Knee-jerk, or just Jerk??

Joel Manby in Love Works writes: "Recently, Google commissioned their internal human resources team to identify and rate the attributes of their best leaders.  They were surprised to find that technical knowledge ranked dead last.  Instead, attributes like listening well and letting employees make relevant decisions attracted and kept the best people." (p. 106)  A little later he adds, "Most people don't leave because of poor performance; they leave because they don't feel valued." (p. 118)

For a company which prides itself on its technical expertise like Google to discover that the attributes of  their most effective leaders, which correlated with keeping and attracting the best people, had nothing to do with their technical knowledge, must have come as quite a surprise.  "Instead, attributes like listening well and letting employees make relevant decisions attracted and kept the best people." 

While I don't believe Manby's statement in the second quote above has been validated by research, it "feels" right.  Feeling like a trusted part of the team goes a long way in enhancing my willingness to stay . . . and to stay fully engaged.  I certainly don't want to remove that feeling of trust from a fellow employee.

Yet, I have to confess that I struggle sometimes with balance.  My nature is inclined to search for patterns, and data points which interrupt the pattern.  Sometimes those data points are positive and will hopefully are indicative of a trend in improved performance.  In other cases the data points are evidence of poor performance with the potential effect of worsening.  I have in the past been accused of being negative and I think I can trace that back to this recognition of a pattern which is going the wrong way and projecting it to a worse case scenario, and then reacting, perhaps too vigorously, to avoid the, as I see it, looming disaster. 

Here's where my struggle with balance comes in.  I need to listen better, trust more, and let those responsible make the relevant decisions.  But I want to focus on the problematic data points, I want to push for immediate action.  So, take a deep breath, and try to balance trust with the right amount of judicious concern, NOT knee-jerk reaction.