Small “Professional Meeting Attender” Manager vs. BIG “Production Results Inspirer” Leader

When people are elevated to a formal position of leadership, they often find themselves spending an inordinate amount of their time in meetings, particularly with their teams rather than actually producing individual results. That is part and parcel for the role of a leader. The risk, however, for the newly minted leader is to devolve into a small “professional meeting attender” manager mentality who engages in merely making “proposals” (which are often made in a vacuum) rather than being a BIG Leader who empowers and inspires people to produce results.

The small “professional meeting attender” manager tends to make two basic mistakes that often results in a loss of credibility with the team s/he leads and a lack of results achievement:

#1: Confusing Proposing with Producing: Proposals are not Production. Proposals are only ideas that MIGHT produce the desired results that, until they are applied to reality by people who actually produce results, often remain theories. In other words, they produce nothing until they are tested against the cold hard reality of the business environment. The only thing proposals are certain to produce is a lot of wind (If you really want to go green, try installing windmills in your offices, conference rooms and board rooms. You'll generate more hot air and wind than you’ll ever need!)

#2: Confusing Proposal Time with Producing Time: Because of a lack of context surrounding the proposal at its early stage, small professional meeting attender managers confuse the time it takes to propose a solution with the actual time it takes to implement the solution and produce the results. Rarely, if ever, is this the case. Plans that can take moments to devise can take hours, days, months or even years to produce the desired results and often small professional meeting attender managers tend to forget this. The brilliance of a plan is often not the initial proposal made in the isolation of a conference room, office or zoom call but in the execution of what is learned on the ground and the adaptations necessary to bring the proposal to realistic fruition. Dave Ramsey, the Christian financial guru, says he believes 20% of finance is knowledge and the remaining 80% is actually doing what you’ve learned from that knowledge. I think solution proposals are more like 10%, if that, of results realization and the actual implementation is more like 90%.

The BIG Production Results Inspirer Leader who empowers and inspires his/her team realizes that attending meetings and making proposals is the easiest and often smallest contribution towards realizing results. Thus, to overcome this temptation, s/he goes the extra mile by exhibiting humility during this phase of production in the form of:

·       Being Curious Rather than Prescriptive: BIG Leaders take the time to truly understand what’s needed to produce the desired results to transform pipedreams into achievements. They adopt a curious, not prescriptive demeanor in their interactions with the team. By doing so, the effort has a better chance of success and team buy-in will be more likely.

·       Helping to Identify & Remove Blockers: BIG Leaders actually do something beyond attempting to display their analytical prowess, especially if the proposal is devised in a sterile meeting room environment which, upon real world application, may not seem that brilliant after all. They, with the help of their teams, identify blockers to the proposal and actually go out ahead of their team to help remove them. This not only shows humility but also creates a sense of teamwork and support for the people who will actually produce the results.  

·       Championing The Necessary Resources: This further shows support to the team and puts the BIG Leader in the position of being someone who can potentially do something that the individual team members may not be able to do on their own: marshal resources needed to achieve the desired results. This makes the BIG Leader an integral part of the solution and not a just a casual observer.

·       Welcoming Pushback & Challenges: By not only being open to challenges and pushback to their proposals but actually asking for and welcoming them, the BIG Leader demonstrates humility via a desire to subordinate his/her ideas to the good of the solution, the team and ultimately, the desired results. 

·       Being the BIG Cheerleader & Advocate to Other Stakeholders: Once the proposal has survived the challenges of the team, the BIG Leader now can be the

cheerleader and advocate for the proposal's success. This helps to champion it to other stakeholders including senior management and other departments. 

Above all, the BIG "Production Results Inspirer" Leader is a supportive team member who utilizes his/her position to the benefit of the team and the realization of positive results for everyone, particularly those charged with actually producing the results. The small "professional meeting attender" manager is only interested in his/her ideas and proposals being aired and followed which undermines confidence in the team s/he leads and ultimately sabotages the desired results.

This week, don’t be a small “professional meeting attender” manager. Be a BIG “Productions Results Inspirer” Leader!