14 December 2005

Leadership and judging

A major ability for a leader to posses is judging without condemning.
Most people learn throughout life, that being judged is a denouncement of ones personality. They often only have experiences with judging, but most of all condemning, statements. For example, what does the statement: “You have to work smarter.” mean? Or a judgment stated in the form of a question: “Do you know what you are doing?” Or the deathblow condemnation: “Why do you do that?” Often spoken in a tone of voice that makes clear that the question is rhetorical.
The motivation for such condemning behavior by the judge or condemner often is discontent with the overall situation. This discontent however creates a reaction, that creates resistance within the recipient of the reaction. In the end the judge has transported his discontent to the judged. The reaction of the judged is not to ask himself the question: “What has been said?” but just reacts. And the original problem, that needed a judgment, is never solved.
For a leader such behavior will signal the beginning of the end of his leadership. Where the beginning is his recognized, respected leadership and the end is a leadership in name, not respected and without influence.
How can a leader prevent that his judgment become condemnations?
First by looking at his feelings.
What does he feel for the situation he needs to judge? Is he irritated, because it does not function or does not function in the way it should? Is he angry, because the person to be judged does not do, what was asked of him? Is he sad, because the situation will be less effective than possible? Every feeling will create its own reaction, but they will create condemnation if they are not recognized as the basis for the reaction.
Secondly the leader can look at what the recipient of the judgment needs and adjust to that need. This strongly compares to what Blanchard and Hersey mean with situational leadership.
Thirdly the leader can look at how he wants to communicate his judgment. And even there it sometimes can go wrong. Because some people will think, that the used medium is a judgment about their personality.
Special is that a leader who gets to know and understand his feelings and emotions, gets better at understanding others.
But maybe the most important activity of judging is, the guts to admit that you as a leader are only human. So when giving wrong judgments, you are also willing to admit, that you made a mistake and will correct it.

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