Why Kind Leaders Aren’t Here to Make Friends (Challenge #93)

Being both a practicing leader and a leadership nerd, I lurk in a bunch of communities for and about educational leadership. Every So often In between the questions about HR issues or budgeting processes, you see a post from a front line worker trying to make sense of something their boss is or isn’t doing. In the case of the question that inspired this episode, A team member was struggling to establish rapport with a new boss who seemed to approve of the team member’s work, but who was a bit standoffish and remote when the team member would try to connect more closely. This team member figured their new boss might just be more introverted than most people they’d worked with before, but was also afraid that their boss didn’t really like them. And as I read the team member’s final plea for advice to become better friends with their new boss, I had an immediate, slightly visceral reaction. Because just as I believe your team is not your family, I also believe that, to quote a reality show cliché, leaders aren’t here to make friends.

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Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, where every Monday morning I teach you how to heal your school or library in the next ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to advise a growing community of educational leaders who want to build a better world without burning out. 

Kind leaders make the tough decisions without becoming jerks. We plan effective systems that help us get the job done with less money and effort. And we’ve learned that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, any vision becomes possible. To be clear, Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but it’s rarely easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around to learn how to create a legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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So here’s the deal. I am a friendly, caring leader who also tends toward introversion. But more than my occasional need to hide in my office and recharge for an hour after touring a donor or new administrator around the library, I have found that I am a kinder leader if I keep a bit of distance from my team.  First, my job is to make the best decisions possible for my team as a whole, and though the best interests of my department as a whole usually overlap with the interests and desires of the members of that department, sometimes they differ. A little emotional distance helps me more sustainably do my duty—to steer the organization I lead in the direction I think will best achieve our goals.

Think about it for a moment. If you’ve become attached to a team member, it becomes a lot harder to have a performance conversation or drastically change their work duties due to a shift in priorities. Also, if you come to depend on that team member for some sort of emotional validation beyond a cordial working relationship, at best you are unintentionally or deliberately taking advantage of a power dynamic where it is harder for that team member to assert boundaries, and at worst you have essentially given that person leverage over you that may put you at a disadvantage. 

When it comes down to it, your team will be best served if you foster a culture of friendliness, not friendship. But what does it mean to be friendly but not friends, and how do you draw that line? 

I think this is where the organizational model of psychological safety can come in handy. Back a few months ago when I and a small group of charter members met for the inaugural session of the Kind Leadership Guild, I kicked us off with a short lecture on psychological safety, which we then used as a framework to help us co-create the mission and rules of conduct for the Guild. You can learn more about that process in episode ##, or head over to kindleadershipguild.com to read the mission and code of conduct for the guild.  

As I told the Guild in slightly more detail, basically there are four stages of psychological safety, which for our purposes help create more welcoming and friendly relationships in the workplace. Those four stages are Inclusion Safety, Learner safety, Contributor safety, and challenger safety.  Before anything else,  in order to be able to give and receive friendliness in a workplace setting, a team member or leader needs to feel included, and that people are willing to connect with them on a human level. On the surface, this doesn’t take much—just a curiosity about other people, and an openness to their unique ways of being and working. In other words, friendliness. However, a lot of people and teams stumble over this first block, especially when differences and changes may be taking them out of their comfort zone. 

Think of the story of the gregarious team member and their introverted boss that I started this episode with. It can be a struggle for any new leader to feel psychologically safe with their new team. This team member could try to establish some inclusion safety with their new supervisor by making some small talk and asking some innocuous personal questions, while not pushing so much that they make their boss feel like they can’t be their natural, more reserved self.

The second stage of psychological safety is learner safety, and I think this is an especially important one when talking about educational organizations. After all, we can’t grow as individuals or teams without learning, and we can’t learn without making mistakes. A team that practices learner safety encourages experimentation and innovations, and welcomes mistakes as a leading indicator of growth. Giving your team members space to spread their wings is one of the friendliest things you can do for them.

The third stage of psychological safety is contributor safety. People feel more connected to their organizations if they are given the autonomy to make their own mark, and are rewarded and celebrated for doing so. Between you and me, I struggled a bit with this one earlier in my management and leadership roles, as the go-getter tendencies that made me shine as an individual contributor suddenly came off as micromanagement. Fortunately, I had several brave colleagues who told me where I was going astray, and I realized that the friendliest thing I could do is redirect my energies to advocating for them, and generally staying out of their way.

And that feedback is a hallmark of the fourth kind of psychological safety—challenger safety. As I said at the top of this episode, I don’t need team members to be my friends. I DO, however, need them to tell me when they think I’m being an idiot, so I can slow down, evaluate, and either course correct or explain why I’m doing what I’m doing, in order for us to move forward as a trusting, effective team that’s building a better world.

And that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day. A leader shouldn’t have a goal of making friends with their team, and a team member shouldn’t try to make friends with their boss. I know it often happens, and sometimes even happens with no ill effects. However, those friendships should be seen as a pleasant surprise that grows out of a team that has already mastered all four stages of psychological safety. But friendships between leaders and team members should never be your goal, and the more power dynamics are at play, the more carefully those friendships should be handled. 

Which brings me to this week’s challenge. Break out your copy of the next steps checklist, and ask yourself the following question: Is your team’s culture as psychologically safe as it could be? Then use the checklist to clarify any problems that make your team unsafe, identify some possible solutions, make a plan, and rally your team to make your workplace as psychologically safe as possible. Trust me, they’ll appreciate a healthier workplace at least as much as they do their closest friendships.

Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge, and for growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively in your own organization. And if you know someone who might find this episode helpful, hit share in your podcast app or send them over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/93. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.