As a growing SME (small and medium sized enterprise), we spend a lot of time searching for, and hiring, smart people to join the team. However, a few years ago, I learnt if we don’t use their smarts, they quit, which gives us a retention problem. Or worse they “quit and stay”, which gives us a moral problem.
As the owner of a business growing 20 per cent year-on-year over the last five years, learning how to fully utilise the skills, talents and potential of the workforce has been critical. It’s not something I’d ever thought about until I read ‘Multipliers’ by Liz Wiseman.
I discovered that I was accidentally shutting down the smarts of the people on my team. This was not because I was being a horrible tyrant, but because I was overly helpful. Stepping in to rescue situations when I saw team members struggle, staying involved in projects that really didn’t need my input, being too generous with ideas on how we could improve, change, grow.
I had all the right intentions — support my team to deliver. But these subtle diminishing behaviours eat away at people’s confidence, or build dependencies on you the leader. They also signal an underlying assumption that your team won’t figure things out without you.
Learning to let go has been one of the toughest leadership lessons I’ve implemented, and it’s a constant battle. The desire, passion and interest to problem solve and fix things, coupled with a genuine interest in all the moving parts of our business, means it’s a conscious decision daily to let people be smart.
However, the rewards are incredible nine times out of ten. You see individuals and teams excel, without you, often delivering much better solutions. The energy, determination and desire to succeed increases and you can almost hear people thinking harder.
Problems get solved faster because there is no leadership bottleneck; individuals take accountability and ownership for projects so that you no longer need to chase; ideas begin to flow rather than be instigated by you. Does it always work perfectly?
No, but the positive outweighs the 10 per cent of the time that it doesn’t work out and where, perhaps, you are disappointed with the results.
As an entrepreneur, I’ve made many mistakes, but when I let go of me having the moratorium on mistake making, I also unleased capability in others.
Your leaders, in particular, need to feel safe to innovate, change or to try something new. If they are afraid of the consequences if something goes wrong, they will play it safe, keep their heads down and deliver to expectations, but nothing more.
Creating a culture where you talk about your own mistakes and openly extract the intelligence from what went wrong, and rapidly learning for next time is crucial. That doesn’t mean everyone has the permission to fail at everything, but more the realisation that the company has your back if it all goes wrong.
I also realised I was sometimes a blocker to individuals applying their strengths. Identifying and sharing everyone in biz-group’s native genius was a powerful experience. This highlights personal capability and taps into intrinsic motivation. You then need finds opportunities for these core skills to be used in the business.
Funny enough, some of these skills mirrored my own and I found I needed to step out of the way and let others shine at the very things I also liked doing. This doesn’t mean we can abdicate as owners of the business. It’s critical to stay engaged ... just work at a different level. Contribute through strategic thinking, by all means contribute to critical projects, and even lead some. But don’t do it all.
When you are needed to help others in a project, try to step in, coach and guide and then step out, so the project team crosses the finish line by themselves.
Why do all of this? If you want to remain a small business, with your fingers in every pie and tight control on what happens day to day, then ignore the last 600 words. However, if you want to grow a business beyond yourself, take vacations without the need to be on your phone constantly and sleep at night knowing you’ve shifted some of the burden of thinking to others in the team. Learning to let go is crucial.
I believe biz-group is only successful because I had these accidental diminishing traits in the early days, and I was prepared to roll up my sleeves and do every job. The incredible growth over the last five years, however, is because of the smart people we hired and the conscious decision to let them be smart.
— The writer is a member and past president of the Entrepreneurs Organisation.
