E-tip No. 67 Why do everything yourself?
The first time I ran a company about 10 years ago, I fell into this trap – lock stock and barrel. I had a staff of 12 and yet they seemed to be waiting on me to do things for them, or not do it how I wanted. My excuses (or beliefs) were:
· It’s quicker if I do it!
· I know how to do it!
· Nobody can do it as well as me!
· I don’t have the time to show you right now.
And I was taking on more and more, getting increasingly stressed and my staff just seemed to be hanging around, chatting and being relaxed, whilst I was the total opposite! I realised what I was doing was completely counter-productive.
And after working long days, and sleepless nights I had a revelation. I recruited a marketer who had some great ideas and experience, and I just told them what I wanted and then let them get on with the job, giving them the support and resources they needed. And the revelation? I couldn’t do their job! It was fantastic!
Some managers think that it looks better if they work the long hours, shoulder the responsibility, be stressed, have sleepless nights, with maybe the idea of taking the credit for the team or organisation.
But here’s the thing, the job of a great manager is to do nothing other than get the best out of their team. Give them the resources, direction and support…and just let them get on with it. Allow them to make mistakes, to learn, to do it their way if it works (hint – it often does), and then they’ll love working with you, be loyal, be resourceful, and want to do their best for you and the business.
You know, an individual can manage up to 12-17 people. Beyond this it becomes difficult to give everyone the attention they need. Constant chopping and changing ideas and instructions and interfering just causes confusion and stress – to everyone! Greiner calls this a crisis of leadership and the way forward is growth through direction. At this point the way forward is setting out the direction of the business (the strategy) and putting in a management structure that allows others to do the day-to-day operations. You can then focus on the business of growing the business and being more relaxed.
Today’s experiment
· Ask yourself: Am I stressed, running ragged, surrounded by a team who are not sure what they’re doing or are confused? Do any of the statements above apply to me?
· Ask yourself how would it be if you let them get on with the job, after you’ve set out what you want of them, and provide them with the support, structure, direction and resources to do that?
· And how would it be getting on with the business of growing the business in a relaxed way?
· And if you’re not sure about this, experiment with one person or a team, giving them time to learn, knowing that you can always go back to the previous stressful way if that works better.
Until we meet…
Anthony
©Anthony Davis 2006
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[...] As Anthony Davis says in his “E-tip No. 67 Why do everything yourself?” , really…. Why do you do everything yourself? In many small businesses there is simply a cash flow problem, but even in large corporations there are trends where some members of a team pick up all the responsibility for a job and are the first to be home with serious burn-out. [...]
I often times feel that management isn’t coached to really leverage the skills and knowledge of people on teams. More, I find more often that many managers and team leads still think that the leader is the ’smartest guy/girl’ in the room and should be calling the shots. How do you change this?
Hi
I was reading George Leonards book on Mastery last night and I agree with him – we have to sometimes give up the old to allow the new to come in. That traditionally trained (?) managers (without coaching skills)have to give up on some (not all) of their skills to learn new ones, such as coaching in order to bring out their team. And for many managers, to say ‘I don’t know’ for many consider a sign of weakness, when actually it’s a strength.
And it applies to the team themselves – they need to give up the old way of things to allow new ones to come in.
I’d start small, say with one member of staff, when they ask to their manager something like ‘what do you want me to do about this’ respond with ‘well, what do you suggest?’ to break the pattern, and over time it will grow and shift across the team.
Anthony