Are you a correction fluid or a travel agent? That was one of the self-awareness questions I do ask leaders in my workshops. Recently, I was asked to relate the concept of a leader being a correction fluid or a travel agent to the act of leading people and organizations.
In my long journey of learning, speaking, coaching, and developing leaders, I have seen different categories of leaders. In the academic world, we have used approaches to classify leaders as democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire, strategic, transactional, transformation, coach to mention a few. Relationships with people and attitude to results can also be used to classify leaders. Someone who does not know you well enough but demands results from you is a boss. He is high on his focus on performance and low is his focus on you beyond the performance metric. Some leaders focus on relationships to the detriment of performance. A leader is one who can create a balance by using the knowledge of his or her staff to bring out the best in them in the interest of his or her organization.
Back to the question. Are you a correction fluid or a travel agent? Being a correction fluid or a travel agent is two of the attributes I have noticed in leaders who are retired but still occupy leadership positions. You know what a correction fluid does. Correction fluid is a white fluid applied to papers to mask error. It functions less where there is no error and where there are errors for the fluid to do its work. The description of the correction fluid is exactly the behaviour of some leaders especially in structured organisations where innovation is low, and staff are confined to ‘business as usual. Leaders with correction fluid syndrome sit at a position and rather than providing directions are busy identifying inconsequential errors or creating one from their opaque opinions. Let me give an example.
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A young analyst is suggesting a process improvement initiative that would save cost, increase turnaround time and improve brand acceptance. A correction fluid leader will not see the immediate need for the change. He or she will be preoccupied with the temporary disruption in the process. The lack of long-term views or benefits is a major problem for correction-fluid leaders. They will do everything humanly possible to decline the initiative and seat in their comfort zones approving transactions or communication on the existing process. A major process improvement is perceived as a disruption of what is working.
Do not be a leader with no deep understanding of what affects your result and your team. If you do, you will fall into the trap of being either a travel agent or a correction-fluid leader
Another major characteristic of correction-fluid leaders is a lack of experience versatility. They have spent donkey years on a particular job function or in the same organisation without a second world-a view of what is possible or obtainable given change in trends-technology, human behaviour or environmental. They seat in-office day in and out correction initiatives without developing any. It is out of context to think correcting errors is bad. No. Leaders are expected to fine-tune the initiative of their subordinates and make it work for the organisation. However, a correction fluid leader is bereaved of any initiative yet he or she is a showstopper for progressive ideas. There are two types of correction-fluid leaders.
The type A correction-fluid leader acknowledges his or her limitation in birthing innovative ideas and as such encourages people around to bring in quality suggestions. He takes ownership of good ideas and gives credit when necessary. To this set of leaders, emails and responses from their team determine how and what they use their days for. They are not fighting against innovation and in most cases; they cannot be easily identified as a correction-fluid leader. They possess the right attitude to support and reward the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The second type of correction-fluid leaders sees nothing good in innovation. They are the old school mind-set who look down on younger colleagues and feel threatened. The corrections they made are with an intent to kill any good initiative. They speak loudly from their past experience dominating experience without any strategic value to support new ideas. They appeared as paranoid for success but only to protect their interest. They are in competition with their subordinates who are hired to support their role. Type B correction-fluid leaders are dangerous. They are leaders with followers’ mentality and require a lot of paradigm shifts to change.
I am not discouraging leaders from improving on innovation but don’t regress your team in the name of adding value with actual value additions.
The next is the leaders who are travel-agent in nature. Travel agents can buy you a travel ticket to anywhere in the world, mostly to places they have never been to or never with an intention to visit. Some leaders are travel agents in the way they approach projects and the execution of work or strategy. In execution management, it is hard to make quality input if you have not learnt enough or be part of the walk-through process. It takes a deep understanding gained by actual doing or latent conceptual insight to make a possible change to a process.
Travel-agent leaders often demand what they have not done or what they know nothing about from their subordinates with no effort to do independent research with the aim of complimenting others. A typical example is in the sales organisation. A sales leader who has never sold a billion worth of his or her company’s products nor has a deep understanding of the markets will also push their subordinates aggressively to do what they have never done. Such leaders do not understand the common difficulties in reaching the milestone sales figure. They will always underestimate the work required and fail to provide adequate support to their employees.
I use the concept of the travel agent and correction fluid to teach leaders the need to be proactively involved in the tripod of result-oriented leadership. To succeed in achieving results, leaders must know the people through which the results are to be achieved. In strictly leadership terms, leaders are not responsible for generating results. Leaders are responsible for people that will achieve the result. Therefore, a deep understanding of people around you. Your people’s strengths are opportunities for you and their weaknesses are threats for you in the process of achieving the set target. The simple and effective logic is for a leader to maximise the opportunity (strengths) and minimise the threats (weakness) in their teams. There is no leader without his or her team. People make the team and the leader. Understanding your team will reduce the correction-fluid and travel agent syndrome in leaders.
The second and the third pillars in the tripod are the processes and products or services your organisation rendered. I do always tell process leaders, never to change a process until they gain a full and in-depth understanding of the process. Your functionality as an effective leader will be limited by your understanding of your process and products or services. The twin element of products or services and the internal process for delivering value are essential to harnessing the potential in your team. Therefore, do not be a leader with no deep understanding of what affects your result and your team. If you do, you will fall into the trap of being either a travel agent or a correction-fluid leader who in a real sense adds little direction to his or her team. In the long run, the effect of being a correction-fluid or travel-agent leader is the low level of engagement of the team members and a major reason to quit for a better team.
