To be modern isn’t always to be human. We now live in what I call the “Attention Community,” when attention has become one rare commodity we all fight to get as leaders.
Because of the free flow of information and continuous innovation and technological advances, we, along with our people, are easily distracted to always attempt to perform par excellence. We must clearly realize that doing more all the time and at the same time doesn’t necessarily mean productivity.
It’s a mistake to make this the norm for survival. And from my point of view, doing more simultaneously isn’t reliance. It’s compliance. And you don’t want people to comply with your leadership. You want them to rely on it.
Our tendency is at an all-time high to do more based on what our leaders ask us to do at a given time, if at all we’re given a task to do. The 8:00-5:00 or 9:00-6:00 job is no more. As leaders, we can make the terrible mistake of pushing our people to work round-the-clock. We get into the habit of texting them at midnight. We send them e-mail at 3:00 A.M.
We expect our people to fear losing their jobs if they are unable to respond to us any time of the day. And yet we expect them to produce optimum results all the time as if they are machines.
We all see technology as a tool for better leadership and productivity, but this may not always be the case.
A stepback leader realizes that although he or she lives in an age when competition is at its peak, it is extremely important to acknowledge that leadership is a people business.
How you feel for people is more important than how you feel for your business and its bottomline. In other words, “People first. Organization always.”
This is because in leadership, your greatest treasure is your people, your people, your people.
