I have a pet peeve about leadership. Actually lots.
But, this one is especially strong.
I have a pet peeve against controlling leadership.
I hate it. It’s so counter-productive to progress. It holds the team back from reaching it’s full potential. It stifles leaders. It never builds healthy teams.
And, the fact is if I allowed myself I could easily be a controlling leader. In fact, command is a “strength” of mine, according to Strengths Finders assessment. It can quickly become a weakness.
So, I discipline myself against controlling leadership.
I delegate.
I purposively bite my tongue.
I allow people to do things differently from the way I would do them.
I don’t micromanage.
I yield to others on my team.
And, when we remove controlling leadership it empowers people.
It means people take initiative.
They make decisions without me.
They proceed on their own.
But, that can create problems for the team.
It often causes miscommunication.
It can lead to fragmentation of the team.
It frequently brings frustration.
People lead. That’s no surprise. It’s what they’ve been empowered to do. But, many times they lead in different directions. Sometimes they lead too quickly. Often they lead into their own agendas — even outside the direction of the rest of the team.
And, the only way to keep that from happening is to be a controlling leader.
So, we have to learn to live in the tension.
We have to get better at keeping others informed. As leaders, we have to keep the vision in front of us and keep directing the team towards it, without controlling. We have to be better leaders.
It’s a constant challenge.
It’s even messy at times. But, it’s best.
Ron, I could not disagree with you more.
The problems you cite result from the leader not listening to employees and/or not responding to their needs respectfully their satisfaction or better even if it means telling them why they cannot have what they say they want. Top-down command and control always fails to create a highly motivated, highly committed, fully engaged workforce of Superstars who love to come to work and are over 300% more productive than if poorly engaged by command and control. The opposite will succeed in spades if done properly.
And that was the pony of my post. See the ending. Better leaders. Thanks.