Employee Willingness to Change: Maturity and Leadership

A large part of the leadership challenge is about unlocking the willingness of people. It is not enough that people are able to make a contribution. For sustainable success, they must be willing to make the contribution. I like to say that leadership is actually about cultivating mature people, or people who are willing to take accountability for their own contribution. These are the kind of people that do not have to be consistently chased to do what is required of them. Maturity and leadership are actually very closely related. Leadership needs to understand how to help employees change towards becoming mature in the workplace.

I want to explore the issue of how leadership is to achieve this. What can leadership do to make employees willing to change and become more mature? Unfortunately this part of leadership is not easy. Giving a person the know-how might be a lengthy process but it is generally straightforward enough. Getting them to adopt a mature attitude towards their work however is a much more complicated challenge.

Unfortunately getting this right is not as simple as just paying them a salary. You can buy a person’s presence in the workplace with a salary, but you cannot buy their loyalty and commitment to the cause. This is something that they have to bring of their own accord. We often don’t realise it but labour is not a commodity like apples. You can’t separate a person from their labour. The quality of labour you get is determined really by the effort the person is willing to dedicate to the cause on a consistent basis. You only get the willing effort if the person chooses to give it.

The good news about leadership is that there is no better way to get a group of people firmly dedicated to a cause than with strong leadership. Good leadership is just very effective at unlocking willingness in people. So what does a leader need to do to unlock this willingness, particularly if just paying the person an eye-watering salary is not enough?

There is quite a lot that needs to be said on this question. A good place to start is to point out that getting this right is deeper than just behaviour. One of the most common mistakes is thinking that unlocking willingness is about getting people on your side by being nice to them. This is actually a very dangerous mistake because very often being too nice is worse than being too harsh. But if unlocking willingness is not about being nice then what is it about?

As Etsko Schuitema indicates, the thing that really makes the difference is not the act of being nice or harsh, it is the intention or motive that sits behind the act. This is what really makes the difference, the intent of the leader.

We recognise the intent of a person in their behaviour. For example a boss might say to me: 5 years ago I did what you have to do now and what I did worked, don’t argue with me, shut up and do what I did. Anyone’s immediate response to this interaction would be at least some degree of resistance. On the other hand a boss might say to me: 5 years ago I did what you have to do and what I did worked, take a look at it, I think it might be helpful to you. Our response to this interaction would probably be a lot more positive.

The question is, where does the difference really lie between the two interactions? The real difference between the two interactions actually lies in the intent of the boss. In the first interaction the boss is trying to get something out of me, I am being viewed as the means by which the job gets done.

In the second interaction the boss is trying to give me something. In fact, having given me the freedom to do my own thing, the boss runs the risk of things turning out much worse than if I simply did what he did. The boss is taking a risk, he is putting the success of the job at risk in order to give me a chance to exercise my own capacities and learn and grow. It is for this reason that we say that the boss is using the job as a means to teach me something. So his intent is different, he doesn’t just want to get something out of me whereas in the first that is precisely what he wants.

This illustrates the central point I want to make about unlocking employee willingness. You cannot hope to unlock the willingness of your people unless they truly believe that you are in the relationship to set them up to succeed, and not simply to get as much out of them as possible or milk them for a much as they are worth. It makes no difference how nice or harsh your behaviour is. In fact, if someone sees that you are being nice to them just to milk them for everything they are worth, they will take you out at the knees.

So we actually have a bit of a paradox. All leaders are pursuing some goal and have enlisted the help of a bunch of people in order to achieve that goal. The problem leaders face is how to get people to commit to achieving the goal. The answer is that the leaders must not make the results their end, they must make the people their end. Actually, leadership is not about achieving a goal, it is about cultivating excellent people. The excellent people must take care of making the goal happen.

There is still a lot that needs to be said regarding what the process of cultivating excellent people involves. As I noted in my previous article, this process should be viewed as a deliberate process of empowerment. What I have discussed in this article should be viewed as the prerequisite for this process of empowerment to work effectively.

It is not possible to do empowerment properly if the leader is not willing to put his own agenda aside for the good of the subordinate. Firstly, staff will not willingly accept the guidance provided and secondly, the leader will not be willing to take the risks necessary to cultivate excellent people. Being a good leader actually requires immense courage. It takes courage to put your people first. However, when a leader gets this right he/she is rewarded with excellent people who will willingly follow the direction of the leader and will commit to making the contribution required of them.