Good leaders support their teams and remove obstacles that get in the way of high performance.
They make themselves accessible and available to opine on issues of concern to team members and work hard to provide the resources the team needs to succeed.
On occasion, they step in and get involved with issues and problems that carry high risk or have tentacles that reach across the enterprise.
But some leaders go too far in their support.
They make it a habit of taking ownership over any issue or problem the team struggles with or any new challenge they haven’t experienced before.
They think they are helping, but in reality, what they are doing is behaving parentally. Without meaning to, they rob the team of taking initiative and encourage them to wait for directions or orders.
Micromanagement can take many forms. The hardest one to see is the brand couched in supporting and helping the team. However, when leaders take over the difficult problems confronting a team, they are, unintentionally or not, micromanaging them.
Over time, the consequences can be severe.
Leaders who take too much ownership of their team’s problems are, in reality, encouraging them to stop taking initiative. This makes them overly dependent on the leader and negates their ability to learn how to work through the problems for themselves.
The team’s problem-solving skills not only atrophy, but they also feel less accountable for their work.
Anytime a leader steps in to fix things when they shouldn’t, they undermine the autonomy the team needs to engage and think through the issues on their own.
They soon become order-takers and not fully developed contributors. The passivity they project over difficult issues is highly predictable. They depend on the leader to figure it out, much like a child depends on a parent for security and sustenance.
The most surprising outcome of this pattern is how frustrated many of these leaders become by the inertia and inaction shown by the team, when they are the ones who have created it.
The solution is relatively easy, but it requires time to take effect. Leaders must refrain from stepping in to fix problems or address issues unless they are beyond the team’s scope or ability, or they carry extreme risk.
Slowly, over time, team members left to struggle through their own issues will rediscover the initiative and agency to add the value they should. Their sense of empowerment returns, and they reclaim the team morale they lost or never knew.
Team members almost always possess the ingenuity and resourcefulness to solve their own problems, unless the leader burglarizes their independence by co-opting their responsibility for it.
Good leaders coach. They don’t rescue. That’s how team members develop and grow into team leaders.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
