3 Ways Great Leaders Hold Themselves Back
Are you getting in your own way? You might be
shooting yourself in the foot if you're guilty of these three things.
Leadership is tough, and often
confusing. To use two metaphors that frankly shouldn't be seen on the same page
together, being a leader often feels like you're the only one driving northward
in a southbound lane; or that you've suddenly found yourself alone, paddling a
canoe through snaking river rapids. In fog. At night.
It's difficult enough to lead, even
at the best of times. The information leaders receive is imperfect and rarely
timely, the resources they have at hand are usually insufficient for the challenge
ahead. And in the heat of execution, communications are often garbled,
imprecise, or ambiguous.
So it's distressing to watch when a
leader makes their already highly stressful and complicated job close to
impossible by adding self-imposed-- albeit subconscious-- constraints on their
ability to lead well. And surprisingly, leaders do precisely that, all the
time.
In my work as an executive coach,
one of the first things I have to ascertain are the ways in which a leader is
making their job even more difficult, simply by getting in their own way. The
ways in which this happens are manifold, of course, but three of them recur so
often as to make them a useful starting point for your own self-analysis:
1.
Bringing hidden presuppositions to important decisions. I see it all the time: a team of key executives get together
to make a decision about an important issue or initiative, and the discussion
is free, open, honest and engaged.
Pretty good, huh? What else could
you reasonably expect?
Well, here's the kicker: the
discussion, great as it might be, only covered about 20 percent of the
waterfront. Because of the presuppositions of one or more of the leaders
(usually based on their personal history, experiences and preferences, some or
all of which may or may not be relevant to the matter under discussion) a whole
bunch of possible solutions or actions never even reached the table.
Presuppositions are slippery things.
By their nature they are almost always held subconsciously (which means we
don't recognize the need to take them into account). They're usually deeply
felt. Most damagingly, their relevance to a specific subject matter is rarely
challenged.
Try this: next time you have an
important issue under consideration, take five minutes to reflect and write
down all the presuppositions you're carrying in your head regarding that
decision. Don't edit your thoughts, don't justify or defend them. Bring them
with you to the meeting, and air them with your colleagues. You'll almost
certainly have a much deeper, richer and effective discussion as a result.
2.
Planning based on people rather than roles. The new strategy should include $10 million in new sales
targets, but you know your sales manager doesn't have what it takes to get you
$10 million in new sales.
The next version of your product
really should be two pounds lighter, but you know your head of product design
doesn't have what it takes to deliver that.
I see leaders hobble their
businesses all the time because they make strategic decisions based on what
their team can deliver, rather than what the market is demanding and what their
business should be delivering in response.
If you have people in roles that
aren't capable of delivering what that role should, your first priority is to
upskill, coach, mentor or hire that skill into your organization. Not to lower
your strategic goals and settle for what the existing team can deliver for you.
Yes, I know-- glib, and easy for me
to say. But here's the thing: your competitors aren't beating you because they
caught a lucky break. They're beating you because they have better people.
Because they took the time to work on their team, and didn't compromise their
strategy.
3.
Welding delegation to trust. Trust
is a good thing. Trust builds loyalty and welds a bond of valuable sweat equity
between the trust-er and the trust-ee.
Trust also makes leaders lazy and
teams weak. Why? Because it develops in the leader a default reaction when
something important needs done--give it to the trusted colleague.
And a few months later, the trusted
colleague is overworked, resented by others on the team and the leader has no
greater bond of trust with the team as a whole than they started with.
The next time you find yourself
turning to "old reliable" to get that vital task done, remember this.
You're subconsciously abdicating one of the most important tasks of leadership:
The hard work involved in building and spreading trust in your team as a whole.
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