Tag: team leadership

Micromanaging has a bad rap…

A great deal is written on why micromanaging is bad for organizations and teams. I do not disagree.

One thing that is important though, and this is often disregarded in environments where people complain about micromanaging: someone HAS to manage micro!

A different take on micromanaging…

Every team and endeavor that I have ever been involved with has required detailed execution to be successful. Someone on the team has to manage things at the detail level. Whether it is the point person on the project or a designee, it needs to be covered. The saying may go, “the devil is in the details”, but I would contend that excellence is in the details. Organizations that manage well to the detail level present as world-class. Who’s managing the details in your organization?

If you are a team member and responsible for the details, but feel your leader is micromanaging, you may want to look at your own execution. Are you getting things done and moving the ball forward on behalf of your team consistently? Here’s a link to some personal productivity tips that may help you build your capacity in this area.

For team leaders

If you are the team leader, and don’t see details being handled well, check your leadership. Have you delegated the detail role specifically? Is your team overburdened by the amount of details needing coverage? You may need to consider re-focusing your team on the big picture and help achieve a greater victory by tightening things up. Sometimes details get dropped because the team is going in too many directions and sometimes it’s simply a matter of individual team members not understanding their role or expectations.  Training and coaching your team on what you are looking for is a better way to build toward organizational success than letting the details slide and settling for less than excellence.

An illustration

If you pickup that your team may feel you are micromanaging, you may need to look at your strategy. My favorite metaphor for micromanagement is when my children are learning to tie their shoes. As they start to learn, the laces will invariably be weak. I have a choice. Do I bend down, tie them myself, and communicate to my child that they aren’t ready for this detail? Or do I bend down, encourage them, and help them understand how to tie them tighter? Depending on my choice, I may be stuck tying their shoes forever!

Leading Volunteers Well: 3 C’s to Keep Your Team Thriving

Volunteer teams depend on capable leadership to be effective, to thrive rather than survive. In my experience, three keys are valuable to successfully leading volunteers:

leading volunteers

1. Care – you have to care and show it or they’ll know it.

You can’t fake this. If you’re just trying to use people to get things done, they can tell. If you don’t care, you should re-think your role. If you do care, but find yourself too busy to show it or don’t know how, you should work on that.

Most volunteers want to be part of a team when they choose to serve, even if it’s just a team of two. That often includes desiring a connection to you if you brought them in to the team. You either have to be upfront that this isn’t going to happen or figure out how to deliver.

2. Communication – working with volunteers requires good communication skills, both talking and listening.

Volunteers need you to figure out how to connect in conversation with them regarding the tasks ahead. You have to keep in touch as decisions are made which will shape the effort and their involvement. Method is also important here; you have to talk and listen in ways that work for them. Phone, email, text, face to face, social media. What works for you may not be what works for them and it is your job as the leader to either bring them to your preferred method OR to do it their way. Even if it means multiple ways for one team. For a busy leader, this can be especially challenging, but it is important.Don’t forget that communication is two way here. If you’re only announcing and never taking time to listen, it will feel like you don’t care how they feel or what they think. You can lose valuable information if you fail on this one, or worse, lose the volunteer.

3. Coordination – getting and staying organized.

This is a pet peeve for me because some leaders talk about administration like it is a four letter word or like it is all paper pushing (which of course they don’t care for). Leading volunteers requires getting organized, even if you’re not good at that.

coordinating volunteersYou have to help everyone find their place on the team, keep up with who is doing what so you can follow up, and schedule and coordinate team meetings in ways that help the team move forward on purposes and objectives. By the way, you can delegate responsibility for coordinating your team to a capable team member. But you still have to work with them in an organized way for their benefit and for the rest of the team.

P.S. I think these also have impact for leading paid teams. Sometimes you can skimp on some of these with people who get paid, though I don’t recommend it. They are definitely critical for volunteers who receive no compensation because you are generally dependent on their goodwill to keep them.
What would you add here? Have you been on a volunteer team that was led well?

Don’t be the boss everyone likes

I have held managerial responsibility for other people since my first job at 16. I’m pretty sure I haven’t always been great at it. One struggle I have had is always wanting my people to like me. This seems like it would be a good thing but I have discovered several reasons over time why I no longer want to be “the boss everyone likes”.

1. Nothing gets done because the boss holds no one accountable to their commitments. No accountability = no results.

2. Bad news is uncomfortable to deliver and to receive. If you can only say what you think people want to hear, you can’t be honest. No honesty = no trust.

3. No decisions are made because inevitably someone disagrees with someone else. No decisions = perpetual stalemate.

4. No conflict is allowed in meetings when the boss is afraid of hurt feelings. No conflict means there is no healthy exchange of ideas, which generally leads to only mediocre ideas getting presented. Everyone can agree on mediocre. People who want better will leave the organization to find a place where conflict promotes improvement.

I still fight the tendency to fall into these bad habits from time to time, but I clearly recognize that when I choose to prioritize things other than being liked, I am much more effective as a supervisor.

What about you? Ever made these mistakes and suffered the organizational consequences?