Executive coach Greg McKeown offers a guide to tapping your team's intelligence
What is the essential role of a manager? Is it to tell people what to do? Or is it to create a platform for team members to manage themselves? The first option is the path of least resistance, but it also creates dependency on you. Instead of responding intelligently to signals from customers, your people will spend their intellectual energy trying to figure out what you want. The second option requires upfront investment but it will pay for itself many times over. It will liberate you while freeing your team. Here are my tips for securing your team's full intelligence...
1. Start with desired results. People can manage themselves against the performance of mutually agreed outcomes. A team puts aside differences in pursuit of something bigger than themselves.
2. Let someone else take responsibility. Make someone else the leader. Be bold. Let your employees run staff meetings. One leader knew he had done this right because his people told him they felt "excited and scared".
3. Design parameters. There is a story about children who were given a huge field to play in. They stayed close to the adults. When the experiment was repeated, with a huge fence around the field, the youngsters played into every corner. Parameters foster creative play and innovation.
4. Define the problem, not the solution. If you want shallow thinking, lead with answers. If you prefer creative thinking, work with your team to define problems and then get out of their way as they solve them.
5. Turn over decisions to the people with the data. Ensure the people closest to the problems make the decisions. They have by far the best information.
6. Invent rules of play. One executive has five rules for how she expects her team to work together. Everyone knows what they are. If they break them, they're off the team. As a result, they know how to fully contribute.
7. Ask for initiative. Do you want someone to ask for permission before they act or would you prefer they take action and check in monthly? Whatever level of initiative you want, you should ask for it.
8. Look to the periphery. Invite people into your meetings who you normally wouldn't: customers, clients, suppliers, people from headquarters, contributors on the front lines and managers from the department you don't get along with. Their ideas will be different and useful.
9. Agree on accountability. When you don't hold people accountable you send the message, "I didn't really think you would do this anyway." Instead, agree upfront on where and when a person will be held accountable and against what measures.
10. Be clear on the consequences. People should know what the rewards and punishments are. If you leave this until afterwards, people will start to play "guess what the manager is thinking" instead of contributing their best thinking.
Greg McKeown is co-author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
