Nobody Cares If It’s Fair, So Lead With Impact

In this episode, Jill Griffin breaks down why high-performing leaders get overlooked covering:

•  the subtle way leaders argue their point, and why it doesn’t land the way they expect
• how leaders unintentionally weaken their position in high-stakes conversations
•  why leadership credibility is a finite resource
•  how strategic leaders think about when to use it

Transcript

Welcome To The Fairness Problem

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Hey friends, Jill Griffin here, the host of The Career Refresh. And this week we are talking about what comes up very often in my coaching conversations when I'm working within teams and groups, and also came up throughout my work when I myself wasn't a corporate executive. And it is a conversation that I have with leaders that are navigating the complexity of organizations. And it is the fairness conversation. Fair. And that's where my mentor way back when would say, would that be the state fair or the county fair, Jill? Because there ain't no fair in business. It's fairness. You know this conversation. Something has happened, a decision was made. Resources got cut, a raise, a promotion, a bonus was sort of alluded to and maybe even promised, but didn't actually happen. And it wasn't fair. And you're right, it's not fair. But here is what I'm going to tell you with love is nobody cares. Nobody cares. I do not mean that to sound harsh, but nobody cares. And I'm saying this because I have seen so many capable, high-performing leaders spend enormous amounts of energy in making the case to HR, to their boss, their skip level, the leadership team, the ELT, the CEO, and getting nowhere every time. Here's what I know after years of coaching leaders and also my own frontline worker work within corporations and on the front line of strategy. Organizations don't respond to fairness, they respond to business impact. So the question is not, was this fair? The question should be, what's the business case? If you've lost staff or you're in the middle of a re-org and you're expected to deliver the same results, the conversation isn't this isn't fair, we can't get this done, or this isn't fair to my people because they're not going to get their raises. The conversation, then, if we're following through with the restructuring thread, is listen, we restructured in in January. And here is how I'm going to deliver against the resources I have. This is what I'm going to have to deprioritize at this time. These are the things that we're actually not going to deliver right now in Q1 or Q2, right? Setting the stage, but letting them know what you're doing. It's also setting a stage for I know we had to make some tough decisions and I'm on board. And here's what I'm going to do with the resources, both human and financial, that I have. Getting clear and what you can do and what you can't do. And I don't mean can't do from a lens of victim. I mean what you can do thinking strategically. Well, how do I actually approach this situation? What can I get done within the resources? That's the leader. We're not complaining. That is the leader looking to close that gap and to set expectations from a completely different place. There's not an energy of like, you're doing this to me. This isn't fair. And that's where that comes from. It's a sense of disempowerment. The other way of approaching it, of like, oof, okay, I'm gonna take this on the chin. Great. This is what we're doing. This that approach of okay, here's what I can do, that is the place that comes from clarity. And here's the other thing that I think is important to remember about clarity. Clarity commands respect in a way that fairness arguments rarely do. There's a second piece of this, and that is clout and credibility are finite resources. So every time you go to bat for something, every time you push back, you escalate, you make an ask, you're coming at it from a fairness conversation or a squeaky wheel conversation, you are using some of your clout and credibility. And you only have so much of it. So it's not about not doing it. It's really taking the pause and asking yourself, is this in this moment, in this scenario, is this worth fighting for? And is it worth fighting for now? And if the answer is yes, my friend, go for it. I am behind you, make the case, push hard, go to the CEO, go to the top, go to the board, do whatever you need to do. Because sometimes the answer is, yeah, we're gonna push for this. But sometimes the answer is, you know what, over the next six months, I'm gonna need to use my clout and credibility differently. And I'm gonna need to think through what else is coming down the pipeline that I need to be thinking about. And maybe I'm gonna pause on this and work within what I have, right? Because leadership, when you understand that, like this is a hard leadership skill to walk this line. And sometimes you have to take the answer that you're given. Again, I'm not talking about anything unethical or immoral or illegal. We're not talking about any of those things. Those, my friends, I will be behind you, go and push. We're talking about the nuances of re-orgs or restructuring or promises broken or um resources being re needed to be reallocated because when we, when someone looked across the house, they decided that this other department or this other need was more important than the need that you were originally given to oversee and achieve. So we need you to be a team player. There's also a concept about first team, and it's really thinking across you amongst your peers, you're all leading in different areas. What is best for the first team? And that's a horizontal approach, versus thinking about it like in this vertical approach where I'm the marketing team, I'm the finance team, I'm the sales team, right? Because then you're fighting against each other. But when you're looking at things horizontally, you're deciding what is best for everyone who's being affected at this level. That is what we wanted me to do. That is where you want to be taking your leadership skills. We want to deliver well against it. And you want to think about saving your clout for when the moment can actually make a change. If you've just gone through a re-org or you're looking for your next round of funding and you don't necessarily have the budget right now for raises or the things that you were promised or want to do for your team, this might not be the best time. Again, only you know this. This is where you hire a coach, you work with a mentor, you work with a senior leader or a sponsor internally, and you figure out how to go about this. But I want you to remember that that constant squeaky wheel starts to lose the room. And the leader who chooses carefully, who really thinks about is this the battle I want to go after? The one who knows when to hold, when to fold them, to quote our friend Kenny Rogers, right? Knowing when to push, that is the person who often gets heard. And even if the answer isn't yes right now, it maybe is yes next month or yes quarter, because we know that we're using your resources wisely and you're not the complainer, and you're thinking about the impact to everyone and the impact to the business. This is strategy. So the next time you're in a situation that feels incredibly unfair, I'm going to sympathize and empathize with you. But I want you to pause and really think about when you're leading inside complex organizations or complex, even if it's a small business, there's still complexity because there's finite resources. What does this actually look like? What is the business case we're pushing? And how do I want to spend my credibility? Asking yourself those two questions is going to help you show up differently both at work and the various conversations. And that's where change starts to become possible. That's the work, friends. All right. This spring, I am launching what I am calling Next Era Leader. It is an intimate group coaching program for women. Sorry, fellas, you know I love you, but right now this is for women. We will do something for the men later this year. This is a leadership group around expanding your ability to think clearly, especially under pressure, making decisions in the complexity and leading without absorbing everything around you. It is a small curated group of women in a room. It'll be a virtual room, but it is a small curated group, six to eight women, and also really thinking through the level of high-level thinking in the room really matters. And that's why we're also keeping it tight and strategic. So men continue to, you know, reach out to me. We'll do the one-on-one work together, but this cohort is for women. There are details in the show notes. There are also details on my website. All right. As always, I want to hear from you. So email me at hello at JillGriffincoaching.com. And until next time, embrace possibility. Be intentional, be smart with that credibility and that clout. And always, always, always be kind. All right. I'll see you soon.