ON LEADERSHIP || Instead of Offering Ping Pong Tables and Free Lunches, Here's THE Trait to Look for in Great Leaders
Ten sick days, free company lunches, unlimited vacation, a games room, a basketball court, work from home… do-whatever-you-want perks from companies aren’t a sign of great leadership. It isn’t even a sign that a company truly ‘cares’ about their staff.
Look closely, and you’ll see that these expenses are like strata fees in residential towers; a company can spread the cost over a few hundred or thousand employees in the company as a cost of operating the business. They’re throwing money at the problem. However, if you go through social media comments, it seems employees of the current era think this is how a company should show they care, with material goods: higher pay, flexibility, and company amenities. They’ve become accustomed to using these factors to define whether leadership values their contribution.
Instead of focusing on factors such as pay (let’s say it’s competitive pay that’s being offered as part of your compensation package), one should also look for other characteristics that indicate great leadership. A big one would be how a leader answers the question: “Who’s fault is it?”
My mom worked in a Japanese company for 14 years and shared that the leader always shares the blame if something goes wrong. Why would they do this even when their direct reports may be the ones to blame?
This is because your team lead, manager, director, or whatever title you’re reporting to has a hand in your training and growth. If they decide to step away from their role temporarily, whether, for vacation or a work trip, they need to train you and ensure that you can step up to the plate and cover for them. If you aren’t 100% ready to take on the responsibility, they bear the risk of you screwing up.
Great leaders take an active role in growing your skill set and developing you as their successor. They aren’t afraid that one day you may take over their role.
Let’s assume you’re not going to be lazy and intentionally screw up, but if you do mess up, your leader should have been the last defence barrier before your work is sent out into the world. Now, lazy mistakes like not doing grammar or spell check, getting addresses wrong, and not doing your homework are intolerable mistakes, and you should be the one taking the blame. Your team lead’s role is to train and coach you to take on their role in the future, not to correct your spelling and grammar errors. That is a waste of their time.
A better example of where the leader should share the blame in how things pan out is in a more strategic situation. If you’re expected to execute their strategy for a campaign, and they haven’t fully trained you on how to think strategically and then execute the steps of the strategy, they should share the blame. How could they expect you to produce at that level when they know they haven’t trained you to do so? Simply telling you that you need to think strategically isn’t the same as taking the train to walk you through their approach, mindset, frameworks, and workflow.
The next time you’re interviewing for a role, look for a leader who isn’t taking a pen to cross your i’s and dot your t’s when you have spelling errors—Grammarly or spellcheck in Word could do that for you. Look for the one who will invest the time in training you. This time commitment to your growth as a potential successor is what you should look for.
The sad thing is society identifies with the other perks I mentioned in the beginning about what makes a great company and leadership, so it’ll be tough to find a needle in the haystack where the leader invests in your personal growth.
Happy hunting!
