Why Results Focused Leadership Produces Unwilling Employees

Results focus is often tipped as a virtue. In a previous article I explained why results focus is not a virtue. In this article I want to speak specifically about results focused leadership and its impact on employee willingness/engagement.

Leadership is really about unlocking willingness. The key challenge of leadership is understanding how to go about doing that. When you look at any person’s description of the leader they would work for willingly something interesting reveals itself. Ask anyone who they would go the extra mile for and what will they say? Someone who is genuinely concerned for me as a person and helps me grow and get better, care and growth. Care and Growth are the leadership qualities that unlock willingness.

But what does this have to do with results focused leadership? Well, if you are a results focused leader, you will fail at Caring for and Growing your people and they will withhold their willingness. Here is why:

1. Results before People

People only give willingness to those that they believe have their best interests at heart. But if a leader is  highly results focused he will more often than not put the results before his people. People are very sensitive creatures and they pick this up very quickly. Before you can blink an eye they will realise that their leader is not concerned about what is best for them, rather he are in the relationship to milk them for everything they are worth.

As soon as they form that opinion they are no longer on the leader’s side and he has lost their willingness. He will have to fight a battle of constant vigilance to make sure they are doing what they need to be doing.

2. Watching the Result, not the Game

To really be there for people and truly set them up to succeed, leaders need to watch their game consistently. We always urge leaders to make decisions based on watching what their people are actually doing rather than simply on the results that are achieved.

When leaders are results focused they will end up making their decisions solely on the basis of the results and be insensitive to the actual man-hour contributions of their people. At some point employees realise that their actual contribution and effort is going unnoticed since all that matters is the result. When this happens they lose the will to maintain the quality of their contribution, as long as the result isn’t affected.

This by the way produces a drop in standard that is often not reflected in the results in the short term but can be crippling in the long run.

3. Absent Leadership

For employees to give a leader their willingness they need to be important enough to him to give them his time and attention. But, related to the previous point, leaders who are results focused will not give attention to what their people are doing, but rather give attention to the results.

This is experienced as a certain form of absentee leadership. Employees will not feel that their day to day efforts are recognised simply because leaders are not giving any attention to them. Leadership will be experienced as being absent in the same way you experience a friend as absent if they are focusing on the tv when you are trying to tell them something.

4. Micro-Managing

When explaining Care and Growth leadership we stress that it is not the leader’s job to produce the result, it is the leader’s job to cultivate excellent employees by caring for them and helping them grow. It is the employees job to produce the result.

Leaders who are highly results focused will want to jump into the fray and fix things personally. When they do this however they undermine the employee. It is demoralising to have someone take something off your hands to make sure it is done right rather than supporting and coaching you to do it right yourself. Choosing to support and coach rather than do it yourself means putting the result at risk to teach the employee something. Doing so is next to impossible of your only concern is producing the result.

With all this having been said against result focus, it is important to stress in closing that results are important; it is why leaders, for the most part, have a job. Employees are responsible for producing a result and they have to be held accountable for the result they are required to produce. So, leaders need to be constantly aware of the result and how the result relates to what their people are actually doing.

The problem arise however when leaders start to think the result is their job and they have to use employees as the human material to achieve the result. When they do this they lose willingness. A leaders job is not the result. The result is a tool the leader must use in order to ensure that his people are excellent. Results are feedback for a good leader but the end game for a bad one.