Changing the way you see the world is not a sign of weakness.
Category: leadership
Do it for yourself
In the parenting journey, there comes a time when you realize you have to give your kids control. It happens quite early, to be honest. It’s when they start to go out play with other kids by themselves, without adult’s supervision.
You have to start give them control, even gradually. And be there to help them handle the consequences of the choices they make. Sure, you do that because you want them to grow as independent, resilient human beings. But you do that also for a very egoistic reason: you simply do not have the energy and time to deal with all the questions they have, to asses all the situations they come to you with, to fix all the problems they face.
In the leadership journey, you will find something similar. If you feel overwhelmed, if you find yourself wondering whether your team can do anything without your input, if you want everything under your own supervision. It’s time to give away control.
If not for your team, do it for yourself.
The benefit will be immediate.
The more, the less
The more people are asked to give opinions on a project, the more urgent it is and the less important it is.
The more people are cc’ed in an email thread, the more urgent it is and the less important it is.
The more reviews and approvals a piece of work needs, the more urgent it is and the less important it is.
The more involvement in a project from upper management and executive team, the more urgent it is and the less important it is.
The more a decision is changed (in a short span of time), the more urgent it is and the less important it is.
Urgent is about fear, uncertainty, stress, distraction, pretense.
Important is about strategy, focus, long-term, doing, control.
When something is important, set the stage and clear the way. If you are doing your job right, somebody will own it and see to it till the final step.
Digest
If you lead a team, you typically have 30-minute (minimum) weekly meetings where you do most of the talking and then go around the room.
Why not trying a weekly digest instead?
You send it out once a week.
You share key decisions from management and executive team.
You highlight important messages (from internal communication systems) that are relevant to your team and that might have been missed.
You update on your main focus for the week and praise people’s achievement from the previous week (you should be able to get that from a project management tool).
You add a personal touch, a story from your weekend, something you have learned, a practice you are developing.
Would that be a time saver?
Failure as learning
Share and celebrate your successes. And share and celebrate your failures too.
This is even more important when you are a leader. People learn from failures, more than they learn from successes. Failures make you more relatable, they help alleviating the pressure, and they allow others to prevent missteps, traps, biases. Indeed, sharing the stories of your failures is one of the greatest gifts you can give your team.
If you aim at owning your story, you ought to own your failures as well.
People pay more attention to, engage in more thinking about, and retain a more elaborate memory of negative as compared to positive events.
Bleadow et al., Learning From Others’ Failures
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