Leadership — It's not about selling ice cream

The other day I saw a LinkedIn post on leadership, it was another of those “I'll just stick this image up and see what happens” posts, hoping that it would get a reaction and go 'viral', you have all seen them.

It had an image saying, "if you want to make everyone happy, don't be a leader. Sell ice Cream". The quote has been attributed to many people, from Steve Jobs to Nick Saban, who is a former American football coach. It doesn't really matter who said it, that's not what is interesting. What I found fascinating was a reply that was posted by another user, which really exploded on the person for daring to post something like this.

The rebuttal was one I've heard a lot over the years, “what type of person was focused on making people unhappy!?” It went on quite a bit and was really having a go at the person posting things, effectively the person was almost demonised at the very thought that they wouldn't focus on keeping everyone happy. The person posting the reply said had been leading a team for a few years, and they had focused on doing what ever it took for the team to be happy, that was their mission, the very meaning they got up in the morning. The result was that their team was performing better than ever! They didn't however say if anyone else in the organisation was 100% happy with their team, we'll be left wondering that forever, I guess.

A fool's errand

To be fair I did think the whole thing was slightly ironic as just the other day I saw a young kid going off at his mum because the ice cream he got didn't have a flake in it as the ice cream van had run out of flakes. So, it seems even selling ice cream you can't keep everyone happy.

I think that's the point the original poster was trying to make, and it's true, you cannot keep everyone happy all the time, I'd go as far to say that if everyone is happy all the time you are doing the entire leadership thing wrong!

If you stop and think about it, just from a practical point of view, you know it's not possible for an entire team or organisation to be all be happy all the time. There are always competing requirements and agenda's, no matter how aligned your team or organisation is. Sally wants to have Tuesday off, but Bob is already off, and you have a rule that no more than 5 of your team can be off at the same time, Samantha gets a bigger pay rise than Steven or Dave's proposed solution gets rejected, again. These are all small things, but of course there will be bigger things as well. To keep everyone happy, you head down the road of saying yes to everyone and everything.

Yes, I can have that report done by 5pm on Wednesday (the team now must work late…), yes you can reallocate that part of the budget to Brian's project, but it means that Samantha's project can't now go ahead, still she can work on Brian's project.

You get the idea, trying to keep everyone happy means that no one is happy, it's the very example of a fool's errand.

Respect for everyone

One of the key principles of lean is respect for people, I tend to think it's an underlying requirement for leadership as well. If you don't respect everyone you work with, how do you expect to work together? Now don't confuse respect with liking someone, it's perfectly possible to dislike someone but still be respectful enough to see their point of view and to get along.

How respectful is it then to have the boss running around, spinning all the plates to keep everyone happy? Seems like it would be really respectful, right? Wrong.

Firstly, what about respect from themselves? There will be times when they are overwhelmed, times when they are less than impressed with the performance of their team, or just downright mad at someone. Bottling it all up just leads to stress and lots of unhappiness, and it's unfair to your team, no matter how hard you try to hide it, they know, it leaks out.

If someone isn't performing at a level you know they can, then you need to call them out on it. Will they be happy about it? Probably not, but as a leader, that's your role. Call people out and support them to do better.

I often hear that they are no dumb idea's, well that's just rubbish, there are lots of dumb idea's, I've had a few myself, just ask my wife! How you point out the dumb idea is obviously important, but again, not everyone will be happy when you do that, but at least people know what you expect and where you stand.

You also need to have enough respect for your peers to argue the heck out of things with them when you believe something is wrong, and that is always going to tick someone off, even for a short time. If you sit in that room and focus on keeping everyone happy rather than focusing on the very best outcome for the organisation, then you aren't doing your job as a leader in the organisation and guess what, then the boss shouldn't be happy.

Happiness breads contentment

How often have you heard that someone's boss, or maybe you have seen it yourself, is a 'yes man' only ever interested in keeping the peace and making sure people are happy, never really getting things done. Teams generally end up getting frustrated with this as an approach.

We all know that change is hard, change would rock the boat and people will be unhappy, so to avoid the unhappiness nothing really changes it stays comfortable. Comfortable organisations tend to be underperforming organisations. If you want to do more then you need to be pushing the limit, sometimes you will fail, and sometimes you won't, it's not comfortable being in an organisation that is constantly pushing for improvement, for some people they will not be happy with this lack of comfort. What's the best way to make them happy? (hint, help them more to another organisation).

Don't sell ice cream

The reality is that as a leader, it's not your job to make sure your team are all 100% happy, certainly not all the time. You want them 100% engaged for sure, how you do that is to challenge them, stretch them, make them feel a little uncomfortable but give them every single bit of support they need to succeed. Speak up in company meetings when you should be having the argument about the specific point on the table, be willing to say no to people, push back on silly deadlines and focus on being a leader who tackles the hard stuff and not the yes person.

If all you want is to make everyone happy, don't be a leader, and perhaps avoid selling ice cream as well.