Leadership Is Not About You: Bill Treasurer on Opening Doors

Jul 30, 2018

4 min read

Updated: Oct 29

Bill Treasurer's napkin said, "the first law of leadership is it's not about you." Bill has practiced leadership development for over 20 years, coaching executives one on one and working with senior teams. He calls himself a leadership plumber, not a leadership expert, because the work is in the innards, removing the hairballs. The most common mistake he sees in emerging leaders is fixating on what they get from leading. They have sharp elbows of ambition. They chase the next rung, more authority, more responsibility. Some of that is part of the climb. But Bill's point is that leadership was never about the leader. It is about those being led, and helping them become more successful and become leaders too.

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 156 with Bill Treasurer.

Why leaders are door openers

Bill came home from a business trip and his wife told him their son Ian, five years old at the time, had been class leader for the day. Bill gave him a high five and asked what he got to do. Ian said he got to open doors for people.

That became Bill's book, Leaders Open Doors. Leaders have to create opportunities for others. Leave people better off than you found them, and the organization better off than you found it. You still have to get results. But you get them on behalf of others, and that is the sweet spot of leading.

Why leaders get frustrated when people don't walk through

I raised something I notice in leaders. The moment you open a door and the moment someone walks through it are two different events, on two different timelines. We get angry at people for not walking through a door we opened months ago.

Bill agreed. Leaders tend to judge others by their own cadence. Every successful leader he has met is impatient, with a foot further on the throttle than the rest of the organization. That makes sense, because you need results. But getting people through the door takes socialization, training, development and nurturing. Judge them by your own pace and you will be constantly frustrated.

Why growth is an outcome, not a strategy

In planning sessions, Bill hears owners say this year we want to grow. His answer is that growth isn't a strategy. Growth is an outcome. Results are ends. You have to focus on the means, and people are the means. How you treat them, develop them and invest in them.

He points to Stephen Covey's retelling of the goose that laid the golden egg. Demand egg after egg and you strangle the goose, and your own results with it. Attend to the production capability instead. Listen to people's needs, learn their aspirations, train them, remove roadblocks. They will get you the golden eggs.

The way to start is vision. Bill shared an old story. If you want people to build a boat, you don't just lay out the wood and hand them hammers and sails. You first make them long for the water. Change happens best with people, not to people. Involve them in shaping the vision, or at least in carrying it out, and their ownership goes up.

Talk about what gets you up in the morning

Bill sees many leaders manage by negative exception. Ken Blanchard put it as catching people doing things wrong instead of catching them doing things right.

Leaders also like to say what keeps them awake at night. Bill calls this the transmission of anxiety. If I can make you as anxious as me, maybe I can sleep. He suggests the opposite. Talk about the condition you want. Talk about what gets you up in the morning and why you are excited about the future. People will be far more willing to get you the results you want.

How humbling setbacks make better leaders

Bill's next book, A Leadership Kick in the Ass, starts from the idea that we learn leadership best from our mess-ups. He calls them transformational humiliating events. A big blunder makes you question everything you were as a leader and rebuild yourself more honestly. You get humility through humiliation.

That humility anchors confidence. People want a leader who is both confident and humble. All confidence, leaning into arrogance, and nobody wants to follow you. Bill's favorite quote is from Mark Twain. "Good judgment is the result of experience and experience is the result of bad judgment."

He also warns about what success does. We pay leaders more, give them better parking spots and defer to them in meetings. They start to believe they are more important than other people. So every leader needs what Bill calls a chief ego deflator. One person who can call the leader on their own crap and hold up a mirror, and a leader who listens instead of getting defensive.

How to apply this in your business this week

Bill offered one practical exercise. Write this question on a scratch pad. Why do my people deserve me to be a good leader? Of course they do. So what are the reasons? Writing them down gets you out of yourself and shows you whether you are being the leader they need.

Name one door you opened for someone that they haven't walked through yet. What do they still need from you to get there?
Rewrite your growth target as the people investments that would produce it.
In your next team meeting, talk about what gets you up in the morning, not what keeps you awake.
Catch one person doing something right, and tell them.
Ask yourself who your chief ego deflator is. If there isn't one, find one.

Then ask whether you hold the door open long enough for your whole team, or close it too soon.