The U.S. debt ceiling debate over the last few weeks could be teaching you one or the other of two significant leadership lessons. Which lesson do you want to learn?
One is autocratic. When facing opposition to your needs, wants, expectations or desires you could stonewall; simply hold your ground and demand that the opponent meet you 100% on your side of the table. You could declare that certain components are “off the table” or “non-negotiable” and thereby short sheet any real dialogue or conversation simply because you can. It’s the classic “I’m right. You’re wrong, get over it and agree with me, otherwise I will make your life miserable.” Clearly this is a possible leadership style because virtually every player in this summer’s debate demonstrated it at one time or another.
The other is collaborative. Alternatively we could realize the fruitlessness of both autocratic leadership and the goal of compromise. After the President signed the bill, Senator Harry Reid said, “No one walked away from the table happy. That is the hallmark of compromise.” When I heard that, I nearly fell out of my seat – and I was driving at the time! No one happy? That’s our goal? We live in the greatest nation on earth, or so they keep telling us from both sides of the aisle. If Congress means to tell us that our leadership goal is one of compromise in which no onw leaves happy, then it’s time for a new leadership goal.
When running your business, organization, non-profit or family, do you really want a compromise, which leaves no one happy? Would you want to compromise the brakes in your car? Would you want to compromise the structural integrity of your home? If not, why would you want to compromise your business, organization or government?
Instead of compromise, consider collaboration as the real goal. Now granted, when we bump up against an autocratic leader, this option is infinitely more challenging. Fortunately in the real world, most leaders have more finesse and compassion than our U.S. congress members apparently have.
How do you achieve collaboration? Well, for starters, you change the way you approach things. And one of the best examples of this comes from the movie, Apollo 13. There is a scene in which the lunar module is running out of oxygen because the scrubbers – the filters that clean the air – are clogging. Ground Control needs to find a solution, so they call their engineers together in a room and pile copies of everything currently available to the astronauts on the Lunar Module and the Command Module onto a large table – nothing more, nothing less. There is no wishing they had something else and there is no debate as to why the filters were designed differently between the two crafts. Instead, they have to figure out, literally, how to fit a square peg in a round hole. This scene isn’t about the engineers getting what they want, or finding out whom to blame for the inconsistent design. There is no time for that. Instead, the engineers collaborate. They take all the materials made available to them and they ask the powerful question: What can be done with the parts that we have? We all know the end of the story: they figured it out. They collaborated
The leadership lesson from the Debt Ceiling Crisis isn’t how to find a solution that makes everyone equally unhappy. The question is how to create something that supersedes what we have previously understood as possible? Whether you are working with physical parts as with the Apollo 13 lunar module challenge, or a collection of mismatched, uniquely designed ideas, philosophies or objectives, how do you get the people in the room to work together to create a solution they are excited about?
While compromise looks at reality and reduces it down to the lowest, unhappiest, common denominator, collaboration does the opposite. By looking at reality and building it up into something new and effective, collaboration ensures a result that everyone can be proud of, not because it’s their own idea or there is someone else to blame. Rather, collaboration creates something greater than the two agendas, something that didn’t exist before, something that works better than expected and which achieves the intended goals in powerful, positive, exciting, and dare I say “happy” ways. That’s a goal we can all get behind.
Autocratic Compromise or Collaboration: which personal and professional leadership lesson do you want to live? <
