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Leadership and the Power of "I Have Absolutely No Idea"

 

Image shows an olive-skinned woman, with long, dark,curly hair, wearing a white t-shirt and light blue jeans. She is sitting cross-legged on a chair, with her hands held out, palms upwards, in a gesture indicating she is unable to offer a response/insight.

As leaders, we are often expected to have all the answers. If we don't, we risk dark mutterings about being "overpaid", about being "the reason people actually doing the work are struggling", or "the reason nothing ever gets done around here."

Across sectors, people hate leaders.  The NHS and UK social care, currently at the centre of political focus for reform, is littered with very public derision of "money being wasted on pointless leadership roles, rather than frontline services."  I've worked in a healthcare transformation leadership role, and...I'd be very wary of doing so again, purely because of the attitudes from clinical staff, including their own operational leads.

I was actually well-liked by these colleagues as a person, but even that regard couldn't get past the disdain my team, and what they represented, were held in. People don't like change, and they really don't like change leaders.

The reason why change leaders are typically disliked is because they often present change as this "really obvious thing" that is a done deal, and so blindingly clear in its benefits, in how the organisation is going to get from where it is to where it absolutely needs to be, right now, actually, and how much better off 'everybody' will be once the change has been implemented, which, of course, the change leader knows exactly how to do, because they're so much more intelligent than all these silly people who are objecting to necessary change, and raising these pesky "operational and cultural barriers", which are completely trivial, and irrelevant to the Grand Plan of Necessary Change.

I connected with people who had an intense dislike for the team I served because I came in with deference to their intelligence, knowledge, experience, and competence around their own area of responsibility, and an acknowledgement that I had "no idea" how the change that had been identified could best be implemented in their world, with minimal disruption to their day to day schedules and demands.

That was a revolution in how my team had historically interacted with other staff (and actually completely at odds with how my boss WANTED me to interact with other staff, which became a source of running tension...) and it ensured that even the most complex and frustrating projects I was responsible for ran more smoothly than they had been before I was assigned them. (I'm not sure what the original intention for my role had been, but I ended up being "the guy we pass the narly, long-running, rotting-in-the-long-grass projects to"... and I actually LOVED working to turn those projects around.)

By starting with "I have absolutely no idea how we can make this work for you guys, I just know that, if we can make it work, your lives will be easier, and you'll have more time in your working day, both of which are great things for you, so I'm really keen to figure out how we're going to make this happen for you" I centred my colleagues as the experts in their roles (which they were),  and invited them to take an active role in examining the problem/s, and instigating and embedding the necessary change that was required; this meant that change was something they were doing with me and my team, rather than something we were doing to them.

Doing with, not doing to is a lynchpin of the UK government's plans for health and social care reforms.  However, doing with requires leadership that says "I have absolutely no idea - what do you think?"  

Right now, the UK government are still centred in their "leadership as greater intellect doing to others", while NHS and social care leaders, equally in a mindset of "we are the most qualified and intelligent people in the room, and therefore responsible for doing to the frontlines" feel unable to implement the changes the government is loudly announcing from every possible platform, and are therefore being perceived as "digging their heels in", and "creating unnecessary and unacceptable barriers to change."

It's okay to have no idea how you're going to complete the challenge you've been set.  It's actually where most of us, on an individual level, start whenever we find ourselves facing doing something worth doing.

If you asked a seventeen year old who had never driven any kind of vehicle before how they were going to get to a point of being someone who was competent and safe to drive on the M25 in rush hour, they wouldn't have much idea beyond "Uhhhh...have driving lessons?" - and yet, every year, somewhere between 750,000 and 1.5million more people become individuals who are legally entitled to drive unaccompanied on the M25, and other busy motorways, often with less than 100 hours of driving practice behind them.

