Leadership Competency 4: Pushes decisions down
Donald Rumsfeld, who served as a US Congressman as well as US Secretary of State and Presidential Chief of Staff said, "Don't be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it." Very wise advice to develop a talented team. Be that leader who hands off the baton to your direct reports and watches them flourish.
Most of us start as specialists and then move gradually into management roles. I was a trader and portfolio manager for nearly ten years before I started managing people. This is pretty much the norm. Because we’re so ingrained in our specialist function, we often have a hard time making the shift to manager. We are so used to doing stuff, specialist type work, that we have a hard time viewing managing a team as real work so we refuse to give our specialist work away.
As you’re building your team, realize that hiring well and developing your team is real work. Getting a group of people to accomplish a job and work together is challenging work. My approach was to train individuals on my team until they could do the job 80% as well as me, then give that job away to them. They more often than not, then proceeded to make up more than the remaining 20% with their own ingenuity and as a result often did a better job and they felt ownership of their process.
The next big challenge after leading a team of specialists is becoming a leader of leaders. Leading leaders was even more challenging for me than learning to manage a team of specialists. As our CEO said to me when I mentioned the challenge of making the change to being a leader of leaders, “you’re not the king anymore”. That was a profound insight for me.
When you lead a team of specialists, you are the person who generally has the answers and knows the details of the work of the team. When you become a leader of leaders, you are more of a coach to the “kings” of the teams in your organization. The leaders on your team are likely to know far more than you about the details of what their team is doing. They are making the key decisions in their teams and owning their processes.
Your role is more about setting desired outcomes for the teams, helping your leaders develop team metrics and dashboards, coaching your leaders on developing their talent, and helping your team of leaders work together to accomplish your organization’s key goals. Also critical is working with peer leaders on your boss’ team to help accomplish your boss’ key organizational goals. As a leader of leaders, you again need to be pushing decisions down to your leaders so they grow in their decision making and so their teams own the processes and outcomes.
To develop your leaders, it’s very important that you have regular one-on-one sessions with them. Weekly or bi-weekly are a good frequency, depending on their work scope and needs. Here are some tips on maximizing the one-on-one development time:
Prioritize the time: Make sure the one-on-one meetings with your direct reports are a high priority. Remember, your key role is to develop your leaders and build your bench to accomplish the organization's desired outcomes. This time is very important, so make it a priority and don’t let other less important meetings or conflicts crowd out these sessions.
Provide feedback on strengths and weaknesses: know your leader’s strengths and weaknesses so you can be helping her grow stronger in her strengths and overcome her weaknesses. Look for opportunities to provide constructive feedback as well as developmental training or experiences to help her grow in key areas.
Management Updates: many years ago my boss shared how he updated his boss at one-on-one meetings. His updates covered four main categories: performance, people, operations and strategic. I used this format going forward to update him and then asked my direct reports to provide the same types of updates to me at our one-on-ones. I found this extremely helpful to keep fully updated on what’s happening within my team and to use these updates to fully keep my manager updated on my organization.
Performance: for me it was updates on the fund performance numbers. For you it may be other types of performance of your business unit or team.
People: discussion of any people related issues that relate to your team. This might include specifics about great work or great feedback on individuals, problem issues related to individual performance, personal issues that your manager should be aware of related to team members. This also would include discussion of promotion candidates, potential leaders for the future, merit increases, possible candidates for rotation for developmental purposes, etc.
Operations: this would include any operational issues that you may have encountered since the last meeting. Examples might include process issues, system outages, defect issues, client feedback about quality, etc.
Strategic: relates to improving the processes for the future, such as enhancements to the process, new product research and development, potential partnerships being considered, etc.
Questions instead of answers: invariably during the update there will be decisions that your direct report is considering making in the management of her organization. It’s best to not provide your answer to their situation but to help them sort through the issue by asking them powerful questions that can help them gain clarity and make their own decision. Growth and insight happens this way as your leader learns how to work through the potential issues and prioritize the most important aspects of the situation leading to their plan of action.
Stretch assignments: look for opportunities to provide assignments that stretch your leaders. These kinds of roles or projects help them develop a broader range of competencies and importantly increase their confidence and resilience as they encounter challenges in the future.
So whether you are a leader of a team of specialists or a leader of leaders, push decisions down and pass the baton to enable your team to grow and to develop a strong and deep bench for the future. This provides a great foundation for your organization’s ongoing growth.
