A staff writer at the Washington Post, Karen DeYoung, wrote a story in late November about an initial meeting between President-elect Obama and Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We write here not to make a political comment about either of these individuals, but to praise the meeting methodology reported by writer DeYoung.
She wrote, “Mullen went unarmed into his first meeting with the new commander in chief–no aides, no PowerPoint presentation, no briefing books. Mullen showed up with just a pad, a pen and a desire to take the measure of his incoming boss.” She added that “it was a 45-minute conversation that ranged from the personal to the philosophical.”
We urge leaders in all organizations to adopt this approach. Too often the urge to prepare elaborate “onboarding” materials for a new leader overwhelms the common sense that would ask, “Why don’t you, first, just ‘get to know’ him or her?” Staffs are too often tasked with multi-day projects to prepare onboarding material, which is often edited and re-edited and edited still again and then, in too many cases, also subjected to that fear-based notion that “we must dumb it down for the executive.”
The “blame” for the too-common practice may not lie with the preparers, for they have often been “taught” by the prior experiences they’ve had with leaders who somehow communicated a desire to hear this onslaught of material from people BEFORE the leader had bothered to learn much about the people themselves. If it was the President-elect who told the Admiral, “Let’s just talk,” then praise for Obama, whose transition seems to be so well-managed in many such respects. If it was the admiral who asked, “Can we just talk?” then bully for him too.
We strongly urge all leaders about to be on the receiving end of “onboarding” knowledge to WAIT a bit for the knowledge and make its acquisition secondary to the much more important need to meet, assess, and perhaps win the confidence of key followers. The onboarding knowledge is, by definition, perishable. The developing (or not) of interpersonal trust is, as the credit card advertisement says, “priceless.”
Sometimes a leader who wants to be sensitive to this issue will make a subtle error. The leader will not ask immediately for the formal onboarding presentations, but WILL send each key follower a memo or email with a list of more general topics “to be prepared to discuss when we meet.” The effect of that memo can be almost as negative as just proceeding with the onboading and can add a rigidity and “pro forma” nature to what should be instead something like the Obama-Mullen conversation. You can bet the followers who get the “be prepared” memo will ask each other, “Have you run YOUR list yet?”
It’s certainly OK, indeed wise, for the leader to have such a topical list. But we say keep the list in your head, vary the order in which the topics are covered, work hard to make the topics “not a list.” And absolutely be prepared to spend time on subjects you the leader did not anticipate, as you learn from your meeting companion of THEIR personal interests. These meetings are for mutual value, for leaders and followers are always joined in a mutually dependent relationship. Otherwise, what happens is not really leadership.