Most leaders would agree that they don’t want to be micromanaged, and the last thing I want to be as a leader is a micromanager. I believe in developing and empowering people with the tools they need to lead themselves well by leveraging their own talents and strengths for the good of the organization.
But as much as we may want to avoid the micromanagement trap, we have to be careful not to let the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction where we become under-managers. This is when you pull back so far from your team members that you’re not close enough to observe them in action and give them honest and consistent feedback on their performance.
Under-managing can be just as dangerous as micromanaging. In fact, I recently came across an article on the Harvard Business Review called “The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader” by Scott Gregory that says that under-management (or as Gregory calls it, “Absentee Leadership”) is arguably THE most destructive style of leadership and is, unfortunately, also the most common. That’s a sobering thought!
In order to help you and your team dig deeper into this issue of the dangers of Absentee Leadership, I’ve created a Team Huddle Coaching Guide based on Gregory’s article that you can download for free and use at your next team meeting. You can view and download the coaching guide here:
Download: Team Huddle – The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader
Included in the download are a leader’s guide for you to use to facilitate the team huddle, a participant’s guide to help your team members prepare and process the areas that you’ll cover, and a bonus self-assessment that you and your team can take to help diagnose whether or not you are managing like an absentee leader.
This is really convicting. It’s easy to call this empowering when it’s really absentee leadership.