For Better Team Performance, Upgrade the Golden Rule to Platinum

The Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” – occurs in many forms across influential writings dating back well over two millennia. Kids pick it up from parents, teachers, or religion and it serves as the foundation of a morality that works well on childhood playgrounds. Unfortunately, playground ethics do not suffice as the tools a leader needs to best develop individuals and nurture high-performing teams.

With the Golden Rule, what happens when another person doesn't like to be treated the way the leader wants to be treated? There's a better paradigm that shifts the center of the worldview away from the leader and onto the team member. Call it the Platinum Rule: Treat others as they want to be treated. It takes more work and understanding of the people around you and isn't always perfect, but if you can pull it off, the results can be light years better.

It's time for an upgrade. Leaders must understand the individual needs of their team members and be willing to adapt to meet them to deliver exceptional individual and collective results. Leave the Golden Rule on the playground where it belongs.

It’s Not About You

A Golden Rule devotee is unlikely to belittle, harass, or lash out in anger at the people around them. These leaders will seek to create a relatively harmonious environment where people can accomplish their tasks without fear. It's a recipe for creating an environment of pleasant, if banal, mediocrity.

Utilizing the Golden Rule as a guiding principle in adulthood primarily works to mitigate negative outcomes in individual relationships. However, it centers the leader and their perception of what is good for others at the heart of decision-making; as a style, it can be paternalistic at best and at worst, catastrophic.

Consider the way people like to be rewarded. Some people want monetary benefits, some want time off. Some want public accolades, others prefer a quiet "thank you." If the leader’s preferences and those of their personnel are mismatched they may rely on ineffective incentives, embarrass their team members or demotivate an engaged individual all because the action wasn't centered on the way those people wanted to be treated. This principle can apply to the way we learn, the way we take feedback, and virtually every other aspect of leadership.

Advancing Inclusion

The Platinum Rule is a key component of the individualized consideration that makes up the transformational leadership model. When a leader moves themselves from the center of the equation, a world of possibility that isn't one-size-fits-all opens up.

In this excerpt from our upcoming book Forging Queer Leaders: How the LGBTQIA+ Community Creates Impact from Adversity, Liz Cavallaro and I touch on how upgrading the rule from gold to platinum creates a culture of inclusion:

Think about how perceptions shift when we treat others the way they want to be treated instead of the way we’d want to be treated. This is the upgrade from the ‘Golden Rule’ to the ‘Platinum Rule’. Treating others the way we’d like to be treated is like a reflex. It takes no effort but doesn’t unlock the full potential of those around us. Treating folks the way they want to be treated takes work, it requires active engagement to listen and ask questions. Applying the Platinum Rule is essential to inclusion. Kimberly Morris put it this way: “There is strength in differences... the glue that holds it all together is treating someone like you value you them.”?Even people working on diversity sometimes forget this.

I was a panelist during ‘Charm School,’ a class for newly promoted generals and civilian executives in the Air Force, to teach about engaging with minority groups. One general asked a question about the best way to engage with someone having negative experiences based around their identity. Another panelist recommended providing them with dignity and respect and to treat them the way the general would want to be treated.

I had to interject and suggested that that approach could be harmful. The other panelist was taken aback, but after a bit of an explanation had an epiphany. Perhaps this general was someone who wanted to be pushed and challenged at every opportunity by her leadership, but the struggling individual wanted a supportive word or an ear to listen. The only way to know was to ask. Armed with that information, a leader can treat the individual the way they wanted to be treated. If leaders treat everyone the same – even if that’s the way they prefer to be treated – they are explicitly saying to people that they don’t see them for who they are. They fail to achieve inclusion.

Creating inclusive, other-centered environments is hard work, but the payoff is enormous. Importantly, inclusion enhances retention; it makes people want to ???????? and grow with an organization, including the military. If you feel like an outsider in your organization, you're likely to be quickly looking for a new job. Inclusion is a key cultural requirement for organizations to keep and develop people into the leaders they need.

Putting Platinum into Practice

Leaders who see others as they truly are and modify their own behavior to provide what their followers need will watch their organizational performance transform. They create environments that are inherently supportive of team and individual development. Under the Platinum Rule, people are motivated to reach beyond the “good enough” solution and pursue excellence.

If your team, company, or organization is happy with minimizing negative outcomes or content with pleasant mediocrity, enjoy it while it lasts. Someone out there will be growing, building, and striving to outcompete you.

There are two approaches to implementing the Platinum Rule into leadership. The active method requires directly asking questions of team members such as:

• What is your preferred learning style?
• How do you want to be recognized for success?
• What motivates you to go the extra mile?

The passive method requires the leader's insight and emotional intelligence. The leader must examine the reactions and behaviors of team members in responses to victories and defeats. An astute leader will find congruent reactions, as well as counterintuitive responses. It could occur when calling out people for success in front of the team and watching one shrink in upon themselves while another beams with pride. Perhaps it's bringing donuts to share at a meeting and catching a sigh from one person while another dives in and shares their thanks. A great leader files these reactions away and modifies their future behavior.

In the Journal of Character and Leadership Development, Lieutenant General (Ret) Christopher Miller wrote a series of questions leaders should consider as they evaluate their inclusion efforts. Most of these questions can also be applied to see if the leader is following the Platinum Rule or centering their decision making around themselves.

Leaders of character can gauge how inclusive they and their organizations are by asking some simple questions every day:

• Do I really listen to my people, and respect what they say whether or not I agree?
• Do I do so without prejudging their inputs and work based on a pre-existing expectation?
• Do I model, and see, indications of consistent respect between peers, and between leaders and followers?
• Do I allow disrespect to exist without correcting it?
• Are there in- and out-groups?
• Do I solicit, mentor, recognize and reward excellence and collaborative effort, and do I reject self-centered or prejudiced conduct whenever it becomes apparent?

Changing perspectives away from how you’d like to be treated is challenging. Even the best leaders will occasionally fail, it's human. It's so easy to put ourselves, our nation, or our planet at the center of the universe despite evidence to the contrary. Just ask Galileo! A leader must keep examining their behavior and striving to cultivate an other-centered focus and apply the Platinum Rule. When leaders put their teams first, they can tackle the thorniest of problems across individuals, teams, organizations, or borders.

Thank you to Blake Dremann, MBA and Alleria Stanley for their reviews and to Mary Carnduff, MD, MBA, FAAOS and Michael Arnone for their insightful editing!