the cost of doing these things and see if we can get funding for it.”
What is the best way to prepare budding leaders to fend off aggressive employees while lifting up the softer but equally valuable voices they manage?