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Why focusing on
your team is not enough
Most first time leaders tend to
make the same set of mistakes
Among the biggest challenges
people face when making the transition from being a manager to a leader is
developing the right mindset. Most people think becoming a leader is about
the formal authority that comes with being a boss, but many don't realise that
it is also about managing interdependencies. They tend to focus on their
formal role and not their role in managing the many interdependent
relationships that exist in organisations.
Most first time leaders focus only
on managing people who report to them. They look down and manage down, but
fail to look out and inside, and that prevents them from being effective. To
get your job done, it is imperative to also focus on people who are not under
your authority but who are essential to you getting your job done. This
includes your peers and your bosses. If you don't focus on building these
relationships, you will find that you aren't aligned with the organisation,
your team isn't working on the right things and you aren't getting the
resources you need to get the job done.Leadership occurs within a context and
focusing on your team is not enough. If you aren't proactively building and
managing relation ships with your peers, bosses and broader networks you will
not be able to get the job done.
Another common misstep most
managers make as they transition to being a leader is to think that what they
want is control over their teams. What they actually need is commitment.
Formal authority is a very limited source of power and in today's world you
need people to use their judgement at work. This requires them to be
committed to their job and to you, and simply having control over your team
doesn't achieve this.Having control over them is not the source of power you
want to rely on if you want them to use their judgement at work.
Many first time lead ers also tend
to focus on building perfect oneon-one relationships with their subordinates.
They forget that this doesn't help in turning a group into a team. Having a
great one-on-one relationship isn't the same as harnessing the power of the
collective.They fail to think about the culture they want to build and how
they can use it to get the outcomes they desire. In today's business
environment it's important to have a team that's agile and can adapt quickly,
but for that to happen, the culture must be right. Leaders must create a
community of people who can collaborate.
Another thing most leaders take a
long time to get right is learning how to delegate. People often think that
new leaders fail to delegate because they like to micromanage or think they
know it all because they've done it all before. While that's true for some,
the majority of them simply don't know how to make judgement calls about when
and to whom to delegate. They don't know who to trust and as a result often
don't delegate enough.They forget that even if they delegate a task, the
final authority on how to execute it still lies with them. Most new leaders
take time to learn how to delegate and empower their team.
Finally, new leaders often think
that deliver ing on the status quo and meeting deliverables is enough. They
rarely plan for tomorrow. However, the boss expects the leader to go beyond
just maintaining the status quo he should be paying attention to what's
happening around him and making proposals on how to be more effective. He
needs to be a change agent. Most leaders though tend to underestimate just
how much they need to do.They tend to be so overwhelmed by the day-to-day
responsibilities of the job that they fail to plan for the future, often
disappointing their boss.
A final aspect that new leaders
often overlook is managing themselves. You must think about how who you are
impacts how you manage.
(As told to Priyanka Sangani) The author is
a professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of Being the Boss: The 3
Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader
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CDET28AUG15
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