From Pleaser to Leader: How Robert Overcame Fake Urgency

As 2023 comes to a wrap, most consider slowing things down for a few days.

Still, I know there must be a few “monsters” out there who will keep their teams overwhelmed and reactive, draining everyone’s energy.

There’s nothing wrong with asking your team to take your urgent requests seriously. But it becomes counterproductive when every other ask is indiscriminately a high priority.

These “fake-urgency” artists are preventing their teams from doing deep work. People are running in all directions and, ultimately, not generating much other than increased stress.

I remember one of them in particular. We’ll call him Robert for the sake of this article.

When I started to assist Robert, he had already developed a disastrous culture of urgency with his team.

Everyone had turned into a firefighter, always needing to be available. Ad hoc “urgent” requests kept absorbing their bandwidth. On top of that, the team had no clear sense of how all these requests contributed to the bigger picture.

They only knew that being busy was considered a sign of high performance without much consideration for actual value creation or impact.

Yet, Robert had great connections with upper levels. So far, he had been relatively good at hiding his lack of strategy behind his “we can do it” attitude in every interaction with the top.

Robert would soon hit the wall, so we worked on the following to initiate a cultural change:

Getting To the Root of the Issue

Robert didn’t fully realize how much harm he was creating and how unsustainable his handling of upper management as a “pleaser” had become.

He had solid potential but didn’t know how to handle these requests while defining and executing a sound strategy with his team.

So, we dug into why Robert acted this way with upper management. Why was he so quick to say yes to all the requests? What prevented him from having a solid strategy for his team? What did he fear the most?

I soon learned that Robert had developed a significant fear of disappointing his superiors, especially when in the heart of a meeting and faced with the need to respond to their inquiries on the spot.

Redefining the Team’s Engagement

As we peeled the onion, it became clear that Robert needed to control his language and build a very different rapport with his team.

As a middle manager, Robert was well-positioned to realize the weight of what leaders say and how they say it. That power and authority was not to be taken lightly. I invited Robert to start with his team and be watchful of the language he was employing. 

We also tackled the following questions:

• • How could he have more involvement from the team in setting goals and priorities?

• • What was to be the playbook for handling urgent requests?

• • How could he empower his team to separate between critical deadlines and other work priorities?

Robert suddenly realized he had let his team depend too much on him to address the day-to-day. They all had lost sight of the bigger picture while he micro-managed and muzzled the team’s collective wisdom. 

It was now time to share with the team the responsibility of qualifying and handling what constituted an urgency or not while letting information flow more freely.

Right Behaviors at all Levels

All this work on the team’s engagement would soon be handy for Robert in his interactions with senior leadership.

He now realized what he had interpreted for a long time as requests were more part of inquisitive conversations to gauge the business. So, Robert started to engage more deeply in discussions with senior leaders instead of being quick to please them.

Planning and language were necessary with the team, but actions were what mattered. So, Robert looked into what behaviors he should reward to help shape everyone’s perception of the new values.

A few questions became top of mind for him so he could highlight and celebrate each time a team member exercised their critical thinking and put any task or request in perspective with the bigger goals to achieve.

There were no awards ceremonies, but Robert made it a daily effort to recognize behaviors that impacted the bottom line most.