Do you give your team specific guidance or broad guidelines?
Our reader poll today asks: Do you give your team specific guidance or broad guidelines?
– I give them very specific guidance: 28.67%
– I give them broad guidelines and let them figure it out: 71.33%
Set direction and set them loose. We hear a lot about “empowerment” but almost a third of us aren’t doing it.Setting guidelines for your team members and then letting them take action has tremendous benefits. They feel in control, they learn (many times by making mistakes), they feel trusted, and they come up with their own creative solutions you might have missed. The big reason we give specific guidance is we fear failure. If we control their behaviors then we control the risks is the thinking. Unfortunately that rarely plays out as it should. Take some risk. Be bold and set direction then walk away. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.
It’s important to understand the scope of each team members skills, capabilities and experiences as well. A “newbie” right out of school with minimal real world experience or training will require more explicit guidelines while still allowing for creativity in implementation, whereas a more senior person may only need an understanding of the required outcome and the context in which it will be utilized. I have seem many entrepreneurs “set people loose”, only to discover that their people have no idea even how to shape a plan to achieve the desired outcome. Setting young people up to fail through LACK of guidance can do far more harm than good!
I’ve had “laissez-faire” leaders, spiralling-toward-retirement leaders, controlling micromanagers, old grumps, and trusters/empowerers. The collaborative leadership style works best for me. I want to lead in the same way I like to be led. That usually works, but some folks aren’t like me! Some folks have a real need for very specific directions and detailed orders, probably because they fear “getting in trouble” if they color outside the lines. That seems like an underlying issue that the collaborative leader can subtly address, maybe by metering out the empowerment.
Do I sound like a stream of consciousness?