BIG OR SMALL?: THE LEADER’S CHOICE!

It’s not unusual in our executive coaching to come across comments such as “I’m fed up with his micromanaging!”, “I want to make sure they do it right!”, “I need to make sure my group doesn’t make any mistakes!”, “I’m tired of solving everyone else’s problems!”, “I have to stay on top of them!”, “As the head of this organization, I’m getting exhausted working 24/7!”. The litany of comments like this are endless.

We find that leaders often don’t hold their people ‘Big’. Allowing their staff to tackle the concerns they own and to learn from the consequences of their decisions, using this learning to grow, become even stronger performers and contributors, and as a result more satisfied.

What happens more often than not is that the leaders not only holds themselves ‘Small’, unfortunately they also hold their people ‘Small’. Meaning, they interfere by giving them ’solutions’ to their presenting problems, not allowing them to stumble, fall, get up and try it again until they successfully work it out, allowing them to mature as individuals and professionals.

It’s similar to raising a child. If you insist on ensuring they not run, fall, eat a little dirt, bump their heads, experience life . . . what normal kids do . . . this will only contribute to retarding their growth and development. We’re not talking about letting them get into serious trouble. That’s a given.

Rather, it’s about letting them experience normal day-to-day challenges and allowing them to learn from the consequences of their choices. From these life experiences they mature and grow into healthy, reasonably well balanced adults (god willing).

The same is true for leaders working with their staff. The choice is about either holding people ‘Big’ or holding them ‘Small’. The benefits of the former are clearly obvious once we think about leadership in this way.

Recently a good friend and colleague, Jake Jacobs, and I had a discussion on this very topic. Jake is a leader in the field of organization development, a noted author of cutting edge books on large-scale real-time strategic change and the Principal of The Winds of Change Group out of Marina del Rey, California. We continue having very rich conversations around potential synergies between Jake’s large-scale work and our executive/corporate coaching. You’re invited to listen to our most recent conversation on the subject of leaders holding their people ‘Big’ or ‘Small’. Enjoy!

    Click here to listen to our discussion!

 What’s been your experience on this? What are your insights? How might you leverage your learning? What is it you would like to do with this? We always enjoy getting your thought and feelings. Take care!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm and is filed under 360 Coaching, Business Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Leadership Transition, Organization Development, Personal Coaching, Team & Group Coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.