Get Out of Your Own Way – Lead Less

I cannot drive this home enough:

The biggest linchpin in your business is you.

Ouch!

It’s true.

Many times, your great leadership means great removal of, well, you. 

It took me a few years, but now I realize that as the leader of my company I had become the linchpin in my business. 

I want you to ask yourself if you’ve become the linchpin. It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to monitor everything, but that’s incredibly counterproductive. When you are the one controlling the decisions, production stops. Your employees have to wait to hear back from you. Not only do you have to halt the flow of what you’re doing, but it’s also likely you won’t make the most informed decision that serves your company, team, or customers best. 

Empowering your employees with autonomy in their roles and providing them the license to make larger decisions is imperative in your business. As leaders, we can be somewhat removed from the day to day interaction with customers and may not have the best gauge of the overall temperature. We may not make the best decisions for each thing that comes up considering that the employees are the ones who are on the front line. They are who implement the systems you’ve created to make your company work efficiently. You hired them for a reason.

If you hire the right people, you’ll trust them to understand the community you serve, how to serve them well, communicate effectively with them, and time that communication far better than you may.

You can’t be reluctant to delegate. If you are, you have to look at if it’s a “you” thing, or a “them” thing. 

If you’re concerned about entrusting big projects to your employees, I have some suggestions:

Mission alignment: First, make your mission clear. This can’t be a generalized statement either. For instance, our mission here is to “Eradicate Entrepreneurial poverty”. It’s a mouthful, but there’s also no question about what we want to do. If we said, “Help small business owners”, is our mission statement, it would leave room for interpretation. Help with what? Be sure to make your mission clear. Another important aspect here is to understand what your employee’s personal missions are. Ask what your teams’ professional and personal goals are. Then try to align the work and compensation so that your employees are even more jazzed about supporting the company mission. It’s a win win.

Role alignment: If you read the blog you’ve seen this before, but it’s for good reason. Everyone is good at something. If you find an employee who is dedicated to the mission, but has a skillset that can add value to your company, create a role for them or tweak their role to better suit them.Yes, work will offer challenges, but you when your team feels like they fit, their sense of belonging, creativity, and work ethic combines into one big productive ball of fire.

Reciprocity: Great loyalty is born out of reciprocity. When you, as a leader, instill your trust in your team, more than likely they will work to continue to earn it. And, they will offer their dedication and trust in you in return. 

Lead like a human: I cannot stress it enough. You are a human leading humans. It’s not about the headcount and the budget. Allow for flaws. You have them. Allow for mistakes. You make them. Allow for learning within your business. You still are. It’s so important that while running a business, you acknowledge that the quest for perfection can be a stick in the wheel (and horrible for morale). When you give yourself and your employees grace, beautiful things begin to happen. I see it in my office. Folks are less anxious about messing up. And ironically, there is less messing up these days, and more laughter and employee satisfaction. 

Remember: empower your employees with some license to make decisions for your business. They will make you proud.You’ve got this.

-Mike

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