Don’t Be a Roadblock

Nearly 20 years ago I was in an interesting role as a US Air Force officer, developing new concepts for the role of military power after the end of the Cold War. During my first year in that job (which lasted 2 years, 8 days, and 3 1/2 hours) I had a fantastic leader. Not only was he visionary, he also knew enough to let his people to do their jobs, and he saw HIS job as setting the right environment for his team and making it easy for them to do their work. All that changed in the second year. The new guy was not that knowledgeable, had trouble spelling “visionary,” and he tried to cover up his ignorance by looking busy, which usually meant sticking his nose deep into his team’s work. After one particularly frustrating conversation with him, when I tried to very politely explain how he had just wrecked a month of work with one phone call, he said, “Hey, I’m just trying to help you.”

“Sir,” I said, walking the line between insubordination and exasperation, “I don’t need you to help me. I need you to get out of my way.”

In your effort to be a good leader you may be standing in your employees’ way rather than clearing the path and pushing them along, and that is not helpful.

Your employees are good at their jobs (or, if they aren’t, they should not be your employees). YOUR job is not to be creating alongside them so much as it is to facilitate their work. You make it clear to them what the organization’s needs, goals, and expectations are, you provide them the environment and the resources to do their work, you offer the training and development opportunities to maintain and improve their talents, you give them the feedback to make sure they stay on course, and you help them get recognized for the great work they do.

What you don’t do, though, is their jobs.

More than that, you need to be careful about how you help them; you need to first understand what they need. This is why we like to promote our employees into leadership positions, because we think they will understand what will be helpful for their teams. But if you are one of those employees who moves up, you have got to remember your role has changed, and your primary talent is now leadership. While you may get involved in doing the value-creating work, that is not your main function anymore. If, on the other hand, you are coming from the outside, you better learn what your new employees need, or you will likely provide them “help” that just slows them down. Either way, nobody expects you to be an expert regarding every skill your employees bring to the table, so don’t try to act like one, because you will just get in the way. Instead, learn as much as you can about what they need, and help them get it.

Try to be attuned to the vibes in your organization. When you walk into a room, do people hide their work, afraid you will try to involve yourself? When you make a few calls to try to help your employees, do you see a sudden increase in CVs coming out of the printer? Or, do people instead come and ask for your opinion or your help, and go away happy? Keep your eyes and ears open so you know if you are providing what they need, before some arrogant little punk (like I was) tells you to “get out of my way.”