That's what I thought in my first years as a leader. In the end, difficult tasks ended up with me or the same people - a classic mistake of ruinous empathy.
It was only when I saw the most engaged and resourceful people sitting after hours, while others abandoned messy or imperfect tasks, that I understood the scale of the problem.
With Cyprian and Robert, we analyzed the main psychological barriers to delegation: -"I'll do it faster myself than explaining it" (effect: no time for strategy, but constant sprints doing work for others)
- "I'm afraid that when I hand over the topic, it will be done poorly and I'll lose the client" (effect: barrier to scaling the company and building mature systems)
- "When I increase requirements, the team won't like me and people will leave" (effect: being a hostage in your own team)
During the recording of materials about building space in the role of a leader for #22community, 3 key conclusions came back to me:
- High standards are a form of respect for an employee's potential.
- True empathy is helping people develop, not "being nice."
- "Protecting" people from challenges is often a mask hiding the leader's fear.
For 23 weeks, I've been using AI as a mirror for my decisions, also in the context of building teams. Based on Cyprian and Robert's experiences, we've prepared prompts that will be daily support in developing managers as part of the #AIJournaling routine.
This will help you catch the moment when you start to cut corners from the good path as part of your daily, quick routine.
And you? Where in your team are you confusing empathy with rationalizing lack of action?
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