One of the common problems leaders face, early in their careers is that they think asking for advice or help is a sign of weakness. They are worried that their staff will lose respect for them. I come across this phenomenon often in my leadership development work in life sciences research. I’ll save up the short passge I came across on P.279 in Goleman’s Social Intelligence yesterday evening:
As the head of a high-performing scientific team told me, “I never hire anyone for my lab without them working with us provisionally for a while. Then I ask the other people in the lab their opinions and I defer to them. If the interpersonal chemistry is not good, I don’t want to risk hiring someone – no matter how good they may be otherwise.”