Great leaders know that their way isn’t always the right way.

Psychology Today

Key points

• Great leaders demonstrate flexibility.
• Part of being flexible is recognizing that your behaviors and habits may not always be best.
• Employees have preferences for how and when they work that are important for leaders to attend to.
• The greater the match between an employee’s work preferences and how they actually get work done, the better.

Have you ever watched someone work and thought, “That’s not the way I would do it”? It’s natural to feel defensive about your own work habits. If you didn’t think they were effective, you probably wouldn’t engage in them. But, in our research, we find that it’s exactly this kind of thinking that gets leaders in trouble. There are many different ways to go about completing the same task or solving the same problem. But leaders often believe that their way is the right way to approach a task or problem, and forget that others may have effective strategies as well.

More than that, different people work differently. That means that a strategy that’s effective for you may be ineffective for someone else. For example, imagine George, who is naturally an early riser, gets up at 5:30 a.m. to start his day. After exercising and eating breakfast, he starts his workday at 7:00 a.m. He prefers to segment his work and life from one another. So, from 7:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., George focuses solely on work. At 3:00 p.m. each day, George closes his laptop to pick up his kids from school and keeps his evening free to spend time with his family. In his view, his success is due to his ability to get a lot of work done early and to really focus on the task at hand when he’s working.

Now, imagine Grace, naturally a night owl, who gets up at 8:30 a.m. to start her day. Engaging in a similar morning routine as George, Grace starts her workday at 10:00 a.m. She prefers to integrate her work and life tasks throughout the day, which means that she tends to extend her workday into the later hours of the night. At 7:00 p.m. each night, she stops working formally but continues to monitor her emails and complete minor work tasks until 9:00 p.m. During that time, she’s also preparing dinner and doing some evening chores. If Grace reports to George, he may view her habits as healthy and productive. He might even advise her to change her schedule to better align with his. Given his success as a leader, he might think it would help Grace to emulate his work habits.

Yet, George’s assumptions are wrong, despite that they align with the assumptions that many leaders hold about their own working styles versus those of others. So what’s the problem with George’s advice? It’s entirely possible that George and Grace are equally productive, despite that they work in totally different ways. George is an early bird chronotype who likes to segment work from life, while Grace is a night owl who likes to integrate these two domains together. Research shows that neither of their approaches is right or wrong. The key is to allow people to work in the way that best suits their natural preferences. When employees have to work in ways that are misaligned with their preferences, they are more likely to become dissatisfied and burnt out.

So, what do great leaders do instead? Great leaders recognize that there are many ways to be productive and that their way is just one of many ways to succeed. Instead of expecting that others will structure their workdays exactly as they do, they allow employees to set their own schedules and to follow their own rhythms. Of course, there are certainly times when employees may need to go against their natural tendencies—for a big client meeting or all-hands call, for example, when scheduling according to each person’s preferences is likely impossible. But for standing meetings or other recurring work blocks in which leaders and employees have more control over timing, leaning into employee preferences for working styles, times, and approaches is useful. For instance, if you are scheduling a standing meeting with a person who is naturally most alert in the morning, but you are a night owl, picking a time in the late morning or early afternoon might work for both of you.

The main point is this: Great leaders are flexible. But part of being flexible is being humble enough to recognize that your way isn’t the only way to achieve success. There are many pathways toward success that employees might follow. Letting them pursue the pathway that best aligns with their productivity patterns can only increase the likelihood that they will thrive.