That is both terrifying - a commercial pilot needs to log 250 hours of fly time before they are considered qualified, becoming a UKCP-registered counsellor or therapist demands 450 practice hours, for contrast - and inspiring; in a very short span of time, from a position of "I have absolutely no idea", someone can go from being unable to smoothly put a car into gear, to someone who can drive on a busy road in the middle of rush hour.

That should be our guiding image as leaders entering and engaging with change; when you genuinely admit "I have absolutely no idea", you let go of the baggage of assumptions about how it might happen, or how it should happen, and free yourself to be coached through the best way to do it.  

I'm now medically banned from driving, owing to sight loss, but I did learn to drive.  I knew quite a bit about cars before I started driving lessons, and I'd driven on an old airfield with my Dad a few times before I started paid lessons.  The thing that took me completely by surprise was my instructor's guidance to drive almost on top of the central line separating two-lane roads, and, on unmarked roads, to drive in the exact centre; I'd always assumed that keeping in towards the kerbs/verges was the best idea, as it kept you as out of other drivers' way as possible; my instructor pointed out that being as close to the centre as possible gave you a lot more road to take evasive action if a vehicle coming the other way lost control, or an animal ran out from that side of the road (and, if an animal ran out from your side of the road, it was less likely to go under your wheels and cause you to lose control), and also gave oncoming vehicles better visibility of you in sub-optimal conditions, including overgrown hedging on country roads, sharply curved bends, and low-visibility weather.

If I'd clung to the fact that "I know about cars, I've even driven a bit before this!" I might have been very resistant to the guidance around best road positioning; fortunately, my Dad had raised me to enter every situation "Believing you don't know anything about anything" - an  attitude that is significantly at odds with contemporary Western European society, but which has served me well both professionally, but also in the face of the many personal challenges I've faced throughout my life.

Understandably, people are wary of admitting they have absolutely no idea; it's seen as evidence that they are poorly-educated, as suggestive of laziness, as proof of a failure to time-manage effectively, failure to properly prepare.  Everything around saying "I have absolutely no idea" is seen as deeply negative.

But it shouldn't be seen that way.

We are - rightly - suspicious of people who claim they have all the answers, who present themselves as knowing "everything about everything".   We know how very, very rare it is for any one person to know everything about even one subject, let alone the many issues which often contribute to complex problems requiring systemic transformation.  However, we're very accepting of the idea that everyone will know a little bit about a lot of things. When, as a leader, you say to those who will have to live with the results of transformative change day to day that you have "absolutely no idea" about how to make that change work for their reality, you are opening up a dialogue with the "little bit about a lot of things" that the people at your table know they know. You're lowering the threshold, making it easier for everyone present to become comfortable contributing "small" insights.  You're removing the pressure for everything to be solved all at once, and you're shifting the position of the frontline crews from your "competitors against change" to collaborators in change.

I don't compete - I always seek collaborators.
Competition is a zero-sum game; collaboration is the rising tide that genuinely does lift everyone's boat.

This is where mentorship comes into its own. Mentorship provides a supportive, equitable relationship in which the mentees' "little bit of knowledge about a lot of things" can be drawn out, and shaped by both mentor and mentee into a workable solution to the problems facing the mentee.

January is National Mentoring Month, and, as part of that, The Productive Pessimist will be running Mentor Mondays, with digital content posted weekly throughout January, every Monday, on different aspects and styles of mentorship, and an offer for a year's worth of mentorship, available to be booked Mondays between 8am-8pm (for 90min sessions) for just £25 when the booking is made and paid for in January.   We offer this Monday mentorship remotely via Zoom, email, or telephone, and can also support team mentorship for businesses and organisations in Norfolk and Waveney, UK, again on Mondays, in person, with sessions of 1-2hrs between the times of 10am-3pm on Mondays.  

To book your Mentor Mondays, as either a business or an organisation, simply reach out to us via email: theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com




Payment is preferred by PayPal Goods and Services, to the same address (theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com) although bank transfer payment can also be facilitated. Payment for Mentor Mondays is required in full on confirmation of booking.



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