Some leaders can’t give up control or don’t feel comfortable unless they own all the important decisions for the team or organization. Even when they delegate less critical decisions to others, they maintain “veto power” over the decision. If they don’t like the decision, they get involved and change it.
The idea of owning or controlling all the significant decisions is not limited to individual leaders. Senior leadership teams can exert the same control and veto power.
In one well-known organization where the management team controls nearly every call, the senior team is known as “the deciders” by their colleagues throughout the enterprise. It is a vivid label team members use to describe the senior team’s decision-making status. It is not a compliment.
The consequences of a leader or leadership team controlling all major decisions are well-known. Team members feel disenfranchised and disconnected. The inability to influence or make decisions that directly affect them promotes apathy and squashes any desire to innovate, participate, and fully engage. They wait to be told what to do.
Leaders below the decision-maker don’t develop and grow. Because they don’t own decisions, those on the team find their credibility lacking. Their ability to influence and coach others to success depends on that credibility. Without it, they just push down directions and act more as elevated team members than leaders.
One outcome, odd only to the leaders who control the decisions, is that team members throughout the organization begin to “shop” any less important decision they don’t like. They know the senior leader or team will sometimes reverse an unpopular decision. So they plead their case in the hopes they can redirect the decision. The more team members succeed in their efforts to sway decisions they don’t like, the longer the line of people outside the leader’s door.
This is no way to run a railroad.
To be clear, all leaders have decision rights over the key issues and choices they believe impact the long-term success of the enterprise. But the best leaders refrain from applying those decision rights unless they have to.
Instead, they clearly lay out what decisions they own and they push down decisions that are better made by others. Once in the hands of a more junior leader or team, they refuse to get involved, unless the wheels are about to come off. This allows their reports to build their leadership credibility and to develop their leadership talents.
When colleagues line up to shop a decision, they listen. They then suggest to the disgruntled party that they take the issue up with the decision-maker, as they won’t interfere. Leaders who refrain from influencing decisions they don’t own soon see the line of team members who need to speak with them disappear.
More importantly, as they share the responsibilities of leadership with other leaders, they empower them to learn and grow as leaders. This is how good organizations and teams become great.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
