“Hope clouds observation.” -Reverend Mother to Jessica in Frank Herbert’s Dune
Hope feeds at least two of my deeply-held values: resilience and creativity. That said, I was struck by the quote above from the book Dune by Frank Herbert.1 In three simple words, the Reverend Mother provides a strong warning against hope. What do I do with that?
While this warning sounds ominous, the challenge as I see it is to strike the balance between informed optimism (“hope”) and disciplined objectivity (“observation”).
Optimism that is not balanced by objectivity can lead us to have blinders in several areas. Today’s reflection will focus on two of them:
The motivations of others
The capabilities of others
The wiring of our brains makes remaining objective quite difficult (we are “programmed” to have biases). And, the communities and cultures in which we participate exacerbate our biases. So for this week’s reflection, I’ve offered one example and 4 questions to enhance your objectivity in these two areas.
The motivations of others
One of the most common missteps I see among leaders is to project their own motivation on others. This is the essence of T’Chaka’s (father) forewarning to T’Challa (son) in Black Panther - “You're a good man with a good heart. And it's hard for a good man to be king.” Leaders that project their motivation on others often struggle to get buy-in and/or translate their vision to the widest audience possible.
At an annual planning meeting, a mission-driven senior executive failed to win the support of two key peers for a new program. He wrongfully assumed that the significant potential of the program to improve patient outcomes would be enough to win them over. One peer objected to rolling out the program, because it would make it harder to deliver her annual budget. Another peer resisted because he had been working on a similar program and did not want another part of the company to have what he perceived as a conflicting effort. For the first peer, her primary motivation was recognition and for the second it was power. Neither shared the primary “altruistic” motivation of the mission-driven leader and so the proposal was “dead-on-arrival.”
Questions to aid our objectivity in assessing the motivations of others2:
What motivates me to advocate for this proposal? To what extent do others share this motivation?
Who is “necessary” to support and execute this proposal?
What do I believe each “necessary” person cares about most?3 What are his/her concerns likely to be?
How can I frame this proposal as a win/win, addressing the motivation of others as well as my own goal(s)?
The capabilities of others
Another common misstep for leaders is to have an overly rosy view of the capabilities of our people. In many cases, this is about a mismatch in the capabilities required to achieve a desired outcome versus the skillset of a legacy leader. In other words, they assign Hulk to lead the initiative when what they need is Antman. This is often exacerbated with loyal colleagues who have worked alongside us for many years.
The CEO of a biotech start-up hired several of her classmates from an elite school as part of the founding team. The team had breakthroughs in the early days and the camaraderie that existed among them fostered a positive, high-energy culture. The CEO was a visionary and brilliant scientist, yet she had relied on her COO to oversee the operational components of the trials. While extremely intelligent, the COO lacked experience overseeing complex trials and underestimated the regulatory challenges this new medicine would face. As a result, they hit two major regulatory roadblocks from the FDA, the second of which delayed the trials so much that instead of being first-to-market, a competitor was able to launch a similar medicine one year earlier.
Questions to aid our objectivity in assessing the capabilities of others4:
What are the desired outcomes that I need this individual to deliver?
On a scale of 1-5 (where 5= 90% confident), how confident am I that this person can deliver each outcome based on their historical performance? What “data” (i.e., specific positive and negative examples) support my score?
If I were to show these scores to someone else, which ratings would I have the hardest time justifying with specific examples?
For the areas that I rated them below a “4,” what are the skill gaps that reduce my confidence in their ability to deliver and can these gaps be closed?
Achieving 100% objectivity is likely beyond human capacity. Given our limitations, my hope (haha) is that these examples and questions enable us to be more objective when the situation calls for it.
Some questions I reflected on this week:
Which of these two areas (motivations of others, capabilities of others) do I tend to have the most difficulty remaining objective?
What is an example where being less objective held me back from achieving a desired outcome? What do I learn from this example?
Going forward, what is one area where I would benefit from being more objective? How will I put this into practice?
I read Dune for the first time in 2021. Though quite long (I recommend listening on Audible at 1.2x speed), it is incredibly prescient and many of the metaphors have relevance in our current environment.
These questions are adapted from “relational power” questions in the HBR article entitled: “A New Prescription for Power” by Elizabeth Long Lingo and Kathleen McGinn https://hbr.org/2020/07/a-new-prescription-for-power
There are many models on motivation. The one I use the most is Hogan’s Motivation, Values and Preference Inventory (MVPI). You can find the definitions here.
This is a simplified version of using a scorecard to assess talent.