Become Obsolete

Domain: Managing Performance - Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Strong, confident leaders make their role obsolete.

Stay with me.

Problem solving and decision making tend to take-up a lot of time for leaders. Delegating these things creates time and space for bigger and better things.

A leader’s role becoming obsolete does not mean they get fired, it means they gain capacity to take on additional challenges that help grow their career. Their role as it was previously defined is obsolete because it has evolved into something new.

For today's topic, we'll provide a couple tips on how to do this…

Return Questions

As mentioned above, a large part of a leader's role is problem solving. Unfortunately, many leaders spend too much time solving problems that should really be addressed by their teams. It can feel good to be the manager that swoops-in to save the day by addressing a problem, but doing so trades long-term effectiveness for short-term satisfaction.

In our article on returning questions, we provide guidance on how to respond to your team when they bring a problem that they are capable of solving.

Of course, certain decisions need to remain with the leader. This includes critical strategy decisions and many staffing decisions. Keep those and follow our guidance for pushing the smaller decisions back to your team.

Information positioning

Sometimes your role provides you with access to exclusive information that your team doesn’t have. We want to solve that by putting your team in position to access as much information as they can.

Obviously, some information is sensitive in nature and can't be shared with your team. The solution here is really easy. If it’s information that you can relay to them, remove yourself as the middle-person and put them in position where they can access it directly.

Share your resources. Not just online informational resources, but also your network. When possible, invite them to the meetings where this type of information is discussed.

Smart small

This all sounds fine in theory, but many managers have a hard time relinquishing this type of control. In those situations, I recommend trying these strategies in a convenient low-stakes situation: your vacation.

This is low stakes because you are (hopefully) already taking vacations. Unfortunately, many managers spend time "just logging-on real quick" during their vacation to over-manage their team. That's the piece you are going to stop.

Brief your team before your vacation to communicate your expectations in advance. Be specific as to the types of decisions and problem solving you expect them to make.

If they reach out to you on your vacation with items they should be responsible for, push back. Let them know it's their decision to make and that you can debrief when you return.

I cannot explain to you what a relief it is to be able to go on a vacation or week-long work-trip knowing that your team is running like clockwork. When you get to this point, you know that you're leading well.

Praise the action, not the outcome

When your team solves problems or makes decisions independently, be sure to praise them…even if the outcome was not great.

Here, we are praising the fact that they acted autonomously. Teaching them to do this long-term is more important that the outcome of one individual decision. They'll get better at problem solving and decision making the more they do it, so the key is to keep them doing it.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please email them to [email protected] 

This week’s action items:

1. Return lower-stakes questions to your team. See our guidance on returning questions.

2. Put your staff in the position to receive as much information as is appropriate, without your involvement.

3. Test-drive and reinforce these techniques while you're away from the office.

4. Praise all instances where your team acted independently, regardless of outcome.