Last week we began a discussion on the leadership techniques of Yahoo’s new CEO and the controversy that began with a new rule. When Marissa Mayer banned telecommuting for Yahoo employees, there were lots of ideas floating around about her reasoning. But in the overall picture, the big controversy with this issue was caused because no one really understood why. People are asking: are you doing this because you don’t trust us? What evidence do you have that telecommuting is bad? After all, there’s lots of evidence that it is actually beneficial, but clearly Marissa doesn’t think so. I want to emphasize here, I’m not arguing that the CEO is not in charge–she certainly can and should lay the rules. She also doesn’t have to appease everyone – she couldn’t even if she wanted to, which I am sure she doesn’t. But if people don’t understand why, they can’t engage, they can’t rise up. I’m not suggesting we coddle employees, I’m suggesting we respect the employees.
That’s the great lesson for leaders to learn from this: Because I said so is not leadership; at best, it’s dictatorship. Remember that whoever you are leading, to whatever degree you’re leading them, they want to understand why. People can follow and achieve remarkable things, even if they disagree, so long as they feel respected and included and can understand the logic and reasoning behind what is asked of them. So the bottom line of all of this is communication. The real question is: did Marissa communicate effectively as a leader to her community? Did she communicate in a way that her employees felt empowered, engaged, taken care of, supported, protected, or did they feel abandoned? I don’t really know everyone’s feelings, of course, but I think many of them felt abandoned. Here’s the memo that was sent out; how would you feel?
