{"id":4408,"date":"2015-02-10T11:53:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T17:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/?p=4408"},"modified":"2015-02-10T11:53:50","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T17:53:50","slug":"why-leaders-must-avoid-the-unilateral-power-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/10\/why-leaders-must-avoid-the-unilateral-power-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Leaders Must Avoid the Unilateral Power Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month I am traveling in Asia with Bill Hybels, who is coaching leaders in 7 different cities. During our stop in Manila, the Philippines, a question was raised during a question and answer forum that prompted Bill to respond with another huge leadership principle.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI know that, as a leader, I need to build consensus. But sometimes I feel like I just need to declare a decision. Is it ever ok to do that?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was a question asked to Bill Hybels at a coaching event this week in Manila, the Philippines.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For some, Bill\u2019s answer was a game-changer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time you make a unilateral leadership power play, you cash in some trust chips.\u201d Bill said with great emphasis.<\/p>\n

Bill went on to unpack the deeper leadership truths.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have positional power and authority, you have the right to simply make the call. You can bypass the messiness of aligning people around a vision, or building consensus and so on. And if you do this consistently you will pay a price.<\/p>\n

And the price you will pay is the erosion of trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was Bill saying that it is never<\/span> appropriate for a leader to simply \u201cmake the call\u201d?<\/p>\n

Not at all. There are those occasions when the leader must step up and simply declare a decision.<\/p>\n

However he was pointing out the leadership truth that you need to be very careful about how often you make a unilateral power play.<\/p>\n

When Bill was making this point, I quickly jotted across my page these 5 problems leaders create when they make a unilateral power play too often.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 <\/strong>Your team will wonder if their contributions matter, or will you simply make the call regardless of their input.<\/strong><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 <\/strong>Your team will begin to doubt their own effectiveness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 <\/strong>You will create unhealthy distance between you and your team.<\/strong><\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 <\/strong>You will create a culture of followers instead of leaders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a05.\u00a0<\/strong>You will slow the pace of productivity. If you have to make all the decisions, you will create a production bottleneck.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leadership requires the ability to make decisions.<\/p>\n

But as Bill reminded these leaders in Manila, a little too much decision-making can get in the way of some big-picture team-building.<\/p>\n

How do you keep from making too many unilateral power plays?<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month I am traveling in Asia with Bill Hybels, who is coaching leaders in 7 different cities. During our stop in Manila, the Philippines, a question was raised during a question and answer forum that prompted Bill to respond with another huge leadership principle. \u201cI know that, as a leader, I need to build…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[769,5,738,478,7,744],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-2","category-discipline2","category-effectiveness-2","category-featured","category-leadership","category-team-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4408"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4414,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4408\/revisions\/4414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}