The [un]common stuff that lives between strategy and execution, that teams don’t talk about.
Your first read every Wednesday morning, meant to be applied and forwarded.
There's a version of leadership that photographs well. The leader is present, available, and responsive. They attend the meetings, they answer the questions, they sign off on the decisions that arrive at their desk. By every visible measure, they are leading.
This is the quietest dysfunction in most organizations, because it sets off no alarms. Passive leadership is a presence without direction, a leader who has confused being involved with being in front, reacting to the organization with great skill while never once setting its course.
Nowhere does it show up more plainly than in how leaders handle their weakest performers.
The passive move is to wait, to give it another quarter, to assume the situation resolves itself if enough patience is applied to it.
Hope and performance management are not a strategic combination, and yet hope is the strategy in more organizations than would ever admit to it.
I've been guilty of this! There was a stretch early on in my career where I told myself I was being patient with someone who needed more time, and what I was actually being was conflict-avoidant in a way that cost everyone.
The person operated at a level that didn't meet expectations while the rest of the team absorbed the slack, and I carried the low, constant hum of a decision I knew I needed to make and kept not making...
The patience and extending the 'benefit of the doubt' I was so proud of was the most disruptive thing on the team. The reason this matters has nothing to do with the one underperformer. What the leader reads as patience, the team reads as permission.
Every quarter the situation is tolerated, the standard quietly resets to whatever the weakest performer is allowed to do, and the strongest people on the team are the first to notice where the floor has been set.
The distance between what you say you expect and what you visibly tolerate becomes the real operating standard, and you did not lower the bar by what you said in a meeting; you lowered it by leaving something unaddressed.
The difference between passive leadership and active leadership is whether you act before circumstances force the decision anyway.
The difference, in practice:
- Passive leadership looks like I hope they'll turn it around if I give them some space.
- Active leadership looks like naming the one behaviour that has to change and the date you'll review it together.
- Passive leadership looks like now isn't the right time to raise it.
- Active leadership looks like putting the conversation on the calendar this week, before another quarter absorbs the cost.
- Passive leadership looks like they probably know it's a problem.
- Active leadership looks like saying the specific thing plainly, so nobody has to guess what you actually think.
- Passive leadership looks like let's revisit this next quarter when things slow down a little.
- Active leadership looks like making the call now, so the team isn't carrying the same uncertainty into the next one.
- Passive leadership looks like I don't want to demotivate them with feedback.
- Active leadership looks like telling them exactly where they stand, because clarity is the most respectful thing you can offer.
- Passive leadership looks like it'll sort itself out.
- Active leadership looks like deciding what sorting it out requires, and owning the first step.
Most of the work I do with mid-senior leadership teams focuses on these behaviours and the steps between a team meeting expectations and falling short, where the gap is rarely about capability and almost always about what is going unaddressed.
If a situation like this came to mind while you were reading, feel free to reply to this email and tell me about it, or book a conversation chat through how we can work with your team.
Go set the bar right where you need it, and remember it's kind to help your team see what's possible for them.
Kendra
Ps. If you're getting into digital transformation within your organization, join me and a number of amazing speakers on Tuesday, June 2nd to hear their success (and learnings) with automated systems, AI, CRMs and more! Visit https://dxmomentum.com/ and get your free friends of TVG ticket using code VENNED.
See you there!
Unsubscribe · Preferences
