What Lance Armstrong and Your Employees Have in Common

If you follow professional cycling, or sports, or just the culture of celebrity in general, you probably know Tyler Hamilton alleged on 60 Minutes that he saw Lance Armstrong use performance enhancing drugs.
60 Minutes also reported that George Hincapie, a teammate for all seven of Lance's Tour de France victories and one of the most respected figures in the sport, testified to a grand jury about Armstrong's doping.

Lance and his team continue to deny he doped and have even set up a website devoted to refuting allegations made by Hamilton, Floyd Landis, 60 Minutes, and others.

Did Lance dope? Who knows. I certainly don't, and I really don't care. Not because I love Lance or hate Lance (is there a middle ground anymore?) but because it has no impact on me either way.

But the Lance "story" is a great allegory for the way we can treat employees.

Consider:

• Lance won the most important cycling event in the world seven times. He's helped raise approximately $400 million for cancer research, and helped to pass a $1 billion bond effort in Texas to fund cancer research.
• He beat cancer and inspired countless thousands of cancer sufferers, their families, and their friends.
• He also may have cheated, and lied about cheating, and publicly trashed the reputations of people who were actually telling the truth.

But what the above absolutely does make him is human: Just like me, just like you, just like your employees.

When an employee makes a mistake -- especially a major mistake -- it's easy to forever view them through the lens of that mistake. When an otherwise solid employee consistently struggles in one performance area, it's easy to view them through the lens of that weakness.

I know I have. A press operator once made what turned out to be a $120,000 error. Others should have caught the mistake, but he bore ultimate responsibility. In every other regard he was an outstanding employee with a twenty-year record of outstanding performance. Yet whenever I saw him I not only thought about that mistake but it may have affected the way I treated him. I like to think not, but I can't be certain.

Like your employees, Lance is the sum of all his parts. If his cycling accomplishments are tainted, what cannot be argued is he was one of the most talented athletes on the planet. If the basis of his fundraising and cancer efforts are tainted, what cannot be argued is he helped raise more money and inspired more people than almost anyone involved in the fight against cancer.

I don't know if Lance doped. I do know that if I look at Lance through just one lens -- hero, doper, activist, cheater, philanthropist, liar -- I miss the rest of him. Ultimately, though, how I look at him doesn't matter.

If you look at your employees through just one performance lens you miss the rest of them -- and you mismanage the rest of them, too.

That matters a lot.

Related:

• The Worst Question Your Employees Can Ask
• You're Not a Great Leader Unless You Pass the Big Issue Test
• 8 Things You Should Never Say to Employees