Let me start this post by making a disclaimer - I'm not anti-leadership book, nor am I anti-personal development. There's a real need for all of us to look for ways to get better at what we do professionally. I believe enough in leadership/management skills that I actually have a training series for managers of people.

The series help managers navigate the most important conversations they have with their direct reports - in their own, authentic voice.

So I'm a believer in the need to get better as a leader/manager of people, but it's the word that I've bolded/italicized above that is key and the subject of this rant. 

Authentic.

As it turns out the appetite of leaders/managers to get better at their craft can be broken down into following groups:

Laggards: Not naturals, not super interested in putting the time and effort forward to become better leaders.

Fast Followers: Good people who want to do good things. They're too busy to chase it on their own, but if you provide the right training and development environment, you'll get ROI on your investment because they'll try, internalize the program and attempt to put new skills to use in the field.

Naturals: You don't even have to do anything. These leaders have the natural DNA, and they're already soaking things up from the world around them to become better leaders - they're reading, tweaking their approach and learning as they go. This accounts for 5% of your manager population, btw.

Enthusiastic Robots: The subject of this post. This leader doesn't have the innate leadership gene of the natural, but they see the need and want to do great things - which is where the problem begins.

That last group often deploys what I'll call Management By Best-Selling Leadership Book. The Robot wants to be a top-tier leader, so much so, that they consume many best sellers on their leadership bookshelf and then the following happens:

1 - They try to install techniques they read about in the aforementioned books without consideration to their personal style, the needs of their team or the existing culture.

2 - They reference the technique in the book, which has the unfortunate outcome of telling their team they're doing a hard install of the technique in question.

3 - They do multiple installs in a given year, which gives the team they manage the sense that - you guessed it - the ideas aren't their own, and they install techniques without much consideration of what actually works best for the team. 

4 - At times, they love what they read so much that they actually order copies of the book for their team, especially if that team consists of other managers of people. Hey, look - The five dysfunctions of teams! That means I'm dysfunctional, right? If you order a book a year for your team without much discussion with team of what they actually want or need, you might be The Robot (said in Jeff Foxworthy voice).

The Robot isn't a bad person. He or she has simply taken a mechanical approach to the topic of leadership and failed to customize the technique they first hear of in a book to their personal management style.

Over time, their direct reports grow weary of the approach, which can cause the leaders to look unauthentic and worse yet, have the team snickering behind their back because of it.

The irony is that at least half of the "Robots" in question don't need the crutch. They're good enough to survive and thrive on their own merits. 

If you've recently read a best seller on leadership and you're thinking about doing an install of some of the things you've learned, let me give you some great advice. Talk to the team about what you've read, but take a balanced feedback approach. Tell them what you loved, but contrast what you thought was BS in the method.

Then install what you want to install (new 1-1 format, etc.), but make sure you go back to the team and get feedback about what they think. From there, adjust accordingly and make tweaks quickly.

Install leadership techniques with a healthy dose of pragmatic management, and you'll never be accused of being a Robot.

Or just give your team the book you just read with the quote, "I loved this and can't wait for us to do this," and watch them break into the following dance when they think you aren't watching.