Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You

by Frances Frei

There’s a role for both positive reinforcement and constructive advice in anyone’s evolution, but here’s the part that surprises most people: the right ratio of positive to constructive is at least 5:1. For every unit of constructive advice you decide to hand out, the recipient should ideally receive five units of positive reinforcement.

How will you know if you’re getting it right? Your performance metric is someone else’s improvement. If you’re not seeing improvement, then it’s your job to try another way.

Build more trust so that your recipient(s) can actually hear what you have to say.

Your job as a leader is to make o...

Engage with a new and improved version of someone, even if they’re not quite there yet. For example, give them that stretch assignment you’ve been holding back or offer advice that only their better self can execute. Anything to signal that the future is now.

Make your audacity and sense of purpose infectious. If recruiting accountability partners will help you succeed, then don’t be shy. Find a peer (or two, or three) to keep you honest.

Discover what people dread doing and reduce their pain.

Assume you don’t know everything that’s draining your team’s time or all of the latest tools that could help.

Be the standard. Model the standards and behaviors you want the people around you to adopt. Be impatient with your own mediocrity and don’t let yourself off the hook. If you find yourself slipping, take a timeout from the leadership path. Spend some time recovering until you’re back on track.

Revealing high standards but minimal devotion might serve a productive, short-term purpose for the herd (e.g., making a negative example of someone), but for a leader to stay there is a pricey choice for most teams. Like the trade-offs associated with fidelity, to stay in severity is a decision that’s driven primarily by your own needs, particularly the need for control and security. Severity can meet these needs, at least provisionally, but its upside is limited. Other people tend to give you what you ask for, but rarely much more than that. They exert just enough energy to avoid feelings of failure or shame or whatever your management weapon of choice may be, but it’s often too risky around leaders in severity to innovate or deviate from expectations (even if it’s to exceed them).

“Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied, to a fellow corporate titan he hardly knew. “You can do it. Get your mind around it. You can do it.”

Many leaders already are deeply devoted to the people around them; they’re just not effectively communicating that devotion.

Ask how you can help. Find out how to be of service to someone. Don’t muddy the agenda with other things on your to-do list; keep the conversation focused on how you can help someone achieve something meaningful. And don’t end the conversation until you’ve committed to take action in ways that improve their chance of success.

Proactively help (without the asking part). Pick someone on your team whose proverbial “plate” you know well (ideally, because you’ve piled things onto it) and surprise them by removing something. Show them you get it by choosing something that’s causing particular frustration and/or is misaligned with their long-term goals.

As a starting place, check the number of “I” and “me” statements you’re making over the course of the day. Replace a healthy percentage of them with “we” and “us.” For bonus points, throw in more “you” and “yours,” as in, “How can we help you achieve your hopes and dreams?”

when you’re making the kinds of changes that enable other people to thrive, you may feel as if you’re out over your skis at some point. Our message to you, to all of us, is to tuck your head and keep going. Get comfortable with the discomfort. The payoff is a force with enough power to unleash other people, a force conventionally known as love.

Encourage your critics to reveal themselves so that you can engage directly with their concerns, which may very well be valid. Collaboration happens in daylight.

Lawyers are rarely the risk-intolerant killjoys they’re made out to be by non-lawyers, so partner with them early.