Tell Them What You Want, Not How You Want It Done

You cannot do everything yourself, nor should you have to. Your employees need to focus on creating while you focus on leadership. If you have 20 people working for you, can you worry about all the details that each and every one of those 20 are dealing with? Of course not. You need to stay above the trees rather than down in the weeds.

Which means, when you give someone a task, you really should not be telling them how to do it. Tell them what you want them to produce, but do not dictate how they should produce it.

It is hard sometimes for leaders to let go, especially when people are in a leadership role for the first time. When you have come up from the “worker bee” level it is easy to slip back into that role, it is natural to return to something comfortable, especially when you are facing new challenges. In creative industries it can be especially tough, because you have a style and a certain set of skills and you know how you would do something, so when you see your employee doing it differently it may make you uncomfortable. But accept it as simply something different, not something bad, and realize that when you were at that point in your career your boss (assuming you had a good one) stepped back and let you develop your skills, so you really should do the same.

Of course, senior leaders do it, too. Throughout different countries in Asia it is still pretty common to see traditional working environments that are very hierarchical, with seniors directing actions and juniors simply following orders. But these days, the pace of business and the rapid changes you experience in your markets and your technologies mean that you will slow the company down to an unacceptable speed if you do not give your employees some freedom of action. You simply cannot control everything and still have the agility you need to meet modern challenges.

One thing that will help you step back is if you have a diverse workplace and you recognize the benefits of that. After all, if you were directing every little detail yourself the work would be based only on your style, but if you allow different people with their own ideas to move forward, you will see a lot more great concepts emerge, and that is good for your organization. Take advantage of the variety of ideas your employees can share.

Along those same lines, realize that with a good workforce you should not have to be looking over their shoulders all the time. Trust your people to do what they are employed to do. Either you have hired good people who can do the work without a lot of supervision, or you have hired incompetent people and, well…that was dumb.

It helps if you create a climate where your employees know what you expect and you know what skills and ideas they bring. This helps to avoid a lot of bad surprises and will make you feel more comfortable about letting go of the reins and allowing them to move forward on a project. We often want to get involved with the details because we feel no one can do it quite like we can, or as well as we can, but if you know what they are capable of, and if you know they know what you want, you will realize they can do it just fine.

One of the most aggravating things for your employees is to have someone dampen their creativity by being very specific in how they want things done. Do not be that boss. You hired smart people (hopefully), now let them do what you hired them to do.