Leadership: It’s Not About Whether People Like You, It’s About How Much People Learn

A common trap we fall into as executives is to be overly preoccupied with whether others like us. This is only natural, particularly when popularity is an indicator of how likely it is you’ll keep your job! Just think of the close watch politicians keep on opinion polls! But even for those of us in more secure positions - don’t we all crave to be liked?

But leadership is not a popularity contest. Leadership often entails going beyond one's job description. The truth is that leadership often requires: 

• Confronting people with difficult realities and challenges they’d rather avoid. 

• Disappointing others: Acknowledging that you can’t take the challenge off their shoulders or fix it for them

• Questioning the status quo: Are the existing structures, processes, and roles as well as the prevailing norms still right?

• Helping people develop the new capacities and skills needed to adapt to a new reality

A mindset shift that many of my clients have found helpful is from “how can I make sure that people like me?” to “how can I help people learn?”. 

Here’s Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School)’s take on this: 

“The new leadership mindset needed is what] I call ‘organizing to learn’. [...] Organizing to learn involves a genuine humility about the limits of what you know. This mindset is driven by a sense of curiosity and commitment to accomplishing amazing things, but knowing that you can’t do it alone — that you need to create conditions whereby people can jump in and learn as they go.”

So how can you become a leader who prioritizes learning over popularity? How do you engage others in learning? And what inner work have you had to do to cultivate a learning mindset in yourself?

Here are three strategies that I often share with my clients. You’ll see that each strategy has two dimensions: The “outer work” of organizing others to learn - and the “inner work” of overcoming the need for popularity, and instead cultivating humility and curiosity. I’d love to hear what resonates with you!

Strategy 1: Identify who needs to learn what. Frame challenges as learning challenges.

When confronted with a challenge, we’re often quick to problem-solve and to change structures or processes in order to solve the problem. Yet such technical fixes often fall short. Many of the complex, adaptive challenges our teams and organizations face are adaptive and require learning. Framing challenges as learning challenges is an essential leadership skill. Ask: What learning (or unlearning) needs to take place for my team or organization to adapt and thrive? Who needs to learn what? Which behaviors, beliefs, mindsets and values are serving us - and which stand in our way? How can I frame our challenge as a learning challenge?

Start with yourself: What do I need to learn in order for my team to adapt? How am I contributing to the problem? How can I be a role model for learning - including by allowing myself to be vulnerable and sharing my learning processes openly with my team or organization?

Strategy 2: Raise the heat. Challenge and provoke to inspire learning.

Learning takes place when there is cognitive dissonance: We are confronted with a piece of information that does not fit with our existing code of how the world is supposed to behave. The child development theorist Jean Piaget coined the term “disequilibrium” for the state of distress required for learning. Disequilibrium is challenging - and it can cause fear and anxiety. It’s not pleasant, but necessary! Getting groups to learn requires regulating disequilibrium. Ronald Heifetz of Harvard uses the analogy of regulating a thermostat in your home: You raise the heat to move people out of the comfort zone and into a learning zone. At the same time, you want to prevent disequilibrium from spilling over into panic. Transferring this insight to your team or organization, the questions become: How high or low is the disequilibrium in my team - are they in the comfort, learning, or panic zone? Do I need to raise or lower the heat - and what might that look like?

Start with yourself: If you, like me, tend to avoid conflict, your inner work will entail building your stomach for conflict and disequilibrium. You don’t want to be the first one to panic when the heat rises! If, on the other hand, you tend to play the role of instigator or trouble maker, you may want to work on toning back your heat-raising interventions, reading the room carefully to ensure others’ remain engaged in learning.

Strategy 3: Hold and contain: Create the conditions that enable learning

Learning is only possible when we are encouraged to experiment, innovate, make mistakes, and fail. This is only possible when we feel safe to show up as beginners. Amy Edmondson coined the term psychological safety to describe team cultures that enable risk taking and learning. Ronald Heifetz borrows the term “holding environment” from child developmental psychologist Donald Winnicot - it’s the affirming and supportive space that enables children to learn.

Ask yourself and your team: How safe does it feel to openly disagree in this team? How frequently do we share and learn from mistakes? Invest in strengthening the holding environment of your team by modeling fallibility, encouraging ongoing learning (including from mistakes), and strengthening bonds of trust between team members.

Start with yourself: In order to cope with the stress - and yes, the likely dip in popularity - you’ll experience as you exercise leadership, you too need to be held! Find a mentor, have an executive coach, cultivate multiple roles (not just your work role!), and invest in the practices and sanctuaries that help you stay grounded and allow you to rejuvenate.