As a manager, you can’t be successful if you are always injecting yourself into the tactical decisions being made within your team! This is called micro-management and will demoralize your team members and sooner or later, will drive your best team members out of the organization. Turnover is expensive and makes you less effective as a manager.
So why is it we as managers struggle with this? Why do we keep injecting ourselves into decisions that don’t need our input? Don’t read on if you don’t want to look in a mirror.
One word – fear!
We jump to the conclusion that our assessment of the situation is unique, that only we can solve the problem and that if we don’t provide direction to the team that they will fail. I hate to say this, but if you don’t trust your team to make the tactical decisions, than you’ve hired the wrong people, you’re not mentoring them properly and you’re not providing them a path for success.
Most managers work their way into management by showing success as an individual contributor. When they make the leap into their first leadership position, they continue to think as an individual contributor versus taking responsibility and delivering as a team. Over time, great managers figure out the change and begin to operate differently. Unfortunately, there are some managers that never figure this out and not only harm their own team, but harm the extended team. Ultimately, this can lead to breakdowns that impact your customers.
So, why do we need to break away from the detail? Shouldn’t we ensure that the team is successfully delivering against the active projects? Well, yes, you need to ensure that the team is delivering against active projects and work, but that doesn’t mean you have to manage the blow by blow of every activity underway within the team. Your primary role as a leader of the team is to remove roadblocks before they impact the team and to act as an escalation point when the team hits a roadblock that they are not able to overcome using standard processes and procedures.
Removing roadblocks before they impact the team - say what? Yes, as the leader of your team, you should be looking at the status information being fed to you and looking at patterns that indicate trouble may be on the way and looking for ways to mitigate those issues. This means you have to correlate the information being fed to you and looking out in front of the team. Sometimes this is listening to the risks and issues being identified by the team, sometimes this is seeing a pattern being reported by multiple sources within the team, sometimes this is listening to folks outside the team that will be impacted by the work product. However you receive the information, it is your job to work ahead of the team and resolve the issue so that they can continue to deliver to the department, the overall organization and your customers - internal and external.
Additionally, when they come to you with an issue that can not be resolved within the team, they are looking to you to pave the way forward. You need to reach outside of the standard silos within your organization and outside the organization to find solutions that allow the team to get back on track and deliver. Sometimes that is going to require you to think outside the box and change the parameters - your job is to find a win, win, win situation. A win for the customer - internal or external - that will rely on the end product from your team, a win for the organization by staying on time, under budget and with the necessary quality constraints, and a win for the team by giving the success they seek.
Nobody on your team consciously wakes up in the morning and makes the decision to fail! These folks are working to make their dreams come true, to care for their families and to make a difference. Your job is to give them the opportunity to succeed.
And I’m not saying, you’ll always succeed at removing the roadblocks. But your team needs to at least see you making the effort to help them find success. They want to know that you’re in it with them.
Being a leader of your team is not easy! But the more your stay in the details and forget about what your team really needs from you, the higher the risks are for their failure and ultimately your failure.
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