Love Me or Fear Me: Pick One

As a leader, would you rather be loved or feared?

We borrow both from Machiavelli and from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, which has a piece contrasting the antipodal approaches of basketball coaches Bobby Knight, the hot-tempered, iron-willed disciplinarian of half-day drills in defensive fundamentals, now at Texas Tech and famously fired from Indiana after a long career for grabbing a student, clutching another player by the neck, and throwing a folding chair across the court in anger at a perceived bad call, with Mike Kryzyweski, a/k/a Coach K, at Duke, who's all about positive reinforcement, warm communication, and caring:  "It's about the heart, it's about family, it's about seeing the good in people."

So which works better?

The short answer is both:  Or, rather, either, since no individual can doppel-gang between the two.  Pick one or the other.

Great, you say; so how do you pick?

Obviously, much depends on the environment in which you're trying to coach lead.   At the head of a law firm partnership, throwing chairs, and the command and control mentality in general, will get you thrown—out.  But to understand your preferred style as a leader means understanding more about yourself, for starters.   How do you stack up on these criteria?

• Do you believe, left to their own devices, people will:
  • get by, slide along, do the minimum, perform only when they're being watched; or
  • perform because they're self-motivated, and have an innate drive to want to do their best?
• Do you think it's more important to establish clear criteria for performance, set formulae, and reward people accordingly?  Or to get obstacles out of people's way and set high goals while maintaining standards?
• Most important, are you flexible (and discerning) enough to respond to the situation in the moment and not apply your own ready-made, comfortable, template to everyone and everything?  This means being astute to the colleague who needs more structure, the one who needs more support, the one who needs more specificity, the one who needs more inspiration.

Above all, it means knowing what  your firm values:  Its culture.  You should be be able to repeat in your sleep what requires utter clarity in hiring and recruiting conversations:  "Don't come here if you're not into teamwork and collaboration."  Or:  "Don't come here if you're not a self-starter; nobody's going to pat you on the back except yourself."

Finally, since Job 1 of a leader is communication, be prepared to use all three of Aristotle's classic elements of rhetoric:

• Logos, or logic, appealing to people's sense of what is rational.
• Pathos, or emotions, tugging on people's heartstrings.  And
• Ethos, or ethics, making an argument based on what's right, true, and inspirational.

Now it's your turn:  Just do it.