I heard a comment the other day on sports radio of all places. “Do you inspire greatness or protect lousy?” It’s a great question for all managers and leaders. Are your actions and words helping the best on your team become even better or great? Or, are you legitimizing excuses to protect the weak employees, aka, the Lousy.
You might be protecting Lousy if you’re doing any of the following:
- Giving “group” praise by telling your team, “Everyone did a great job today”… when “everyone” really didn’t do a great job. This demotivates your best people and excuses the lousy into thinking they’re ok or that they can coast on the coattails of the performers.
- Buying into the “we’re too busy” excuse for whatever the Lousy don’t feel like doing. Maybe it’s finding the time to attend a 15-minute meeting, taking 3 minutes to handle a customer call in a remarkable way or responding to calls and email in a timely manner. “We’re too busy” is another way of saying “we’re not organized” or “we’re lazy” or “we don’t care and what are you going to do about it?”.
- Not holding employees accountable. You can have all the standards and expectations you want, but if there is no accountability, the Lousy will figure out pretty quickly that they run the show. They’ll figure out the exact minimum to keep you off their back and they will never do more than that and they’ll certainly never achieve greatness. Without accountability, why should they bother?
- Not following your organization’s leadership. Too often managers themselves are not on the same page as leadership. If you want to be an effective leader, you have to be able to follow and support your leader. Your team is watching and they can see clearly where you stand. Not standing by and supporting your leadership is an inspiration to the Lousy.
These are just a few of the many things managers and leaders do every day to protect the Lousy. As bad as this is, the worst part of protecting the Lousy is the consequence of demotivating your best people and even causing them to seek opportunities with your competition. It’s a simple choice and far too many managers are choosing to protect the Lousy at the expense of Greatness. Choose your direction wisely.
