When we are offered a leadership position, we usually see the perks that come along with that position. The title, the salary, the respect that we attribute to both. It is not bad for us to consider those things, and they are true, but those things are held with reins tied to a wilder horse—the illusion of control and responsibility for other people’s lives and work, so consider leadership, and your role in it, carefully.
We have spent many minutes and words in this blog reviewing the dangers in bad business leadership, but we haven’t spent perhaps as much time reviewing the dangers of good business leadership. Specifically, the assumption that comes with good leadership that you know better about how to solve a problem than your colleagues do, just because your individual work has granted you a title or a salary that is ranked higher than theirs by some metric.
It is only recently that I realized that I was committing some of these leadership errors and needed to redirect. When an employee or a client brought me a problem, I would try to solve it for them. It’s a habit of those of us who enjoy problem-solving and box-checking and “helping people” by our nature. I want to help, therefore, I’ll give you my opinion of what you should do/how you should handle a situation. Often, this is framed with a lighter touch, such as, “If I were in your situation, I would do x, y, z.” What I realized was that I was trying, in a non-hostile and hopefully caring way, to pull them to my solutions and my answers, and by doing that, I was insinuating that I knew better than they did how to solve their problem.
In coaching, we work from a framework of viewing our clients as fully whole, resourceful, and capable, all by themselves. They don’t need me to solve their problem for them, they already know intuitively and using their own problem-solving skills, how to move forward. What they may need is space to process those things, to be asked questions that they had not yet thought of, to be met with kindness and curiosity and time and space to walk through that problem-solving process themselves to get to the answer waiting for them on the other side. So instead of trying to help by problem-solving and taking them to my way of finding the solution, what I needed to do instead was to give those clients or employees space to figure it out themselves, and express my confidence in their ability to figure it out.
And such is the inherent tricky invitation of leadership. To think that because we have earned the title or we’ve checked the boxes, that we know better and can control the outcomes to our own plan or strategic goal by simply directing others to do what we “know” is best. Sure, we can do that, and many times, it works—our experience and intuition does count for something. And sure, some of the best leadership is a thoughtful and considered leader instructing the team on how to move forward in a tight situation. (We all thrive when a good leader is steering the ship, setting the course, and holding the hard things!)
But it is also wisdom and good leadership to know that control is an illusion, and not a mechanism to get a problem solved. A solution or goal should be one that has many contributions from a team of people who have different perspectives and backgrounds and can share their own problem-solving strengths and knowledge to get the team or company to higher ground.
Sharing the problem-solving responsibility will enable you and your team to benefit from the shared wisdom and experiences present in all of your people. You’ll be surprised where you end up, but I do know that it will absolutely feel much richer, much more connected, and much less controlling than if you solved the problem by yourself. Isn’t it a relief to know that we don’t have to solve everything by ourselves? We’re part of a team! Act like it!