Executives are pulled in a lot of different directions, depending on your role at a company. Most executives have employees under them – and they can be direct or indirect reports. Managing these people at times can come in direct conflict to other duties targeted at the executive and this leaves the executive with a choice; either focus on employees or their own specific executive tasks or some balance of the two. 

I believe there are only two types of executives; 1) introverted – those that are focused internally on their tasks and, secondarily, on management of others or 2) Extroverted – executives that are focused on managing first, then on their own specific tasks. Both are hybrids but each have a different primary focus. The introverted executive still must manage employees, but it is secondary to their executive tasks and the extroverted executive still has duties to perform outside of managing people. Both types of duties are required needs of an organization and are important. At times, specific positions may require one over the other. How does an executive balance one need over the other when this conflict exists?

Before answering this question, let’s look at the ramifications of focusing on one over the other. The introverted executive performs critical tasks that, it appears initially, only they can perform. Important, yes, but the impact is that of one single individual. Research shows that high performers can be up to 400% more productive than the average performer (1). I believe this represents the ceiling for high performer production at 400% of the average employee. Not all high performers achieve the 400% productivity increase, and I venture that the average high performer productivity range to average performers is probably 200-300% on average. So, let’s consider the maximum impact to the organization of a multiplicity factor of 250% for the average high performer. This translates into 150% incremental performance impact over the average performer – still significant, in my opinion. Next, we consider the extroverted executive with a focus first on employees. His internal duties are secondary to the team and may be somewhat neglected or under-prioritized. But if he can improve productivity in the average member of his team, then the impact has potential to be exponential. Let’s take an executive with 10 direct and indirect reports. If he can increase their productivity by 15% each, then their incremental impact to the organization is the equivalent of the average high achiever introverted executive. What if they can increase productivity by 40%, then it is a 400% impact. Now imagine if he has 20 people reporting to him, most of which can achieve a 25% improvement – he has already surpassed the maximum productivity of the high achiever at 500% simply because of scale. This exponential growth can easily eclipse the high performer alone. If your goal is to impact the firm in a positive way (and I believe it should be) the extroverted management style provides potentially a much greater impact to the organization. And the more employees under the executive whose efficiency is increased, the larger the impact.

However, there also are other benefits to this extroverted focus on employees – increased employee satisfaction as employees know they are doing a good job; higher retention rates and we know happier employees are more productive. Externally focusing on employees can create an environment of satisfied employees that are challenged and are developing new skills daily because the environment has shifted for employees to one of empowerment over their duties rather than traditional task oriented. My accounting employees are challenged every day to arrive at better ways to do their jobs – they were not purely hired to do manual tasks such as to close the books, complete journal entries or reconcile bank accounts – I hired them because of their ability to think and their judgement – and I want my employees thinking on the job more than performing manual work. These employees are in the best position to improve their jobs and to proactively serve our customer – operations. Challenge your people to think outside of the box to change what they do and how they do it. The world and your organization is changing fast, and we need people to change with it – so make adaptation and change a cornerstone for your team so your finance function evolves continually. Can you imagine a 10% productivity improvement across the board at all levels of an organization? And I believe it can and should be dramatically higher.

The best organizations and employees tell their customers and managers what they need before they realize they need it. Your employees are your most significant asset – why wouldn’t you want to invest in them when the returns are so great. My employees work less for me than I do for them. I believe an executive’s real job is to give each employee what they need to succeed – so we are really working for our employees more than they are working for us.

Quit focusing on noncritical internal duties that don’t push the needle on organizational productivity and commit to serving, leading and developing your team. Propel your team to greatness by becoming an extroverted manager and help your team to serve its customer in the same extroverted manner. I believe you cannot go wrong with the results – my teams are proof of it.