Good morning Friend,
The other day, I found myself overfunctioning: Preparing to take over a task that I’d already delegated. Wanting to micromanage. To fix a likely problem in advance.
I was concerned that the person who was responsible for completing the task wasn’t going to do it correctly.
So, I caught myself. Instead of taking over (overfunctioning), I stepped back and allowed the person to do their thing.
But my instincts were correct, and the task wasn’t done properly.
As a result, a mistake happened.
Guess what happened next?
It was not a comfortable conversation, but it also wasn’t the end of the world.
And it forced us to examine the system that made the mistake possible in the first place. Together, we found and corrected a fault in our system. It was a win-win.
As leaders, when we overfunction in order to spare ourselves (and those around us) from the pain of a mistake, we inadvertently hold back their growth.
Your thought experiment this week is to let go and let a few mistakes get made.
Great leadership doesn’t mean having a zero mistake record. It means having the intestinal fortitude to absorb the turbulence of a team actively growing and evolving.
It means having the courage to empower people and then accept the necessarily mixed consequences of the learning curve as they grow in confidence and skill.
Sending you all the intestinal fortitude in the world on this fine Monday morning.
Shine on, my friend.
B
