Create an inclusive leadership style

Ok, so this is a mom-and-apple-pie post. But hey, just because your mom said it doesn’t mean it’s not worth thinking about!

A sizeable part of get on track to becoming a successful leader is adopting the right attitude. Example: when resolving a conflict between one or more people we are taught, from a very early stage, to think about the winners and losers, and to avoid being one of the losers. There is a better way.

There doesn’t always have to be winners and losers. Sometimes it is the case that viewpoints are so vastly separated and so fundamentally held that someone must win and someone else must lose. But it often happens that you can find a path through a conflict where everyone benefits and some useful change still happens.

The way that this happens in practice will vary from situation to situation, not least because the people and organizations involved will come to conflict with different interests. But let’s look at a couple examples and see if we can’t make this a little more concrete.

An example: company to company

Let’s say that you are tasked with convincing a company to let your company use their whiz-bang technology on your website. They have their own revenue model and sell the technology you want for zillions of dollars per year. You are a start up and can’t afford zillions.

The classical solution is that you pony up—and stretch yourself too thin, resenting it forever—or walk away bitter and ready to blame everything that goes wrong with the project from then on either on that company for not selling to you cheap or your company for not being rich enough to afford it in the first place. You lose, both times.

The other company wins if you pay up and is indifferent (probably) if you walk away. At least until you become a multi-billion dollar company and they regret not being more accommodating, at which point they lose. In the first case, one winner and one loser. Interestingly, in that second case we can actually create two losers.

What about a third option?

What if the two of you could find some other way for your company to compensate the company who’s technology you want? For example, some small amount up front and then a percentage of new business driven by the newly acquired technology? You get something you want: good. The other company gets exposure, a minimum amount of income, and a potentially huge upper end if your web site takes off and they get a percentage: also good. Two winners here.

Another example: person to person

The same thing is possible when resolving direct people conflicts, too. Let’s say that you have two employees fighting over the same piece of a choice new project. Tom wants it because he’s always gotten that work, and Susan wants it because she’s never done work at that level and wants a shot at advancement.

There are lots of ways for both of these folks to win. You could give the work to Susan as part of her development and task Tom with training her to do it as part of his development path to more senior duties—now both people stand to be promoted by the same project, and both people get to grow. Another option: can you take this project a step further than you’ve ever taken this kind of work by using Tom’s expertise to grow a new area and backfilling his role with Susan?

Not every situation will reduce to such nicely wrapped packages, but this is about a point of view and establishing a pattern of behavior. Try to achieve these goals all the time, but be realistic and acknowledge you’re only going to make it some of the time.

This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.