Mandy Haskett: How leading by microwave can burn you

Last week, I was in a meeting with a frustrated chief marketing officer who snapped at his teammate: “I sign the front of your check! You sign the back.” (Sigh.) He had lost his footing and resorted to a flex. It was as effective as it is in the movies: not at all.

In our debrief afterward, the CMO lamented that his people just need to “get on board and do their jobs” and that he “doesn’t have time for soft stuff … only results.” He’d forgotten that those results would come from the trail of now-dead bodies he’d left in his wake.

Bad as his behavior was, I confess—an old version of me could relate.

People like me are the reason microwaves were invented. Faster feels thrilling, even when the outcome is mediocre. And yet, we know that the things worth doing in life are hard, sometimes confusing at first, and often time-intensive. Name something you’re super proud of. Did you microwave it? Me, neither.

Leading is one of these things. Creating the conditions through which others can rise and thrive requires a great deal of trust and influence. When it comes to influence, human instinct is our obstacle and our advantage.

It’s heroic to run into a burning building. And keeping buildings from burning down in the first place is also really important (and scalable)! Interestingly, our instincts work against us when it comes to prevention.

Too many executives reactively wait until their cultures are on fire to prioritize coaching and development for their leaders. We’ve evolved to take smaller soon over larger later. It’s human. But when it comes to managing the delicate interpersonal dynamics of a workplace, this instinct is our obstacle.

The field of behavioral economics reminds us that we make decisions in three big ways that help us outrun lions but trip us up when we’re faced with complexity.

Here’s what’s working for and against us:

1. Evolution

We’re all the product of a long string of choices, some of which we inherit. For example, Americans’ top phobia is snakes, but fewer than 10 people die by venomous snake bites in the United States each year. Cars, on the other hand, kill about 41,000 people. But we’re not afraid of cars. Some choices are hardwired because they’ve been handed down. This is also why losses matter more than gains. We’re hardwired to do anything to avoid loss.

When leaders begin to experience the loss of key talent, that’s when they develop a sense of urgency to fix the culture. These are the same leaders who call in consultants like me when their culture is already engulfed in flames.

2. Brain function

The brain occupies 2% of the body but uses 20% of our energy. So we’re drawn to shortcuts.

Google once displayed bowls of M&Ms at its offices. When the company began to look for ways to promote health/wellness, a team of behavioral science PhDs was tapped to search for a solution that would deter staff from scooping up handfuls of junk food. The PhDs’ solution: a jar with a lid. This jar made it only a teeny bit harder for staff to help themselves, but that little barrier reduced calories consumed in one office by 3.1 million M&Ms over seven weeks.

When a behavior feels a little more difficult, our brains discourage it from happening. How “easy” is giving constructive feedback? How “easy” is it to keep a diverse group of humans engaged, inspired and committed? It’s not easy at all! And yet, without these heroic efforts, cultures catalyze toxicity rather than the results we seek.

3. Cognitive biases

These are the foundational filters. We all exist inside the context of our culture, so our behavior feels more correct when we see other people doing it. I once had a boss who regularly began drinking around 3 p.m. each day. Guess what his team members did? They drank.

Developing cultural norms is all about repeated behaviors. The more that leaders model (insert behavior) on purpose, the more it feels like (that behavior) is the right thing to do by all.

If only beer were the gateway to the results we’d needed.

To turn our biases into our advantage, highlight those who are already adopting the behavior change you seek to the people whose behavior you want to change.

Influencing others is complex.

When we say, “I need a gut check,” what we really need is a head check. Our rational brain is just doing its job: rationalizing what our intuitive brain has already decided. We’re feeling creatures who (sometimes) think. See above: CMO.

Author and business leader Aaron Dignan breaks down the critical difference between what’s “complex” and what’s “complicated.”

A complicated system is a causal system—subject to cause-and-effect, interacting in highly predictable ways. Problems with complicated systems have solutions (think: a car’s engine).

A complex system (a workplace!) is not causal; it’s dispositional. We can make informed guesses about its disposition, but we can’t be sure. We can make predictions about the weather, Dignan says, but we cannot control it.

Unlike complicated problems, complex problems cannot be solved—only managed. They cannot be controlled, only nudged.

I encounter frustrated leaders every day treating the complex interpersonal systems at work like they’re complicated car engines. These frustrated leaders would like something fast, simple, safe, guaranteed or free—that doesn’t require them to examine much of their own behavior.

Me, too.

Here’s the head check: There’s no shortcut for workplace culture. There’s no such thing as complex culture made simple. There’s no microwave for this work. BUT there is compelling evidence that proactively preventing your culture from catching fire will also help you scale it.

Even though it’s not easy (and every bit of our reptilian brains would like the drive-through version), leading well might just be the way we evolve.•

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Haskett is a leadership consultant at Advisa, a Carmel-based leadership consultancy.