Say Less, Say Last or Say Nothing

In strat­e­gy, invest­ments, lead­er­ship and rela­tion­ships what you don’t do can be just as impor­tant as what you do.

With invest­ments, pro­fes­sion­als spend their days research­ing to gen­er­ate a lot of ideas but only put their cap­i­tal in a few places.

In busi­ness, to con­tin­ue grow­ing a com­pa­ny, there’s a nat­ur­al process of edit­ing out a high pro­por­tion of ideas peo­ple have and select­ing the few that mat­ter most. Oth­er­wise, it’s very easy to dilute the focus of the company.

The same is true in lead­er­ship. In order to con­tin­ue to grow, effec­tive lead­ers real­ize that they must become bet­ter at not say­ing and doing things. When you work close to the front lines you can offer more direc­tion and spend time teach­ing and demon­strat­ing good work. How­ev­er, as you get clos­er to the exec­u­tive lev­el you need to do less teach­ing and mas­ter the art of ask­ing chal­leng­ing ques­tions. Con­trary to what you might see in TV and movies, the most effec­tive CEOs and lead­ers don’t actu­al­ly share a lot of opin­ions – or pro­vide a lot of answers.

Their job is to sup­port their teams and make them­selves use­less (See Chap­ter 10, Your Oxy­gen Mask First).

High­ly effec­tive lead­ers stop the nat­ur­al desire to answer people’s ques­tions or pro­vide guid­ance and try to say very lit­tle. If they do speak, they speak last, to not influ­ence the think­ing of the group. These lead­ers want peo­ple to think for them­selves, to come with rec­om­mend­ed solu­tions. They ask their teams deep, chal­leng­ing ques­tions to tru­ly under­stand the issues. And they ensure that account­abil­i­ty sits on the shoul­ders of the best peo­ple on their team. (See Chap­ter 12, Your Oxy­gen Mask First, Stop Being Chief Prob­lem Solver).

At their core, these lead­ers are like many par­ents. They under­stand that their role is to raise strong, inde­pen­dent adults who don’t need much from them, yet pro­duce out­stand­ing results.

Our job is to do our best not to stand in the way of their growth. Our role is to say less, say last or say nothing.

The Chal­lenge

• Where do you need to be less help­ful so that your peo­ple can grow and take more responsibility?
• Where can you say less, say last or say nothing?