Ask How They Are Before Why It's Late: Robert Wagnon on Leadership

Nov 12, 2013

6 min read

Updated: Oct 29

When a project stalls, the reflex question is why isn't this happening. Robert Wagnon, CEO and chairman of Republic State Mortgage, wants leaders to ask a different question first. His napkin reads, "Most people are fighting a heroic battle we know nothing about." The person who missed the deadline may be dealing with a child who is failing out of school, a marriage that might be breaking up, or a voice in their own head saying the job has outgrown them. Every established owner leads through others, so this matters. Ask how someone is before you ask about the work, and remarkable people step up. Skip that step, and they start hiding problems from you. Robert is open that he forgets this when he is hungry, angry, lonely or tired. His answer is to own it the next day and start again.

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 12 with Robert Wagnon.

Why asking about the deadline first can hurt your team

Robert is also a scoutmaster to a troop of 77 scouts. Many of them are leading other people for the first time. They say what they want to accomplish, they put a team together, and at the first meeting it isn't happening. They get frustrated. Someone isn't doing their part.

He sees the same pattern in managers, in emerging leaders and in himself. Being focused on a target is a gift. Sometimes that gift shows up as tunnel vision, and the first words out of our mouth are why isn't this happening. That question may serve a tactical mission. It can also harm what Robert calls a strategic life of significance.

If you remember that the person in front of you is fighting a battle you can't see, the order changes. Why it isn't happening might come seventh or eighth on the list. The first thing you say is closer to this. "Tell me what's going on with you."

Most companies say people are their most valuable resource. Robert's point is that the saying is rarely at the front of our minds when we are working through a to-do list. He ties it to an idea from the Seven Habits book. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

What is a leader's first job?

Robert borrows a military metaphor. There isn't a general or an admiral who doesn't know that the first mission is to care for the troops. If they are healthy and well trained, they will accomplish the mission.

Checking on the target first is a tactical mistake. It may help you over the next 10 minutes, 10 days, maybe three weeks. But a life of significance is built on relationships, and those reach far beyond any short-term number. If you serve people in the battle going on inside them, he believes 99.9% of them will step up and serve you in return.

He isn't dismissing planning, huddles or measurable targets. Leaders like us figured out how to get our own work done. Now we are called to work through others and develop other leaders. If you have done the work of identifying, recruiting and retaining remarkable people, even they will hit a hard stretch at some point. Your job then is to serve that person so they can help you get where you are going. He puts it this way. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you have to take everyone with you.

What happens when a leader forgets to ask

Robert's personal assistant has a servant's heart. She sees the world through the lens of what the other person needs. A couple of years ago, that thoughtful attention began to slip. He showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time, felt embarrassed in front of an audience, and came back demanding to know why his calendar was a mess.

Then he learned she had received a serious diagnosis and had not yet found her footing to tell him. He believes she held back because she had sensed his agitation. It re-centered his compass. He had forgotten his own sentence in the heat of the moment.

Her battle was a large one. Most are more ordinary, and they are everywhere. A fight with a spouse. A child with a learning disability. An internal dialogue that says this job has outgrown me. Robert's view is that the leader who steps in, closes the door and asks how someone is doing will keep a remarkable team around them for an entire career. The leader who doesn't teaches people to hide problems. Once your team hides problems from you, they multiply.

How to manage your own heroic battle as a leader

Robert knows these things intellectually and still forgets them. Catch him hungry, angry, lonely, tired or worn out, and he says he can tear someone's head off. So he has a practice for the day after. He goes back to the team, says he was not his best self yesterday, and makes amends. Remarkable people, he says, have enormous capacity for forgiveness.

He teaches three words. Try, fail, adjust. If he is never failing, he isn't growing. Failure doesn't bother him as long as the team can figure out what went wrong and fix it quickly.

He also watches his own inner voice. He jokes that he can sit at a stoplight and make himself wealthy or broke depending on what he tells himself. When that voice isn't serving him, he writes down plain, true things. I'm a good friend. My children are healthy. He doesn't believe the brain can hold gratitude and negative self-talk at the same time, and he calls it a practice because sometimes he has to write the words before he feels them.

I do something similar. Ten minutes of thinking great thoughts, ten of reading them and ten of writing them. Some days it feels like going through the motions. Robert's answer is that sometimes you go through the motion to develop the feeling.

How to build a people-first culture with new managers

Robert notices a pattern in frontline managers. The first time they have direct reports, they worry about their own performance, so they overweight the tactical targets. They are almost set up to forget the needs of their people.

The fix sits with the leaders above them. Middle management and the executive team have to say clearly that people are the number one resource. They should expect new managers to set aggressive targets, to fail, and to analyze and adjust. A missed number is recoverable, because another quarter follows. What isn't acceptable is a missed number whose carnage is human capital, a manager who abandons the people they lead.

Leadership, in Robert's words, is service to something other than yourself. You can hit the numbers and get the check, and that still isn't leadership. Did you bring everyone with you? Did everyone understand where you were going? And did they believe they could come see you?

That phrase about the carnage of human capital is the one I keep coming back to. We can't sacrifice our people to reach an outcome. A business that does more than any of us can do alone only gets there through its people working as a team.

How to apply this in your business this week

Pick one conversation and change its order.

Before your next status check with each direct report, close the door and ask how they are. Listen before you ask about the work.
Write down what you are telling yourself on your worst day this week, then write three plain things you are grateful for.
If you lost your temper with someone, go back, name it and ask to start again.
Tell your newer managers that a missed number can be recovered and a damaged team is much harder to rebuild.
Ask yourself whether your people believe they can bring you a problem. If you aren't sure, that is your answer.