Summary: Smart and driven managers often fail not because they lack capability, but because they neglect relationships whilst focusing on functional performance. They move too fast, sideline colleagues, micromanage and operate as lone wolves. Over time, teams become disengaged and managers risk burnout. HR can safeguard strong performers by championing three leadership imperatives focused on psychological safety, a sense of agency and wellbeing.
Average managers ruffle few feathers, for they typically protect the status quo, ask little of their colleagues and seldom make others look bad. But time and again I see how managers described as smart and driven fail to meet expectations.
I say ‘smart and driven’ because these are the words people often use to describe colleagues whom they see as strong performers.
At the same time, when I interview stakeholders to learn how they experience a senior manager with these strengths, an insistent ‘but’ qualifies much of the praise. To be smart and driven is a double-edged sword.
How smart, driven managers fail
Whilst each person is unique and every situation different, smart and driven managers face some common challenges. Let us consider Emma.
Emma prides herself on being smart, an asset colleagues see in her quick thinking, technical know-how and career history. She has good reason to be confident in her abilities. That said, co-workers say she comes across as arrogant. (In the Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI), arrogance is the ‘overdone’ flip side of self-confidence.)
Stakeholders see how Emma values performance and timely outcomes (the Red motive in the Inventory) and rightly conclude she is driven to achieve. She means well, yet others struggle to keep up and feel sidelined by her urgency. Colleagues say Emma cares about tasks, not people; she forgets that a manager’s job is to ‘bring everyone on a journey’ – five words I hear all the time.
Emma is viewed as a lone wolf: colleagues believe she is aloof, seldom a team player. With a track record of excellence in hands-on roles and what others see as a lack of patience, she finds it easier to do everything herself. But this causes many to feel disparaged or overlooked. Some colleagues worry she is at risk of burnout.
Broad and deep knowledge gets Emma into trouble, too. Sure of her position, she routinely tells people what to think or do. Her team members, especially, feel they have little autonomy and, over time, become disengaged. Many resent her for what they see as controlling behaviour. Their frustrations play out in the canteen, via the staff survey or through grievances.
Emma’s boss has another concern. He notes she is anxious about day-to-day outcomes, and worries she spends days in the weeds. She has little time to provide strategic direction, build relationships with internal stakeholders, or connect within her industry. This is the work he pays her to do.
The smart, driven manager’s risk
Emma is not unusual. As a smart, driven individual with a good track record, she – like many – struggles to let go of the thinking and practice that brought success in the past.
Clearly, every person’s situation is different. Still, what I often discover through coaching or in discussions with teams is how managers invest in functional performance, yet neglect to build trust with stakeholders or work through relationships.
This is a problem, for the job of a manager, largely, is to create the conditions for others to perform. To neglect trust and relationships causes risk to the individual, team, and organisation. Managers are rarely fired for shortfalls in hard skills.
Everyone faces this hurdle when a career evolves toward leadership. But the strain is perhaps felt most by smart, driven people who pride themselves on their historical performance on tasks.
Noteworthy also is how workplace culture often endorses unhelpful behaviours. For example, short-term incentives direct attention to tasks and results; systems and processes obscure complex human questions; early careers promote functional, and not relational, skills.
The adaptation from well-rehearsed functional activities to what I call ‘connective’ performance – work that nurtures, and benefits from, trust and human connection – calls for compassion and proper support.
How to safeguard against leadership failure
How can HR safeguard the organisation’s strong performers from the kind of leadership failure we see in Emma?
The best outcomes are secured via interventions across three levels – organisation, team, and individual. With this in mind, below are three leadership imperatives that HR can champion to good effect.
Reinforce psychological safety
Smart and driven managers can be intimidating, even when this is not their intention. Reinforcing a culture of psychological safety builds trust and encourages everyone to participate.
HR can organise development to support healthy interpersonal practices.
1. Show curiosity and ask questions.
2. Demonstrate active listening.
3. Encourage naysayers to speak out.
Encourage a sense of agency
Fiercely independent, smart and capable managers plough ahead with tasks, often to good short-term effect. But morale suffers when team members are left behind, treated as cogs in the machine, or given little chance to shape their work.
For impact that lasts, nurture an environment where all team members develop mastery.
1. Give people a say in the design of work.
2. Invite juniors to speak in important meetings.
3. Provide for ongoing self-development.
Promote everyone’s wellbeing
Finally, wellbeing is a question for both managers and team members when connective work is crowded out by an intensity of functional performance. Not everyone burns out, of course, but exhaustion and stress are common.
Lobby for practices that allow colleagues to accommodate their own and others’ needs as people.
1. Explore personal concerns in team member one-to-ones.
2. To lower stress, find ways to manage energy, not time.
3. Interact with colleagues as people, beyond a task.
Provide support at three levels
Support managers and their teams to explore these practices, while also holding conversations at the organisational level to agree on a corporate norm. This will allow you to advance individual behaviour, group cooperation and workplace culture – for change that lasts.
With the three imperatives, HR can guide smart and driven managers to secure desirable outcomes, not by running up the hill alone – as one client described the tendency – but through trust and productive connections.
For practical actions that will encourage trust and collaboration, download our executive guide Bang Heads No More.
Key takeaways
- Consider task value versus relationship risk: Smart and driven managers bring great strengths, while these can be a risk when someone neglects workplace relationships.
- Provide support at three levels: For the best outcomes, HR leaders can craft development strategies that work at organisation, team, and individual levels.
- Emphasise vital imperatives: Smart and driven managers are protected from failure when they build capability in three leadership imperatives: psychological safety, agency and wellbeing.
