It’s not too busy, it’s ego

Running courses with people from a cross section of organisations for nearly 20 years gives us a special lens with which to view a company culture. As part of a course, people are required to register on a web-based portal, and answer 4 simple questions. In all, it takes less than 10 minutes. There’s a trend which happens on almost every course concerning the likelihood that a person will pre-register for the course, with the correlation being how senior the person is in the organisation. So have a think, what happens to the likelihood someone will spend 10 minutes registering for the course as their rank increases? You nailed it, the likelihood drops like a stone.

Now the normal response can range from a sincere apology to a snarky “I’m much too busy”, with the bulk of the responses sitting within coo-ey of the latter. The thing is, everyone is flat out busy! So if everyone is busy, why do only the lower ranks log on and register? Maybe it’s consequences…?

OK so the title of this article suggests that these higher ups are just being egomaniacs, which may be true in some instances, but the real issue is that of impact. When higher ranked members of a course cohort routinely do their homework and contribute energetically to the training sessions, the scores and capability of all the attendees increases. Conversely when they don’t contribute, and don’t lead in the room, well you can imagine, it’s not good - this is a vintage downstream-impact blind spot for many people in leadership positions. By not considering how their behaviour impacts the people around them, they impact the effectiveness of a course negatively, and not just by a little bit. The lack of any consequences for the leaders is exposing them to the blind spot. If their boss was there, and had done the homework and registered, would they be chipping in a bit more…?