What’s the Recipe?

We all have them in our family—those family members who have the natural ability to create a meal masterpiece without any effort. You sit down to dinner with them, and the meal is unbelievable. Of course, the next question for the armature chef is, “What’s the Recipe.” They graciously give you the “recipe” as they found it, created it, or received it from generations past, and you attempt to make it. The food doesn’t look the same, it doesn’t smell the same. You ponder “did she mean a pinch or a tsp?!” It’s a disappointment because it is not the same. The recipe seems different. You decide if you’re going to get this recipe correct, you need to go back to the source and watch them create it! Maybe then, you’ll see what is different about their recipe than yours.

Leadership is the same way. We all have different recipes and ways of working with our teams, and we all have different styles, skill sets, and motivations. You may observe a leader who seems to have a happy, healthy team, and you want to replicate what they are doing on your team. You try to do what they do for a few days, but it quickly falls flat. Why?

IT’S NOT YOUR RECIPE

There are millions of leadership books, podcasts, websites, and webinars. I’ve read many leadership books throughout the years, and the one thing I’ve learned is that you can’t fake something or replicate something you’re not willing to understand and observe in action. I have spent several years watching different leadership styles, and I’ve watched leaders in large and small organizations fail and succeed with very different approaches. What I have learned through this observation process were three main observations for successful and unsuccessful leadership.

RECIPE FOR FAILURE

1. You are not trusting your team. Not counting the intelligent people you hired to do the job you’ve entrusted them with is a recipe for failure. Why? They will never grow, never trust that you will depend on them and they will become disengaged.
2. You look for someone to blame. Something will inevitably go wrong. That is life; that is business. Blaming someone instead of finding the solution is not a story of success. My team makes mistakes from time to time. I am confident that they fix their mistakes and know they can come to me and not feel like they will get screamed at for the error. Look, I paid out severance to a person who wasn’t supposed to get one. I went straight to the VP and said, “I F*ed up,” no excuse needed. It was my oversite. Does your team feel they can come to you with an issue without feeling like there will be a backlash?
3. You hold on to a preconceived bias. We all have biases; there aren’t any who have an internal preference that we may not even realize that we hold. Perhaps it’s the first impression of a person. Maybe it’s the way they dressed their first day of work that wasn’t quite up to your expectation. Perhaps it’s the way they said something to you. The worst would be if YOUR preconceived bias resulted from another person’s “opinion” of an employee. Perhaps one you’ve never even honestly had the time to meet or interact with on your own. Your bias could be ruining your team’s recipe for success. You need to check those biases at the door. Everyone has a back story and if you hired a person because they interviewed well for the position, TRUST your initial excitement for the candidate.

RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

1.  It would help if you relinquished control entirely. Trust the people you hire to do the job. Of course, that is not the same as “washing your hands” of the project/responsibility but let them make it their own. Perhaps they have a better way of doing something. You know most employees came from somewhere else with other experiences. Let them help you grow! Please stay in the loop and check in regularly, but let them do what you hired them to do. Step out of the weeds.
2. It would be best if you had “teaching” moments. I am in an all-day chat with my team. It’s open for us to communicate, and often, I’ll send them a “Teaching Moment .”It may be something I just learned, a process they may not know yet, or something they handled incorrectly but was an easy fix. These moments make us pause and update our systems of doing things. 
3. Sometimes you need to adjust your leadership style to match your employee. Not the other way around. Your employees will learn YOUR leadership style by observing you but are you taking the time to learn how they thrive and feel appreciated? Adjusting is not an option. Just like having different personalities in children, we’re all different adults. Take the time to know your team, learn their strengths and what drives them, and your team will be successful. 

We all want to be better leaders, but none of us can follow the same recipe. Leadership asked me, “how do we replicate that success?” The first step would be to find someone in your organization who consistently successfully leads their team and then OBSERVE them in action. 

I’ll conclude with a story from years past. I make an amazing Chocolate Chip Cookie. It took dozens of batches and test recipes, but I finally nailed down a fan favorite, and low and beheld, my cookie was a hit. A coworker asked me, “What’s the recipe .”I gave her the ingredients. She came into my classroom the next day and said, “That wasn’t the recipe .”I said, “well, if you want the recipe, you have to come to watch me MAKE the cookies; the ingredients aren’t the entire recipe.” She, of course, came over to observe and saw that there was a lot more prep in making those cookies than just reading the ingredients. It took blending certain things and sifting. Through her observation, she made a batch that was similar to the original cookie. Will it ever be the same? No, it’s not her recipe, but she can now take that base recipe and make it her own, just as you can do with your team. An essential part of leadership is understanding your team and how they tick. If you trust your people, they will trust your charge.