Are you a boring boss?

When was the last time you made your team yawn?

Google research says forget conventional leadership traits, 'boring is best'

Yawn: boring bosses are best for business

Conventional wisdom suggests that a good leader should be dynamic and courageous, with a dash of charisma and a good turn of phrase. Well, that most unconventional of companies, Google, has just released its conclusions from some extensive research, derived from internal data and gleaned from countless interviews with Google employees about what they feel makes a good leader. Their conclusions are rather surprising, because the most important trait that staff tend to appreciate in their leaders are none of these things.  What the Google employees overwhelming suggest makes a good leader, is that they need to be ‘boring’ or, more precisely, predictable.

These are interesting findings, but it is hardly surprising that this is something that might be found at a business, such as Google, which is staffed by teams of highly qualified technical experts and creatives. They often respond best when they are allowed to have their own space and develop whatever project they are working on without the interference of a manager.

Nevertheless, I do think that this research has some validity, it was conducted in a very large and progressive business with a significant sample size of data, although it would be interesting to see this replicated across other types of organisation. It certainly ties in with recent research relating to motivational psychology, where emphasis is placed upon the need for autonomy, mastery and purpose.  The results of recent research and its application to business has been well presented and popularised in the book, Drive, by Dan Pink.  However, I wonder whether such a trait has universal relevance in other work environments and alternative situational leadership circumstances or whether it is symptomatic of the Google workplace and other similar Silicon Valley organisations.  It would be worthy of further study and research.

Anecdotally I have certainly felt more motivated in situations where I was not micro-managed by an overzealous boss who was too keen to involve themselves in the minutiae.  My previous article about Steve Job, “Riding the Shithead-Hero Rollercoaster”, suggested that Jobs firmly believed that you had to allow your team to deliver and trust them to do so in an environment in which they felt empowered to innovate and challenge. Although it is clear that both Jobs - and someone like Jeff Bezos at Amazon - do encourage cultures where confrontation is viewed as healthy to foster growth and development – something that would seem at variance with the idea of predictability, which is something that neither Jobs nor Bezos could be accused of.

This will obviously prompt further debate and research, but if you have been brushing up your leadership skills recently, you might just like to stop what you are doing and take a breather, switch on the TV or start collecting beer cans or fridge magnets, and see what you can do to make yourself just a little more boring and predictable. Rather than being boring, you can call it management training!

Written by Will Trevor, Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training

Email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

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