Looking in, acting out
When issues arise asking ourselves if we’re the problem can be useful.
After giving it due thought we might be shocked with the answer – discovering we’re the blockage. Not by design, of course. But whether inadvertent or not a blockage is a blockage and something we must clear.
How did we end up here?
It’s a surprisingly easy place to sleepwalk into.
- Maybe we confuse the need to have oversight with the need to control everything. Eventually nothing can happen without our approval. All decisions become ours to make. The system seizes up while our work piles up. Team confidence ebbs away with the diminishing autonomy. People don’t feel trusted. And when the pressure is on we tend to impose more control not less.
- Perhaps we focus our 1-1s with our people on task rather than offering the challenge and support that turbo-charges their development. The gap between what the team could achieve and reality widens.
- We may think we’re imparting knowledge and expertise in the interests of speed. Asking (‘how would you approach it?’) more than telling is the antidote. It encourages new ideas, different and independent thought, a sense of value. Who wouldn’t want to work there?
Understanding when we’re the one getting in the way may come from those brave enough to tell us and us having the courage to listen, hear and make the change.
Yet we don’t need to wait for the prompt. Some honest self-reflection will tell us what we need to know, and do, and how.