I think you underestimate the publishing potential of Lydia’s Rule. As stated and illustrated above, it strikes me as being a potent and useful exemplar of Vroom’s Expectancy Theory. Along that line, it’s interesting to consider what happens when the expectancies get out of whack. Assuming a leader wanted to apply Lydia’s Rule at work, what happens when:

1. The employee loses confidence in the boss’s intentions; i.e. the employee comes to believe that the real, unspoken rule is “You make me look good, and I’ll make me look good.” If the employee has a significantly shorter time horizon that the boss, this seems likely.

2. The leader fails in his/her role in the company. I wrote about this briefly for the Conference Board Review, referring to the problem as the Failed Leader Fallout. http://www.tcbreview.com/rules-of-engagement-sum09.php.

3. The leader doesn’t have the “juice” to make the employee look good; i.e. doesn’t fail but still doesn’t have the stature to make a difference. I also wrote about this in the above mentioned article, referring to it as The Catch-22.

4. The employee doesn’t want attention from the senior leadership; i.e. there’s enough toxicity and capriciousness in the workplace that they’d rather stay out of the line of fire.

The list could be much longer with some thought, but I bet you could develop Lydia’s Rule into an engaging business book.

Lawrence Kersten, Co-Founder of Despair, Inc.

I’d love to see a world where the statement was inverted, however: “I’ll make you look good, and that will make me look good.”

If the role of leaders in organizations is to mentor, coach, and develop their people, then they should be rewarded for doing so. The individual employee has to work hard and well, of course, but they also need the environment that makes achievement possible. Otherwise, no amount of effort will make anyone look good at all since the system surrounding all of them isn’t designed for success anyway.