Over the years I have seen many leaders become their own obstacles. Primarily because they feel they must be at the center of every decision and every move a team makes. We refer to this action as micromanagement and shows an unhealthy relationship with trust. Here are five tips on positioning yourself in a supportive manner and still lead your teams.
- Empower your teams to make decisions: Autonomy is something teams hardly ever see in their workplaces. It is mainly because a lack of trust exists from leadership. If you aim to support your teams it begins with trusting their judgements, empowering them to harness their innovation power and ensuring they have the resources needed to execute their plans for success. Dictating every move will cause more distrust from all parties and never lead to true leadership.
- Delegation is a superpower, use it wisely: Delegation given with clarity can produce extraordinary results. Once you delegate, trust that the hands you have placed the task in will know the “How” to achieve great results. This creates an ownership environment while you provide encouragement and supportive oversight. You want your teams to have the flexibility to be creative and bring ingenuity to the results while fostering a leadership development opportunity for all.
- Guide through vision, not the details: Vision and direction is your role and when clearly communicated the team can come up with the details. Who has ever enjoyed the leader that is lurking at every decision turn? None that I am aware. Dictating the details is the reason why we experience unhealthy work environments and high turnover. Give your teams the needed guidance, step back, encourage them and watch success happen.
- Create a leadership growth environment: A leader that cannot create another leader has limited themselves. Leadership requires for you to identify leadership potential in others and provide opportunities for them to lead. You must encourage these individuals to take on increased responsibility, while mentoring them through the decision-making process, and helping them develop their leadership skills. When you create other leaders, you also bolster the succession plan of your company.
- Focus on guiding and not controlling: Guidance through thoughtful feedback will develop an individual more than a controlling process. You are responsible as a leader to create and foster an environment of learning and continuous improvement, while allowing your team to oversee their own work. You hired these individuals because you saw they had the needed skills to complete the tasks ahead. Let them do what they were hired to do and stay out of their way until they ask for your assistance, encouragement, or resources.
Leadership is not easy but by implementing these five tips into your day-to-day leadership you will see a drastic improvement in how you lead, the environment you lead in and the people you are privileged to lead. Keep learning, improving and building future leaders that you can be proud of.
