Harvard Business Review

THOUGH ELIOT has been successful in his career, his present troubles expose fault lines that threaten his future. There is a growing consensus among researchers that people learn leadership by carefully reflecting on experience and thoughtfully setting goals for how to proceed. The ability to absorb experience’s lessons in this way is known as learning agility. Eliot doesn’t yet possess this ability. He reacts rather than reflects, and his actions

A significant challenge for Eliot is that the people best able to help him are either below him (subordinates) or above him (the board) in the hierarchy, and any communication across a power differential is difficult. Eliot would have to take certain steps to ensure that he received useful advice.

For one thing, Amory Essler can no longer be his confidant, given their respective roles. All Eliot’s interactions with board members

Confident people ask for help all
the time. They call it getting input.

are based mostly on his anxiety. Whether he keeps or loses his current job as chief executive, his long-term issue is developing learning agility.

But that will require Eliot to admit his weaknesses, which he, like many leaders, isn’t comfortable doing. He speaks openly to few people: his friend on the board, his squash opponent, and his wife. They prove to be of little help. He avoids seeking advice from colleagues who might be able to offer him some real guidance. He imagines that they would react negatively, thinking less of him and perhaps feeling nervous about the company’s prospects. But in fact the responses would depend to a great extent on Eliot’s mind-set and behavior as he sought help.

If he went to his colleagues or directors thinking that he was failing and embarrassed to be seeking guidance, he would indeed engender negative feelings. But people who don’t see anything shameful about asking for help tend not to create anxiety in others. Confident people ask for help all the time. They call it getting input.

Eliot might feel greater confidence if he could focus more on the business and less on himself. By keeping the company and its needs at the center of his thinking, he’d reduce the “ego cost” of appearing to be less than all-knowing. This mind-set shift is the hallmark of a true leader.

(including Amory) should be measured and well considered. Moreover, he should avoid presenting general problems and instead lay out details of the company’s situation and propose specific solutions. He should push for focused reactions to his proposals.

Eliot must deal with two typical employee concerns if he seeks input from subordinates: They worry about how they will look (critical, not team players), and they’re quick to assume that nothing they say will make a difference. To address those concerns, Eliot needs to work hard to create a culture in which input is valued. He should also take pains to show that any advice he receives from employees is given real consideration.

Despite Eliot’s misadventures with coaches, I do think he could benefit from one. To find one who is right for him, he first needs to be clear about why he seeks coaching. I suspect that Amory’s goal was to help prepare Eliot for long-term success, not to help him find someone to solve the company’s immediate business problems. The coach’s role should be to prod Eliot into understanding that he’s not just an individual performer now, but is responsible for leading a collective of many people. He must come to realize that the collective needs him to reach out and get help – not just once or twice but on a continuing basis. It’s no longer appropriate for him to see himself as the rugged, all-powerful individualist.

Susan J. Ashford (sja@ umich.edu) is the associate dean for leadership programming and the executive MBA program and the Michael and Susan Jandernoa Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor.