Leading – Not Lording Over
Written by: Santarvis Brown, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
If you are a leader or have professional goals of becoming a leader there is no doubt you have at your fingertips thousands of articles of online guidance. Then, of course, you have hundreds of books at your disposal. However, what I’d like you to do is take a step back from all of that and ask yourself, “what kind of leader do I want to have?”
Consider these questions: Do you want your leader to intimidate and micromanage you? Or do you want your leader to empower you?
I’m willing to bet you want to be empowered. Empowerment creates trust and improved morale in a company.
While many will have you believe being a good leader is a challenge, the reality is that you just need to look inside yourself.
Building Trust by Eliminating Micromanagement
Leading, not lording over means building trust in your employees. And trust starts with backing off. The opposite of this is micromanagement. I bet you’ve heard that word before. Perhaps, you’ve even used it when talking about your leaders.
Micromanagement abandons trust and builds a work environment of low performance, aggressiveness, and high-turnover. Employees become ineffective when a leader consistently scrutinizes their performance. Micromanaged employees lose creativity, or don’t feel they can provide feedback or ideas. Micromanagement builds a team of workers who grow to expect their job will be fully laid out for them. This leads to low morale and mistakes from employees, and more work for the leader.
Here are actions common to micromanagers:
Resist delegating work
Become involved in work assigned to others
Too involved in the details to see the big picture.
Discourage others to make decisions without running the decision through you first
Focus on the unimportant or least important information
Ignore colleague experience and knowledge
Not loyal to colleagues
Misaligned priorities
Team lacks motivation
Leading with Trust
A strong leader is a person who builds teams that flourish under empowerment rather than control. Employees are hired due to their ability to do a job. That should be praised rather than disregarded. That is why an effective leader does not try to control the employee, but rather looks at leadership as being a resource for employees.
When you become a resource, you are providing tools that allow empowered employees to succeed. When employees succeed, leaders succeed. Here are some examples of how you can become a positive resource for empowered employees:
Provide consistent and honest communication
Strong communication creates a bond of trust and knowledge between leaders and their employees. Communication includes one-on-one conversation and instruction (when needed), expectations, goals, a list of available resources, and most importantly a willingness to take feedback and suggestions from the employee.
Clear objectives
By providing clear objectives a leader sets expectations for each employee. This leaves out the ambiguous nature found in many micromanaged offices. Every employee understands their role. And every employee is provided the tools to satisfactorily achieve their goals.
Opens the door for feedback
Both providing and being open to feedback is one of the most important things employees recognize in a comfortable work environment. Being open to suggestions and feedback creates an open atmosphere. For many employees being heard is a powerful recognition tool.
Leading, not lording over is about empowering employees to do what they were hired to do. You can tap into a powerful workforce simply by strong communication, providing clear direction and resources, and encouraging feedback.
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Santarvis Brown, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Dr. Santarvis Brown has spent 15+ years serving as a leader, innovator, and changemaker in education, showcasing in-depth insight as an administrator, educator, and program director. A noted speaker, researcher, and full professor, he has lent his speaking talent to many community and educational forums, serving as a keynote speaker. He has also penned several publications tackling issues in civic service, faith, leadership, and education.
