Page 180 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

Assessing Your Organization’s Health 165

engagement, learning agility, and talent development are vitally important.
Enabling and empowering employees is more the rule of thumb.
What is the organization’s expectation? Examine the needs of the work
team. What is expected by higher management? Consider the situational
requirements of leadership. A young, inexperienced, relatively immature team
may require close directive management. In contrast, a skilled, experienced,
and mature workforce may resent close supervision, and such groups are often
more productive in an atmosphere in which responsibility is more highly del-
egated. Assess the leadership expectations and needs of the team to ensure that
your primary and back-up leadership styles fit the challenges at hand and the
expectations of senior management as well as the team you are leading. Mesh-
ing your needs and preferred styles and those of your team may require you
to “style flex” to create the best conditions for the performance of your team.
You must determine what you are able to delegate to your leadership team.
What aspect of the day-to-day operations can you delegate? You must be
comfortable that you have the leadership in place so that you can delegate
appropriately and with confidence. If you cannot delegate to your team mem-
bers with confidence, you will soon be overwhelmed with work—your own
and theirs.
A manager for a large information organization had not sufficiently dele-
gated responsibility to his direct reports, partly because he lacked confidence in
them and partly out of his own compulsion to check everything and know all
the answers. So he edged toward the 70-hour workweek (that’s seven 10-hour
days). He pressured himself to the point that it was affecting his health and fam-
ily. He felt he had to know everything, be everywhere, and do everything. In the
process, he created tremendous backlogs in the work. Deadlines were missed,
customers upset. His own workforce became demoralized and angry as they
found their own work scrutinized and often redone by their boss with little
apparent improvement. This led to continued conflict between the employees
and the manager. Ultimately he needed to leave the organization, and peace was
restored with his former team under new and more effective leadership.
Your diagnosis should assess your middle managers’ ability to demonstrate
leadership as well as coach and develop managers and work teams. Do mid-
dle managers effectively lead capable people to whom they can confidently
delegate responsibility? Review with your managers their direct reports, and
encourage them to train or closely manage the performance of those about