Are You Unknowingly Setting Your Team Up For Failure
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Are You Unknowingly Setting Your Team Up For Failure?
Does this sound familiar? A team member freaks out when a problem comes up and they rely on you to fix it. See this question that came up recently from a client.
Issue from Client:
"I am on a critical call when one of my employees starts calling. I let the call go to voicemail so that I can fully focus on the person on the critical call. The employee calls back again 2 minutes later. This time I send a text asking if I can call them back later. They respond by texting me the problem. Someone is in front of them looking for something, and the person handling it is away at lunch. They want to know what to do.
How do I get them to think for themselves instead of relying on me as a fire fighter? I am so frustrated with this. This is getting in the way of me leaving on time to be with my family, and managing my own work load."
Rachel’s take for all leaders facing this challenge:
First of all, good job! Your team knows when things get tough, you are someone they can rely on. They trust you and know they can count on you to help them. The challenge here is that they have learned to rely solely on you, and stopped thinking through the issue themselves.
If you are like my client, you are a compassionate leader who really cares about your employees. You want to show them that no job is too small and you are in the trenches rolling up your sleeves with them. The challenge in this scenario is you may find yourself falling behind on critical projects, or being so immersed in the weeds you cannot see from the aerial view required of you to be successful in a leadership role.
There is a story about a man and a butterfly I want to share with you to consider as we discuss helping versus leading.
The Story of the Man and the Butterfly – Author Unknown.
A man found a cocoon hanging on a small bush.
As he watched a small opening appeared in the cocoon.
Inside was a butterfly trying to get out.
He sat there and watched the butterfly for hours as it struggled and struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole that it had made in the cocoon.
Then the butterfly stopped, as if it was stuck, as if it couldn’t get out and it couldn’t go any further.
Then the man decided to help the butterfly out.
He took a pair of scissors and snipped off some of the cocoon making the opening much bigger.
The butterfly then emerged easily, but it was not as it should be.
It had a swollen body and small shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch it, expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the body, though this never happened.
The butterfly then spent the rest of its life crawling around with shriveled wings and it was never able to fly.
What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the small hole in the cocoon and the struggle was required in the butterfly’s development. In order to get through this opening the butterfly must face the struggle that was nature’s way of forcing the fluid from the swollen body into its wings so that the wings could then unfold and enable the butterfly for flight.
It is true that you have experienced many things, and can likely make it easier on your employees. My question to you is what is your goal? Do you want to be the leader they can rely on to get things done for them? Or, do you want to be the leader that they can rely on to help them develop for success?
Quick easy steps to encouraging your team to be more independent:
Ask open ended questions
Instead of shooting down answers that you feel are wrong, ask questions to help them review the potential outcomes of their options
Encourage them in trying something, even if it is not your way
Support them when they fail - Ask questions in review to help them analyze what happened and decipher where they could do something differently in the future
Set boundaries - Do not take the call just because they are in the fire drill; sometimes being unavailable can be the best thing
Article Written By Rachel Carey, Leadership Coach, People Strategist, and Speaker at Emerging Lotus Coaching
© Rachel Carey-McElwaney and www.emerginglotuscoaching.com, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rachel Carey-McElwaney and www.emerginglotuscoaching.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.