Leadership experts believe that an effective leader should be open to dissent or differing opinions. Jim Collins, for example, said the following in Good to Great:

“Leadership is about vision – but it is equally important to create a climate where truth is heard and brutal facts are confronted.”

In other words, a good leader is one who will create a workplace environment where employees feel free to disagree, say what they think, or push back on specific ideas or initiatives. Such a practice, it is believed, helps to create an environment of transparency, openness, and trust.

Which sounds great. Right up until the time the leader’s ideas or opinions are actually questioned. As it turns out, there is a bit of difference between talking about disagreement and actually having someone question your decisions. Those in charge often tend to perceive dissent or disagreement as disrespectful. Or argumentative. Or completely inappropriate (“Perhaps you should get more than two years of experience before you start criticizing my decisions!”) More than a few times, I have seen leaders get irritated, even angry, when an employee offers resistance or challenges the boss’s ideas. Even if they have been encouraged to do exactly that.

This doesn’t mean that Collins is off-base. It just means that this idea is a little more difficult than one might suppose. To successfully create an environment where the “brutal facts are confronted” requires much more than a simple edict by the boss (“I want you guys to challenge me!”). It requires a long-term investment in the manager-employee relationship, because people will typically disagree with people they don’t know at all (and don’t care if they see again), or with people whom they feel comfortable offering their own opinions. It takes a strong relationship to feel comfortable enough to offer a conflicting idea, especially if the person you are contradicting is the boss.

“You Can’t Handle the Truth”

A Few Good Men. Great movie. Nicholson’s famous line has been used and re-used in every conceivable part of our society, and it definitely applies to the workplace. Quite often, managers simply can’t handle the truth. There are, in fact, at least three things that can derail this idea of “creat[ing] a climate where truth is heard”: 1) A lack of maturity in the boss, 2) A lack of trust between the boss and employees, and 3) A failure to understand the motives of employees.

First, an immature boss can react completely wrong to an employee who offers a contradictory opinion, and that will be the end of that. Want proof? Suggest to your employees that they need to challenge your thinking. When they do, get irritated. Roll your eyes. Throw out a couple of sarcastic comments to show them who’s boss. Argue your point – hard – without trying to understand their perspectives. It won’t take more than once or twice to shut down any opposition you encounter.

Second, no employee is likely to challenge a boss that is not trusted. A lack of trust is the invisible enemy of a high-performance workplace, and it is often created by little things we fail to pay attention to. Failure to follow-through. Lack of consistency. Poor decision-making. Selfishness. Inadequate communication. In the absence of trust, very few people will venture out onto a limb to disagree with the boss.

Third, in the right environment, people may actually be willing to offer contrary ideas, but the boss still needs to understand the context of the disagreement. Sometimes dissent is simply resistance to needed change. Sometimes dissent is a negative response to new responsibilities. Sometimes dissent may reflect a lack of understanding of the bigger picture. When employees push back against your ideas or current workplace practices, it makes a world of difference to know whether the employee is presenting a plausible alternative or simply lobbying to avoid something he or she doesn’t care to do.

So, it takes a special kind of leader to encourage dissent. A leader who is competent, yet willing to learn. Confident, yet willing to listen. Strong-willed, yet humble. Which, by some coincidence, is exactly the kind of leader employees love to work for. A recent Washington Post article cites research by noted psychologist Robert Hogan with regard to leadership:

“According to Hogan’s research, followers want four things: integrity, confidence, decision-making and clarity. But just as important is what followers don’t want: irritability, moodiness, untrustworthiness, indec­i­sive­­­ness, needless micro-management and excessive authority. They perceive these things as incompetent, and pretty soon the leveling mechanism kicks in and there is a subtle rebellion.”

If you want to benefit from your employees ideas and perspectives, start by creating the right environment. Get to know your people. Set clear expectations. Follow through. Spend more time asking questions than showing them what you know. Something will begin to happen. Once employees perceive you as competent, fair, and willing to listen, you won’t have to ask your people to offer up new ideas – they just will.

Being needed is a good feeling – if you’re talking about personal relationships. But, if you’re the boss, it can create all kinds of problems. Like 14-hour days, and unused vacation, and employee dependency. When the troops can’t do without you life can get pretty complicated, and performance is necessarily going to suffer – either right now, because you have to do everything, or later, because you never developed the talent underneath you to create a smooth succession plan.

Here is a simple test: Can you take a five-day vacation (nine days away from the office, including two weekends) without any contact whatsoever with the office? Do you trust that your team could perform exceptionally well without you? Would it bother you if they did? If you managed to take five days off, would your desk be piled with weeks of work when you returned? Yes, being needed has its drawbacks.

The problems with “being needed” extends to leadership succession as well. Look at Howard Schultz, for example. He left Starbucks, but was forced to return after eight years amid a significant downturn in performance. The late Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, and returned twelve years later after three CEO failures. In 1992, Lee Iacocca stepped down as the CEO of Chrysler and, following years of declining sales and a failed merger with Daimler Benz, he returned in 2005 to reprise his old commercials. “If you can find a better car, buy it,” he urged buyers. Unfortunately, they did. Bankruptcy followed in 2009.

More recently, there is speculation that Bill Gates may return to Microsoft more than a decade after resigning as the company’s CEO. Since his exit, Microsoft’s stock price has taken a beating, and high-profile product offerings have crashed and burned (remember Windows Vista?).

Two Reasons Why They Can’t Do Without You

So, exactly what happens when visionary leaders step out of the picture and their companies falter? I suspect two culprits – a lack of clarity and/or poor people development. When the visionary goes away and the organization stumbles, the leader’s vision is typically not clearly communicated. The leader has a clear vision, but it mostly stays locked away in the confines of his or her imagination. Need to know, and all that. Whether that is an ego problem or simply poor communication is up for interpretation.

At the same time, many visionary leaders also have control issues. Actually, many leaders have control issues – visionary or otherwise – but you get the point. As they seek control of everything, they naturally fail to develop the talent below them, and the company suffers – in the short-term or the long-term, or both. To truly create high-performance, in the short-term and the long-term, requires an emphasis on people development. More importantly, the opportunity to enjoy any kind of work-life balance definitely requires a focus on people development.

The real truth is that many managers need to be needed. They derive much of their own personal worth and self-esteem from being needed. They love to answer questions and solve problems. They live to make decisions, issue orders, and otherwise direct workplace traffic. Promotion to management is simply a validation that they are better than most, and control is the reward for being good at what they do. Unfortunately, whether the motivation is ego or a fear of failure, the results of failing to provide clarity or develop talent in the organization are ultimately the same – the toll on the leaders and/or the organization is punitive.

It is, in fact, just about impossible to find a control freak that manages a high-performance team and enjoys a healthy, satisfying private life. The two just don’t seem to go together. Ultimately, there is burn-out, depression, relationship issues, or health problems.

On the other hand, it is good to feel needed…