Why Good Leaders Lose Great Teams

Alan Mulally is considered by many to be one of the best leaders of the past century. But that wasn't always the case.

Before Alan Mulally saved Ford Motor Company — and, with it, arguably the American auto industry — he lost his best engineer.

This was decades earlier, at Boeing. Alan had risen to young-star status the way many of us do: alone, and fast. So the team handed him someone to manage. And manage, he did.

Alan managed the way he thought managers were supposed to — feedback, then more feedback, round after round on a single assignment. After the fourteenth round, the engineer stopped him. Not to argue the notes. To resign. "Before you give me the ... fifteenth... round of feedback, I need to tell you that I'm quitting."

Alan was gobsmacked. He thought they were having a great time. But the engineer was experiencing things a bit differently.

"Everyone here does command and control, Alan, but that's not who you are. You're a really neat person who cares. You'd be more effective if you just be you."

I've thought about that exit a lot since Alan told me the story because it names something my research kept turning up we assume people leave for advancement and money, but that's wrong. They leave when the relationship with their boss doesn't align with how they want to be seen.

For the past seven years I've run a global workforce engagement study — nearly 10,000 responses across 113 countries, representing every possible industry and every possible demographic. Only 36.7% rank pay as the most important factor in their happiness at work. What actually holds people is consonance: the alignment between what they do and who they are, resting on four things they want far more of than they have — Calling, Connection, Contribution, Control. Miss even one and you don't have a satisfied employee. You have a resignation that hasn't been written yet.

Alan's engineer had already written his.

You're Not as Good as a Leader as You Think

Now, I hear you. Through the email lines and the internet tubes, I hear you saying, "But, I'm a good leader. I've done the training. I'm reading newsletters like this. I get good results. So I won't lose my best people."

I'm sorry to tell you, but you are wrong. Maybe not about being a good leader. But about why being a good leader is enough.

Obviously, you don't need to read this newsletter to know that bad people lose good people. So, in looking through the data, I decided to look at people who self-reported that they work for a leader they respect, a "good leader." You may be just as shocked as I was to find that the evidence was overwhelmingly clear: Good leaders lose good people too, and at a rate that is the same as bad leaders. What predicts whether someone stays isn't how competent the boss looks — it's whether the person feels known. When the relationship is real, 53% of people do their best work. When the leader is "good" but that relationship isn't there, it falls to 21%... the same level as the people who say they work for a bad leader.

Gulp.

By every technical measure, Alan was a good manager. Fourteen rounds of feedback is attention. It just wasn't the kind that makes anyone feel seen.

So, What Do the Best Leaders Do Instead?

What Alan did with that failure is the part worth stealing. He didn't tighten his system. He went back to the principles his parents raised him on — the purpose of life is to love and be loved; to serve is to live; seek to understand before you seek to be understood; it's nice to be important but more important to be nice; working together is the way to create a lot of good, and so forth — and slowly built a way of leading around them. Twenty years later, by the time he reached Ford, it had a name, Working Together, and it fit on a single sheet of paper. It's what let him walk into the famous Ford Thunderbird Room, look at a team that had been coached to report everything was going swimmingly while the company bled $17 billion a year, and make it safe to finally show him a little red.

That's what being known does. It's also, precisely, what his engineer had asked him for two decades too early.

So the practical translation, for anyone leading people right now: stop auditing for liked and start auditing for known. "Are you happy here?" gets you noise. "Which of the four Cs of Calling, Connection, Contribution, and Control feels thinnest for you right now?" gets you the truth in about thirty seconds — while there's still time to do something with it.

Because Alan's engineer wasn't wrong, and he wasn't difficult. He was early. And Alan spent the next twenty years making sure the next one wouldn't have to leave to be heard.

Let's Work Together

I bring research-backed insights, compelling storytelling, and actionable strategies to organizations, teams, and leaders worldwide, helping everyone bring the very best version of themselves to work every single day. Together, we can sold the $8.8 trillion dollar problem that is disillusionment, burnout, and disengagement.

​Read more about my research here, and how we can work together to increase belonging, productivity, and happiness for you and your team at work.