Great leadership is about inspiring, motivating, and guiding people toward a common goal.
But what happens when the people you need to lead are strongly entrenched into seemingly irreconcilable positions, even if those positions are unrelated to the business goal you are trying to achieve?
How do you foster teamwork and cooperation when, at the most basic level, employees are divided along ideological lines?
Irreconcilable animosity
You only need to watch TV news these days to sense the feeling of irreconcilable animosity that Pew Research has been detecting for quite some time now.
In one study* it found that 8 of 10 Americans — and that includes your employees, stockholders, and customers — believe that people along party lines can’t agree on the basic issues.
In another study** it established that the gap between the two ideological camps is the widest it has ever been.
A new leadership challenge
Make no mistake: This ideological divide society matters to you as a leader.
It matters because it colors the mood your of employees when they come to work in the working. It influences your peers’ inclination to partner with you. It affects your customers’ behavior. It can sway your stakeholders’ feelings about your company.
Conflicting points of view
I’ve written about conflicting points of view in the past, most specifically in a post I titled “Walk a While in their Shoes.” In it, I underscored the need for leaders facing an impasse to try to view the issue from the other person’s point of view.
The situation I’m talking about today is related, but it’s not the same. Today I’m talking about an undercurrent that may not be clearly visible but that can impact your effectiveness as a leader.
However, both cases point to a set of leadership skills that need to come into play.
Soft and Hard Leadership Skills
As difficult as we thought it might have been to lead people while transforming companies and bringing accelerated innovation, leading in such a divided ideological climate requires a new mix of leadership skills.
Leaders today and into the future will still need to possess the tried-and-true Intelligence Quotient (IQ) skills such as financial acumen and business savvy.
But now more than ever they will need to balance those so-called “hard” skills with an equal dose of “soft” Emotional Quotient (EQ) skills such as leading people, cultivating networks and, in particular, empathy.
Empathy, which can be defined as the ability to understand the feelings of another person, even if we don’t share them, is most important in today’s climate.
As a leader, you must understand that employees represent a mix of the divided ideological camps that we are in. If your teams sense you don’t empathize with some of their views, you’re going to be a less effective leader. You don’t have to agree, but you must be able to listen.
As long we remain in these camps we are going to need business leaders who can empathize, who can move people to achieve goals by being able to listen and being able to address the emotional needs of those employees.
I am confident leaders will step up to the challenges we face like they have done many times before. In my experience, difficult times brings out the best in all of us.
Leaders who strike the right balance of soft and hard skills will inspire, motivate, and guide people successfully to achieve common goals.
References
(**) – http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/
