The same trait that helps productive people get things done also tends to get them into trouble
- Productivity at work comes down to taking initiative, according to leadership experts Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman.
- Zenger and Folkman say the most productive employees get started on a project - and ask for forgiveness later.
- If you're really worried about being reprimanded, one alternative is to present your boss with your plan before you forge ahead with it.
Reading through a recent Harvard Business Review article on the traits of super productive people, I was struck by one concept in particular.
According to the authors, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, who are the president and the CEO of leadership consultancy Zenger/Folkman, productive people tend to take initiative. And while that benefits them in the long run, it can cause some problems in the short run.
The authors write that the most productive people don't wait to be told to start a project. They ask for forgiveness rather than permission. "And indeed, their bias for action can get them into trouble sometimes - they might start executing a project before all parties have bought in, say. But their bosses rarely complain, because their results tend to speak for themselves," the authors wrote.
This finding is based on a study the authors ran, in which they assessed the performance of 7,000 people who had been reviewed by their managers, peers, and clients.
I called Zenger and Folkman to learn more about their research, and they said taking initiative is partly about coming to your boss with potential solutions, as opposed to just problems. Folkman said he's heard about too many situations in which an employee comes to a boss and says they encountered a problem while working on a project, so they simply stopped working on the project.
One piece of taking initiative, according to Folkman, is simply having the guts to get started. That tends to be the hardest part of any project, sometimes because we're waiting for the green light from managers or coworkers. And yet, as their research suggests, employees who can overcome their fear of getting shot down or scolded tend to be more effective in the long run.
It can be helpful to present your boss with a proposed solution rather than a question about how to proceed
Speaking with Zenger and Folkman, I thought of Chade-Meng Tan, the former Googler engineer who started the "Search Inside Yourself" program to teach his coworkers about mindfulness and emotional intelligence. (The program has since spread across the globe.)
When I spoke with Tan last year, he told me that the "secret" to his success at Google was to use his own judgment and then "sit back and wait for them to fire me." Tan said of his experience launching SIY: "This is one of those situations where I just do the right thing and then, if it doesn't work out, just ask for forgiveness."
To be sure, that approach won't work for everyone in every workplace. Alison Green, who writes the popular "Ask a Manager" column, said mid-level and senior employees are generally expected to make more decisions independently than junior-level employees.
Yet Green came up with a "middle ground" for those unsure whether to consult their boss. Email your manager and say, "Here's the situation with X. I'm planning to do Y. Please let me know if you'd like me to handle it differently."
That way, your manager has a chance to veto anything outlandish, but you show that you're taking ownership of a project. Win-win.