Leadership Case Study: The CEO Stuck on Transmit

We've all sat next to the person on the plane whose transmitter is stuck in the "on" position -- they talk at you the whole flight, telling you about their victories and challenges as if you had asked a deeply probing question. Whether they do this because they are nervous, or feel the need to take a social hostage whom they can use for a little compulsive self-disclosure, it can be fascinating, but more often than not, it causes the would-be "listener" to tune out. While no more than annoying social behavior for the chatty seat-mate on the plane, for leaders, it can be a very serious problem indeed. When a leader is stuck on transmit, their people will tune out in meetings and one-on-one discussions. The boss then misses critical information, problems, and fails to get important news from their people. They are likely to then push their folks into things without having the necessary context about what else is happening, which, in turn, makes everyone operate less effectively. For those reasons, it's critical to ratchet back the tendency to be on "transmit," and to increase the amount of time a leader spends on "receive." When the person is unaware of their speech-ifying, prognosticating, or tendency to transmit rather than receive, then some outside observation is needed to get it out of their blind spot and into the open so that it can be addressed. To that end, I sat in on a staff meeting recently with a CEO client of mine, at his request, and observed his behavior. He is consciously working on listening more of the time. After the meeting, and back in the private confines of his office, I had to report to him that he dominated over 70% of the meeting, causing many of the people to shut down, just like the seat-mate on the plane. He recognized it, was frustrated, as he's been working on it for a while, and asked me: "Why is this lesson about listening / being on “receive” not “transmit” so hard for me to learn?” I asked him what his job as CEO is, in relation to his people, to which he replied:nn “My job as a CEO is to keep people on track.” I then asked him what happens if he stops telling people what he thinks, what they should do, and how they should do it, and he said:nn “If I stop doing that, I'm afraid the ball will stop rolling.” These core beliefs drive behavior that resembles a parent teaching a lesson to children. It assumes they can't operate on their own, and whatever thoughts or ideas they may have to contribute, it's not as important as what the leader thinks or says. All of which put the leader in transmit/tell mode. The intervention is to replace these core beliefs with different ones and try them on for size. Perhaps, I said, your job is to a) as Jim Collins says, get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats… THEN… b) inspire and guide people to get the most out of themselves – to do their best work, independent of any need to tell them what to do and how to do it, to direct them, or to ride herd over them. Unlike the guy on the plane, leaders usually don't get stuck on transmit out of social anxiety or compulsive self-disclosure -- we get stuck on transmit because we believe we have to keep the balls rolling. When we replace that belief, then enhanced leadership effectiveness follows.