One of the things I’m learning right now is that there are two entirely different styles to leading and coaching people. Each have their pros and cons and…each (in the right season) can be highly successful.
So…the only question is, which way do we lead ‘most’ of the time?
“Do As I Say” style
With this style we find ourselves…
- Telling people what to do and making sure they do it
- Stopping each and every problem before they happen
- Focusing 80% of our time on ‘the what’ and 20% of our time on ‘the who’
- Making almost all of the decisions and filtering down the instructions
- Training ‘yes men’
“I Trust You” style
With this style we find ourselves…
- Asking people questions like ‘what would you do…?’ & then help them do it
- Allowing (small) problems to occur so people can ‘fail forward’ (we always have their back)
- Focusing 70% of our time on ‘the who’ and 30% of our time on ‘the what’
- Enabling and empowering your leaders to make decisions
- Training thinkers
The interesting part for me is, in CM there are so many things to MAKE SURE we do! When it comes to safety, security, relevance, excellence we want…HAVE… to be at the top of our game.
There are details that we cannot compromise on and many times this drives us to keep our hands all over everything and everyone else’s hands off! The challenge with this is that over time…we can’t keep up and our people won’t feel ownership in what they do.
So, again…the best style could be a mix of both…to each their own season. However, the question still remains…
- Which is the style that you use most?
- Which do you find/think is more successful?
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January 7th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I think the first way (do as I say) is a great way to find followers, and the second way (I trust you) is the only way to find leaders. Both are needed, because some people aren’t leaders (and aren’t interested) so they just want to know the plan. But, I think the 2nd way should be used most of the time. I try to use it whenever possible.
A good balance that I’m trying to get to is involving leaders in creating the systems and processes. So, we’re using “I trust you” to create “do as WE say” processes. The goal would be for everyone to know that all systems & processes are open to change and that we always need to improve.
I find the 2nd one more successful in developing leaders. Leaders usually bail out if the first one is used on them for too long. The tough part comes when trusting people to make decisions I don’t necessarily agree with, but I’m trusting them to know what’s best. Of course, there’s always room to come back and change things if something doesn’t work, regardless of whoever had the idea.