Leaders Shouldn't Be Too Receptive To Input
A CEO need not be receptive to all my input.
It's more important to move fast and decisively. If you’re cooking a dosa, someone will suggest adding sugar, butter and eggs to bake a cake. You can’t be receptive to that input and add some cake ingredients to the dosa batter — you’ll make a mess. It’s okay not to even listen to such advice. Not because baking a cake is a bad idea, or because the suggestion will result in a bad cake, but because that’s not what we’re cooking here.
When I was junior, I thought I knew everything and people should just do what I say and everything will work out. I distracted my team in endless discussions. I drained everyone’s energy. When people tried to accommodate me, I was not satisfied. If anything, I was emboldened to waste more time. I see the same behavior among some junior people, reacting emotionally that their input wasn’t taken, rather than stopping to ask if it’s helping move the team forward along the path the leader has decided to take.
A leader is not a chatbot. When you’re not receptive to certain input, it’s perfectly fine to say no. I worked with someone who’d say yes to me but did not implement my suggestions, repeatedly. I saw through it and lost trust in that person’s words. I went through a period when I was so receptive to people’s inputs that I lost my way, lost track, and lost confidence in how I was running my startup. The word “no” exists in the dictionary for a reason 1.
If you board a bus going to Goa, you don’t get to argue that it should go to the Himalayas 2. The leader is the one in the driver’s seat, and if you insist on going to the Himalayas, get off the bus. If you have suggestions on how to get to Goa faster, great. A leader I respect said about one of my decisions, “I’d have done things in a different way, but this is also fine”.
One of the CEOs I work with is not as receptive to my input as I’d have liked. And that’s perfectly fine. Let’s be decisive. My job is to support him how I can. He’s the CEO — not me.
Conversely, another leader I worked with was so receptive to input she could never decide anything. The team revisited the same disagreements quarter on quarter. The disagreements metastasized into a general feeling of discontent. People stopped taking initiative. The company progressed slower than it could have. I stopped working with her, because it was just a waste of my time.
The next time I hear someone complain that a leader is not receptive to input, I’ll listen eagerly — it could be a good sign that he’s decisive, that he’s accommodating but not too accommodating.
At the same time, give a non-zero weightage to making people feel heard.
You can and should argue anything, but not again and again, and at the end of the conversation, disagree and commit.