What leaders can learn from con men

Con men might seem like an unlikely source of insight for leaders. Certainly, a leader shouldn't be conning and manipulating his or her people. Leaders need to be genuine and transparent in their actions. A leader's job is to help people reach their potential, not exploit their weaknesses.

So why take a lesson from a con man? The answer is simple. While their goals and results are quite different, conning and leading do have something in common. They both require trust. This is where a leader can learn something.

In their book Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions, authors Stephen L. Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde and Sandra Blakeslee describe a classic con called “The Pigeon Drop”. The example in their book came from a fellow neuroscientist named Paul Zak who actually fell for the con in his youth.

The con goes like this. A guy comes out of a restroom at store or, in this case, a gas station and tells the cashier that he just found a pearl necklace. A few minutes later, the cashier receives a call from a man saying that he lost the necklace. The man says he is offering a $200 reward. The cashier lets the man know that another customer found the necklace. The caller says he’ll be there in 30 minutes to pick it up. Unfortunately, the man who found the necklace says that he is late for a job interview and can’t wait. He’s in a bind and asks the cashier for help. He offers to give the necklace to the cashier and split the reward. The cashier just has to give the guy $100 and then he can keep the $200 when the owner of the necklace arrives. Of course, the “owner” of the necklace never shows up and the cashier is now out $100.

As you read this story, you might be thinking, “What a chump, I’d never fall for that.” Yet, many people fall for this and similar tricks all the time. In the heat of the moment our reactions are different than when reading about this in the abstract. Con artists are experts at quickly building rapport and trust. That’s why they are so effective. Once they gain your trust, they have you. The rest is easy.

But it's not so easy for leaders.  In his September, 2006 HBR article, The Decision to Trust, Robert Hurley cites research showing that 50% of managers don’t trust their leaders. Sadly, that was the most optimistic statistic he provided regarding trust. So why is it that leaders have to work so hard to gain people’s trust while a good con artist can do it in a matter of minutes?

It might be that the leader is too focused on doing things to gain trust. Macknik and his co-authors have an interesting insight in their analysis of the con man’s success. The authors (and Paul Zak) hypothesize that con artists are drugging you (or more accurately, are causing you to drug yourself)! They get your brain to release a hormone, oxytocin, into your system. Oxytocin causes us to feel connected to others. It is released during childbirth and situations in which you are “bonding” with others. Perhaps it is also released when you are being conned.

“The key to a con, says Zak, is not that you trust the con man, but that he shows he trusts you. Con men ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of oxytocin and its effect on other parts of the brain, you feel good when you help others. ‘I need your help’ is a potent stimulus for action. As for the pigeon con, the first hook was Zak’s desire to help the poor guy get this nice gift to his undoubtedly sweet wife. The second hook was the man who wanted to give the necklace back but who was late for his interview. If only Zak could help him get that job. Zak’s oxytocin system was in high gear, urging him to reciprocate the trust he had been shown and to help these people.”

The lesson is simple. Perhaps leaders should spend less time trying to convince people to trust them and more time letting their guard down, soliciting help, and demonstrating that they trust their people.

Hopefully your leadership success isn't based on being a con man. That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from them. Con men get people to do things that they never dreamt possible. When people get hurt, it’s a crime. Yet when those “impossible” actions bring out people’s potential and help them succeed, it’s leadership.

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Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.

Risk-taking versus recklessness

Leaders are realizing that maintaining the status quo is no longer a sustainable strategy. Many are pondering the question of how to create a culture of people who are more willing to take risks. However, as soon as that desire is expressed, it is almost always qualified. What if this new out of control workforce takes down the business? As long as this qualifier exists, there won’t be many risk-taking organizations. Such concerns come from a flawed view risk and people.

Risk is an inherent and necessary force in any business. Without it there would be no innovation, little progress, and few opportunities. Risk is simply the uncertainty involved in doing an activity. Managing risk is understanding the nature of that uncertainty, the range of possible outcomes, and the implications of each outcome. It also involves assessing the degree to which the organization can handle the negative outcomes (and deciding whether or not to take the action). Finally, managing risk requires that steps are taken to buffer or reduce any potentially negative outcome.

Risk is different from recklessness. Recklessness occurs when the potential outcomes are not considered nor are the proper steps taken to minimize exposure to those problems. Recklessness is about doing things without thinking them through.

Leaders’ fears of organizational demise at the hands of a newly minted “risk taking” culture are often fears of a reckless culture. It’s important to understand the difference.

Leaders who believe that their people will act recklessly if given more latitude don’t trust their workforce. It shouldn’t follow naturally that just because someone can do something he or she will do it indiscriminately (and will do it with disregard for the well-being of the organization). One senior executive said that front-line employees shouldn’t be taught how to think critically or innovate. Her concern was that they would stop listening to their supervisors and just question things all day long. She didn’t trust her people’s judgment to know when to apply their new tools.

If you can’t trust your people with new tools, you probably don’t trust them with their current tools either.

