The LIFT Blog

By Ryan W. Quinn

I am going to do something a little different in this post than we do in most of our other posts. In most of ourposts, we try to introduce our readers to some research from the field of Positive Organizational Scholarship, illustrate this research using personal stories or current events, and explain how leaders can apply that research in their organizations. On today’s topic, however, we know more from practical experience than we do from research, so I will focus more on the practical wisdom than on the research.

Negotiating with Andrew

Last Sunday my wife, Amy, and I spent the morning trying to get our family ready for church: giving the kids baths, getting them dressed and fed, and trying to get ourselves ready as well. Time ran out quickly, and with only a few minutes left until we were supposed to go, I found myself trying to convince our naked three-year-old that he really wanted to put his clothes on. For some reason, he did not seem to think that wearing clothing was as important as I thought it was.

As the time to leave loomed before me, I tried some time-tested techniques of parenting: bribes and threats. I racked my brain for rewards I could offer him and punishments I could threaten him with. I came up with a few, but none of them worked. My frustration was peaking.

As I sat there helplessly trying to figure out what to do, Amy came in and saw my dilemma. Instead of using rewards or threats, she simply picked up Andrew’s shirt and asked, “Is this Andrew’s shirt or Mommy’s shirt?” Andrew stopped to look at her. Then Amy said, “It’s Mommy’s shirt!” and pretended she was putting it on. The shirt was, of course, too small for her, and obviously so. Andrew thought this was funny and said, “No, it’s Andrew’s shirt!” He let Amy put it on him, followed by his other clothing, and soon we were off to church.

A Concern with Time

Later in the week, I was writing up a teaching note for a class on “becoming externally-open.” As we explain in Lift, an externally-open psychological state is a state in which a person is open to learning and to receiving feedback.* Good teaching notes help teachers anticipate concerns that students often have about the concepts they are learning, so I began to think through some of the concerns that students typically raise when I teach this concept. One of the concerns that came to mind was time pressure: “What if I just don’t have time to apply these concepts?”

Time is not just a concern when it comes to becoming externally open. Time pressure is one of the most common concerns that I hear in the classroom from executives and MBAs, whether the class is on team design and process, change management, or interpersonal relationships. Good leadership is hard, and it takes time. I have learned, however, that what looks like a major time investment up front can often save a significant amount of time later on.

Consider, for example, my experience with Andrew. When I was trying to convince him to put his clothes on, I was not seeking for feedback and looking to learn new ways to improve my parenting. I was not externally-open. I just wanted him to put his clothes on. Research on learning goals** suggests, however, that if I wanted to become externally-open, I could have stopped and asked myself, “What are three (or four or five) strategies I could use to accomplish my purpose in this situation?” And, as we describe in Lift, if I had trouble thinking of strategies, I could have asked someone (like Amy) to help me come up with ideas. I knew this. I’ve used these principles before and I’ve written about them. I did not apply them, however, because I thought we were going to be late for church and I did not have enough time to stop and think through alternative strategies. We had a deadline to meet, and I needed Andrew to put his clothes on now.

The irony of this situation–as I learned from seeing how Amy dealt with Andrew–is that if I had stopped, tried to come up with alternate strategies, and perhaps asked Amy for ideas, I would have resolved the situation much more quickly than I would have if I had kept trying to use rewards and punishments to persuade Andrew. In fact, if I had continued using rewards and punishments to persuade Andrew, I probably would have made the situation worse, and we would have been exceptionally late to church.

Broad Application

Taking time to apply verified principles of management and leadership almost always saves us time in the long run, even if it takes extra time in the short run. We often hear stories about project teams who lost enormous swaths of time and money because of conflict and poor execution–problems that they could have avoided if they had taken the time to design their teams and set norms as soon as they were organized. Earlier this summer I advised a student of mine who is working on a change management project for her internship to take the time to regularly meet with and listen to the many people who are interested in and affected by the project. “Wow!” she commented, “That will take a lot of time!” Fortunately, I did not have to convince her that it would also save her a lot of time in the long run. Jesse Bernstein, a personal friend who has run two businesses and one chamber of commerce over his multiple decades of experience once told me, “There is almost no important decision that cannot be put off until tomorrow.” We tend to make better decisions when we think about them and even sleep on them–shouldn’t we give the important decisions extra time, even if it does mean putting off a deadline?

Practical wisdom seems to be ahead of scientific research on this topic. Before I sat down to write this entry, I searched through the management and leadership literature to find research on when and how people extend deadlines. I found plenty of research on how deadlines change people’s behavior. And I also found plenty of research on how our ideas about time are socially constructed. But I could not find any research that integrated these two ideas to explore questions like “When, why, and how should people extend their deadlines to improve their leadership practice?”

We may not know all of the answers, but we do know that people can pause, extend their deadlines, and change the way they invest their time–even if this sometimes requires negotiation with others. There are certainly times when it is legitimate to make compromises in order to get something done on time, even if we may not practice ideal leadership. I suspect, however, that these should be the exceptions rather than the rule. Often, the excuse that we do not have enough time is just that–an excuse. Until we do have more answers, I think it is good advice to remember that, more often than not, if we have a chance to pause and apply good leadership principles it is worth the time.

* An externally-open state is the same thing as Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset,” in which a person believes that he or she is capable of improving themselves, but we treat this as a temporary state rather than as an enduring trait.

** An example of research on learning goals is Seijts, G. H., Latham, G. P., Tasa, K., & Latham, B. W. 2004. Goal Setting and Goal Orientation: An Integration of Two Different Yet Related Literatures. Academy of Management Journal, 47(2): 227-239.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.