What is your motivation when you tell the guy you supervise, who happens to be close to your boss, to copy you on all communications with your boss? I just got off Skyping with a client, lets call her Betty, who was struggling with that issue.
Betty's motivation, it turned out, was fear-based. Fear that her authority would be undermined or she would be seen as irrelevant. Fear that in truth she did not have any value to add to the conversation.
There is nothing useful or productive that comes from a fear-based response. This is not a leadership tool.
I asked Betty what would happen if she was not copied. Would the overall program be damaged? Would their mission be in danger of running awry? No, she said. The need to be included in correspondence was a protection of her own status. And you can't protect your status from a fear-based perspective. It will backfire.
To her infinite credit, Betty looked at her own motivations honestly and was able to choose a path that served the good of the entire project, rather than her own image.
She could have made a mess by insisting on being copied, by creating discourse with her direct report and forcing alignments between him and her boss, instead of with her. Energy would have gone into managing those challenges rather than in implementing something more important to them all.
We are constantly challenged to look within ourselves and understand what is our own motivation and ask ourselves the question: So what? If the answer is, it is all about me then step aside.
Powerful leadership is selfless and demands of us a great deal of self-management.
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