Ritz Carlton’s reputation for high quality service is built on a culture that trusts and empowers its people to make decisions (and take risks). Every employee is empowered to use his or her own judgment to spend up to $2,000 on each guest each day (http://www.baldrige.com/criteria_workforce/world-class-employee-orientation/). Given the number of customers who pass through the Ritz Carlton hotels each day this could quickly bankrupt the company. Yet, it has had the opposite effect. Ritz Carlton’s employees use this policy judiciously along with their other customer service tools. It’s a risk, but their training programs, reward systems, and leadership ensure that their people do not act recklessly.

My son is in the process of learning to drive. Allowing anyone who has never driven a car to get behind the wheel is a risk. Although I have some concerns, my first thought isn’t that he is going to drive off a cliff or cause a major pile-up on the highway. We are taking a risk, but we (and he) are not being reckless. We are careful about the situations in which we let him drive. As his skills and confidence improve, we’ll give him more opportunities. Second, we talk with him about good and bad driving habits. Third, we try our best to model appropriate driving behavior. While none of this guarantees that he won’t have an accident, it does minimize the risks associated with his learning to drive. We also know that he is a responsible kid and we trust him. This doesn’t mean he won’t make mistakes. It does give us confidence that we can handle those mistakes and that they will not be due to reckless behavior.

Having a culture of people who take risks is not a bad thing so long as those people are not reckless. As a leader your job is to give your people the knowledge, tools, and motivation to differentiate the two.

If your first thought is that allowing your people to take risks will lead to chaos and destruction, then either you have the wrong people or they have the wrong leader.

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Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.

Why don’t Navy SEALS have team-building retreats?

I just finished reading Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin. Among the many things that struck me about the book was that, although SEALS have to work as an incredibly well integrated team (and trust one another), they don’t do team-building or trust exercises. At least, they don’t do it the way the rest of us do. They learn team-building and trust by being put into situations in which their success is dependent on those things. That’s enough. Team-building, trust, and communication are not topics or concepts that somehow exist outside of their work. They are the foundation of their work.

About the time I was reading the book, I received a request to lead a team-building workshop for the leadership team of a mid-sized organization. I asked what problem they were trying to solve with the workshop. They said they needed to work better as a team. I asked why. Were they not hitting their targets, unable to deliver to their customers, or getting into some type of trouble? No, everything was working. They just thought it was important for their leadership team to work together more effectively (they were a leadership TEAM after all, why would I even question that they needed team building training?)

I run into this problem a lot. Leaders want their people to work together as a team even though, when you look under the surface, their jobs really don’t require it.

So why is it that the groups needing the most team-building and trust appear to focus on it less (at least explicitly)?

I think it comes down to work. SEALS need teamwork and trust otherwise they die. Most of us don’t. Maybe we’ll suffer some inefficiencies, but in the grand scheme, most organizations aren’t structured in a way that requires or encourages team-building and trust. Many organizations even create environments that discourage it.

Before scheduling your next off-site meeting on team-building or trust, take a step back. Is lack of trust a problem or is it merely a symptom of an organization whose goals, processes, structure, and rewards, don’t require it.

If it’s just a symptom of the environment, you have to first change that environment. Ironically once you increase the level of shared goals and interdependency between your people, you’ll probably see a decrease in the amount of time people spend talking about teamwork and trust as external, discrete topics and instead just start making it happen.

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Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.

It’s time to derail the FYI train

At one time or another, we’ve all climbed aboard the FYI train. You receive an email from your boss. The first line of the email says “FYI”. The next line is the beginning of the forwarded email from his or her boss, it also says “FYI”. The FYIs continue back to the original sender of the email. That’s the FYI train.

Most people think that the FYI train is a good thing. They defend the practice by saying that they are helping to cascade information down into the organization. Passing along information is a good thing. However, passing along information without context isn’t.

The president of a company should have a very different reason for sending along an article to his or her vice presidents than a front line manager should have for sending to his or her team. After all, the vice presidents and front line staff have very different views of the organization, are held accountable for significantly different things, and have been engaging in different conversations with their bosses. So why send the exact same message without any guidance?

The most common excuse for not providing context is time. Most leaders don’t think they have any and typing FYI and hitting send is a quick way to get the task done. But is that really the best use of time? If the leader believes that one part of the article supports a recent decision or conversation, why have everyone else read the entire thing (hoping they’ll figure out the connection)? If the president is expecting a response or recommendation based upon the article doesn’t it save time to spell that out?

The problem is that most leaders associate context with detail. The two are different. You can provide context with very little detail and you can provide a lot of detail without any context.

A simple statement of what the recipient should focus on or do with the forwarded email might be sufficient. In some cases, a broader explanation might be necessary if you are trying to relate the contents of the email to something that is currently happening.

Context is important. It’s true that people don’t have a lot of extra time. However, they really don’t have time for accumulating facts and information that serve no purpose. Nothing should be “for your information” anymore. If something triggers you to forward an email to someone else, pass along that detail.

A little context will go a long way at helping people use their time more effectively and, in the end, will save you the time from having to backtrack and explain why you wanted them to look at the information in the first place.

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Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com