When Leaders Stop Asking

I'm always interested in leadership failure and what it teaches us. There is often a pattern. A leader stops asking questions and that's when things start to go wrong. The news at the moment is full of examples I could draw from but I've decided to look a little further back.

Fred Goodwin didn't build one of the world's largest banks by being incurious. At some point, though, something changed. Goodwin, nicknamed "Fred the Shred" for his aggressive cost-cutting and tyrannical approach to management, discouraged disagreement and challenge. The people around him stopped presenting honest information, because they learned it wasn't welcome. As Lord Turner, then Chair of the Financial Standards Authority, said in his organisation's 450 page report into the reasons for the bank's collapse

underlying deficiencies in RBS management, governance and culture which made it prone to make poor decisions

He stopped being curious about what was actually happening inside his own organisation. Nobody was asking the difficult questions, and Goodwin certainly wasn't. When RBS collapsed in 2008, it took billions of pounds and thousands of jobs with it and its failure was a key element of the financial crisis that we're still paying the price for all these years later. No one has been properly held to account even if it is now clear that a leadership that had stopped wanting to know the truth was a key factor.

Kodak's is a different and sadder tale. The company's engineers actually invented the first digital camera prototype back in 1975. Their curiosity led Kodak to being way ahead of its time but the then leadership were completely confident that they were in the film business, and wanted the company to remain in the film business. They failed to ask what kind of business they might need to be in and by the time the question became unavoidable, it was too late.

What connects these two stories of corporate failure isn't just incompetence, it's incompetence which comes from a lack of curiosity.

It can be actively dangerous when a leader stops being curious about the people they are responsible for. Not curious about what they're experiencing, what they're worried about, what they're seeing within their teams or customer feedback. When a leader relies on not knowing, whether that's a conscious choice or an unconscious desire to remain comfortable, they have abandoned one of the most important aspects of their role. You cannot hold people to account if you haven't first asked what's actually going on. And if you're not asking, what are you protecting yourself from?

The bosses I have seen do this well, and I have been lucky enough to work alongside some of them, are relentlessly, sometimes annoyingly, curious. They ask questions that make you think and they create conditions where honest information can travel upwards without being punished. They want to know what's truly going on. And then they act on what they find out.

That is leadership.

What am I reading? 📚

As someone who's managed to sustain a daily yoga practice, 10,000 steps a day and various other irritatingly worthy activities, I'm not sure I need any more Atomic Habits but it's an interesting read on how to break bad habits and replace them with improvements, and how habit tracking helps.

What am I watching? 👀

In difficult moments at work long ago I sometimes had cause to ask “is this the right room for an argument?” in an attempt to ease conflict with humour.

I’m not sure people would get the reference these days but I saw this Monty Python sketch again the other day and smiled to myself.

What am I listening to?👂

Linger by the Cranberries came on in a cafe I was in this week. RIP Dolores and her beautiful voice.

Joy-giving things 😍

My neighbour's lilac is putting on a fine display for eyes and nose at the moment during the beautiful spring weather we're enjoying here in Birmingham.

Have a great weekend and hope you manage to get out and about wherever you are.

Lucy x

This weekly newsletter is created by Lucy Caldicott. You can find more about my work at ChangeOut.org.

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