I enjoy and am thankful for the replies and questions I receive on my articles and newsletters, and a question I frequently get asked is “Why are you doing what you do?”
There are many little stories about how I have gotten to where I am today, but let me share one that has been significant in many ways. I think my experience will resonate with many of you. The experience impacted me a lot at the time, in the 2000s, and it is something that has formed my motivation to shift my work from business building, to psychology development.
My story of feeling useless
I was headhunted to be the Chief of Staff for an exceptionally fast-growing SME company in Germany, and be the one who creates organizational structures. The founder was also the CEO, and known to be a brilliant entrepreneur. His challenge was that he had not been able to create efficient structures, did not want to delegate responsibility, and therefore had more than 40 direct reports. Every decision had to be OK'ed by him personally.
This is how it worked:
I kid you not! Every direct report had to submit a one-pager to the CEO, following a pre-defined template. On this one-pager, people had to describe the topic and recommend a decision. Below that, the CEO would tick off one of 3 boxes that said:
It was great to get a "Go Ahead", and even OK to be told not to go ahead. Things were clear.
The second worst was to be asked to set an appointment to discuss with the CEO. Due to his overloaded schedule, it was almost impossible to get a firm slot. That meant that I would sit and wait in my office, hoping to finally get called in for a discussion. It could take days to get this meeting, and when it happened, it was in most cases a moment of abuse, takedown and being ridiculed.
Can you imagine what this did to people?
In this environment of fear and lack of psychological safety, several colleagues “burned out” and had to seek therapeutic help. When people went on medical leave, they were seen as being “weak” by other colleagues in the leadership team, and none of them ever came back to work for the company again. I somehow managed to continue to function, but being much more aware today of what a Burn-out is, I can see that I should have sought help too. Still today, I hate the ringing tone of the CISCO phone that was popular back then. Like Pavlov’s famous dog experiment, I had been programmed to be fearful and feel hopeless when the phone rang. It’s what is called “learned helplessness” in psychology, and it is one of the topics I work with some of my clients to overcome.
The impact on the organization
The worst thing that could happen, was when the CEO took my idea and give it to someone else—without my knowledge nor consent. That was a terrible feeling because I felt betrayed, marginalized, and completely useless. It happened to many colleagues every day, and the organization was utterly confused, infights started, and there was no sense of psychological safety. You can imagine that collaboration was not good, and the company was effectively “broken”. It has since perished.
So, what has this got to do with what I do today?
Well, the willingness to delegate responsibility, to trust people, and to build people's confidence and courage are still leadership competencies that not every leader has today. In most cases, however, takedowns and abuse are not the problem anymore, as leaders are more educated, and organizations are more aware of the negative impact.
The problems today are more subtle, and for me, it boils down to two things:
How can a leader enable their people to feel confident and collaborate better?
How can leaders create a safe environment, where people dare to take risks and innovate?
These two questions are central to my work today, and I am privileged to be allowed to support employees, leaders and organizations in developing their answers to these questions. Because I have lived through many situations in my own professional life, I have a deep empathy and passion for people, their experiences and their willingness to make today better than yesterday.
I hope this explains a bit, why I am doing what I am doing. And I also hope that some of you will find inspiration in how to overcome difficult situations by reading my story.
if you have any questions, you can reach me on Henrik@novosensus.org
Yours,
Henrik