Living in the Bubble Spells Disaster for Leaders

When I worked as a communication specialist in an AT&T (later Lucent Technologies) manufacturing facility in Richmond, Va., in the 1990s, one of my responsibilities was to help coordinate face-to-face opportunities by visiting executives.

One executive was Curtis. J. Crawford, who at the time was president of AT&T Microelectronics, the business unit to which our plant belonged. Rarely did Crawford miss an opportunity to visit the factory floor. He always had his message points about the direction of the business and what it would take to achieve goals, but he also listened to what was on the minds of employees.

I recalled this about Crawford, who is now president and CEO of XCEO, Inc., a management consulting firm, as I listened to President Barack Obama’s press conference the day after his policies were largely rejected by voters in mid-term elections. One of the themes that has emerged among analysts is that Obama and congressional Democrats failed to listen to Americans. Indeed, Obama acknowledged that he might be perceived as out of touch, one danger of living “in the bubble” of the White House.

“How do I meet my responsibilities here in the White House .. but still have that opportunity to engage with the American people .. and give them confidence that I am listening to them,” said a pensive Obama during the press conference.

Like his policies or not, many people considered Obama to be an effective communicator during his presidential campaign. However, somewhere along the way, he lost sight of the other side of communication — listening — and it might have cost his party its hold on the U.S. House of Representatives.

There’s a lesson here for business leaders, and that’s what made me recall Curt Crawford. Now, there are obvious differences between the President of the United States and the president of a company. But just as the President of the United States is beholden to the voting public, presidents of companies are beholden to shareholders, customers, boards of directors and, yes, employees. And while leadership sometimes means making tough and unpopular decisions, failure to listen to what is on the minds of your constituents can spell disaster.

Leaders who listen take into account the ideas, concerns and perspectives of stakeholders and fold them into the mix of other data upon which leaders rely. Why is this important? Here are a few reasons:

• Leaders don’t know everything. There are subject-matter experts out there whose expertise just might help solve a problem.
• People want to know they’re being listened to. A leader who listens sends a message about the importance of constituent groups, whether customers, employees or shareholders.
• Leaders lead only if followers allow them to. If a leader loses the confidence and trust of constituents, the leader’s effectiveness and ability to get things done suffers.

I remember Curt Crawford telling employees that communication was perhaps his most important role as a leader. Certainly it’s not the only role — there is strategy and the management of resources, among others — but he recognized that a leader who leads from the bubble of the C-suite, who is out of touch with stakeholders, is doomed to failure. Just ask President Obama.

On a Culture Getting What it Always Got

That whirring sound you hear is the American electorate’s heads spinning on the day after another change election. For the third consecutive time, voters have thrown the bums out, hoping that the next batch will be better than the last.

Our political culture is really nothing more than a reflection of ourselves, so the waffling back and forth tells me that we really don’t know what we want from our leaders. I believe the reason for this ever-increasing indecision is the ever-increasing polarization fueled by media personalities on the extreme left and the extreme right — communicators who rely on hyperbole rather than thoughtful commentary because it’s more entertaining and grabs higher ratings.

During this campaign and on this, the morning after, there’s a lot of angry voters who are crying, “Do you hear us, Washington? We demand better!” But really, we have no one to blame for this mess but ourselves. We created this political culture and we’re the ones who keep it alive by tuning in to the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann and by behaving badly at political rallies hosted by the extreme right and extreme left.

A culture — whether political, social or corporate — is a mere reflection of its constituents. So, when we elevate The Situation, whose only talent is that he looks good without a shirt, to celebrity status, we get even more vapid entertainment thrown at us. When we undermine our co-workers and fan the flames of internal competition at work, we get treated like children by management. When we reduce political discourse to name-calling and broad generalizations of the other side, we get legislative gridlock.

So how do we fix it? I wish there was an easy answer. I’ve worked on the communication of culture-change programs for several Fortune 500 companies and I can tell you it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a slow, methodical, deliberate process. It reminds me of the old joke about how many therapists it takes to change a light bulb: just one, but it takes a long time and the light bulb must really want to change.

If we’re part of a culture that we really want to change, it starts with us individually, changing our attitudes and behaviors. Until that happens, to borrow from Tony Robbins, we’ll always get what we always got.