Why you must stop stepping in if you want to step back…
Do you pride yourself on ‘rescuing’ your team?
We’re always told the number one focus for our clients is to step back as leaders. One of the most common frustrations of the same leaders, however, is that they find themselves constantly stepping in to rescue their team.
When we review this and break it down, we can see a pattern.
The leader says they want something, yet at the same time, the actions being taken don’t match the words spoken. Why does this happen?
Stepping in is actually the wrong thing to do if you are committed to developing the leadership within your team. While you may know this intellectually, it’s tricky to do. Especially if you are someone who loves people and who loves to help others.
Stepping in all the time can look like jumping in to fix things, it can be solving the problems of your team for them or another similar behaviour. Whatever it is, this can have a very disruptive and debilitating impact on the morale of your team, and you won’t even know it.
Sam, an employee at an industrial products company, shared with us that the water cooler talk taking place internally was not healthy and you can guess what everyone was talking about: the behaviour of the big boss. He was notorious for jumping in, whichled to the team calling him‘Superman’ behind his back.
They didn’t mean to be disrespectful – the problem was that ‘Superman’ was not giving them the space to figure things out on their own and to gain the confidence to step into the responsibilities they were given. Sam would also complain that he and his colleagues felt left in the dark. That the meetings and town hall gatherings were platitudes and did not reflect the real deal happening inside the business from day-to-day.
The cost of this kind of interplay happening inside your team and your company is that it erodes both morale and trust. Once trust is eroded, people withhold information and fail to contribute in ways that bring the business forward and progress the workload.
This scenario may be one of the biggest nightmares for directors and business leaders who drive teams. While they need their team to step up, the team is afraid to step up, for fear of stepping on toes and jumping in because their boss or overall leader or director typically micromanages everyone.
When a business team is in flow, an organic method occurs. Everyone knows what they are doing, how to do it, when to do it by, who they are doing it with and the part it plays in the overarching plan.
When a business’ team’s members are confident, they go the extra mile and even if they don’t know what to do or get stuck or confused, they ask each other for help, which leads to brainstorming and solutions. They support each other in ways that move the production forward at a pace that everyone can feel proud of. You hired your team so you can grow your business – so you need to let them bring their talents to the table and develop their skills for that growth to occur!
The leaders Intercept work with intellectually know that it is their responsibility to create an environment that enables team members to step up. The one thing that will always destroy this is the leader’s temptation to jump back in when it is not necessary.
If you‘d like to understand how you can create a winning team that steps up without you having to work any harder or sacrifice your own time, to have a team that surprises you with their new ideas and inventive solutions, and a team that goes the extra mile to achieve success, then it’s timeto apply for a Strategy Call with one of our Intercept team members.
During this call, we’ll work with you to understand what’s happening inside your business and determine if our methods are a good fit for your team dynamics.
We look forward to hearing from you and assessing whether we’re a good fit to work together so that we can support you to create a high performing team that allows you to step back, without any need to step in.
Apply here: www.interceptexperience.com
Or email: mail@interceptexperience.com
