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For many leaders, one of the most challenging shifts is moving from directly executing work to guiding the team toward a goal.
As a new manager, you may be used to being hands-on, and this approach may be appreciated by colleagues and superiors alike. They may admire you for your willingness to "get your hands dirty."
However, as responsibilities increase, the difference between an effective leader and a mere super-executor becomes increasingly apparent.
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From Executor to Leader: The Transformation Challenge in Leadership
For many leaders, one of the most challenging shifts is moving from directly executing work to guiding the team toward a goal. As a new manager, you may be used to being hands-on, and this approach may be appreciated by colleagues and superiors alike. They may admire you for your willingness to "get your hands dirty." However, as responsibilities increase, the difference between an effective leader and a mere super-executor becomes increasingly apparent.
In the beginning, you may be able to cope with the task at hand by waking up early and going to bed late. But as resources become more limited and demands increase, how you engage others will have a direct impact on how high you can lead your leadership. Your potential can be truly enhanced when you empower your team members to contribute their best abilities to a common goal. Conversely, every time you take on more tasks unnecessarily, your personal influence will wane accordingly.
Increasing your impact means accepting the inevitable paradox of leadership: you need to be more critical, but less directly involved. When justifying your insistence on doing it yourself, you may confuse "involvement" with "important." But in fact, the two are different – just as busyness is not the same as being productive. Your engagement is a reflection of your commitment to your work, your choice of tasks, and your decisions. Your contribution to success, or importance, depends on how effectively you motivate your team members.
This means shaping the thinking and planning of others, rather than giving direct orders; hold a popular view rather than a mandatory directive; And by motivating others to act, make your own priorities a reality.
While this may sound like common sense, it's actually not that easy to do. That's exactly what motivational leaders should be looking for. However, many people are in a constant state of tension because they are overcommitted, and this state stimulates our protective instinctive response. This survival instinct can eventually weaken our own influence by limiting the influence of others.
To find out if you're feeling uneasy about taking on too many tasks, ask yourself: If you suddenly need to take a week off, will your plans and priorities still be able to move forward in your absence?
If your answer is yes or you're not sure, then you're probably more involved than necessary. To enhance your leadership potential, you need to increase your own influence by amplifying the role of others. Regardless of your preferred approach to delegation, I've found that the following four strategies work for leaders at all levels.
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Four strategies on how to delegate
1. Start with your reasons.
The key to being an effective leader is to make team members understand the meaning of their work and how they contribute to the big picture. When you demonstrate to your team the importance of their work to the overall project, they are more likely to be emotionally engaged and action-oriented. Share not only your business reasons, but also your personal motivations. If you can't express why something is important to you, it becomes difficult to motivate others to care about it. This is the basis for effective cooperation. Otherwise, team members may have misunderstandings about their tasks and what they mean. The initial communication is a critical moment to avoid misunderstandings, so be sure to articulate your motivations clearly.
2. Inspire their commitment.
Next, it's time to inspire commitment from your team members. People are excited about what they can be a part of, but they are only really engaged when they understand their role and how they can contribute. When defining tasks, make sure the team understands their role and that the tasks are appropriate to their capabilities. At the same time, clearly state all additional expectations in order to reach a complete understanding. If you have a clear expectation of the outcome, you need to be equally clear when asking questions. Make sure they understand your request (preferably face-to-face, or at least through**, to avoid misunderstandings in the email). Avoid being surprised by "I've told them what I want!" "And mistakes; This only proves that you failed to make sure they understood and got their commitment.
3.Engage at the appropriate level.
The right level of engagement is also crucial. You need to be engaged enough to provide support and stay accountable, but too much or too little can be risky. When choosing the right level of engagement, ask team members what kind of engagement they think will be most helpful, which not only makes it clear how often they want you to engage, but also gives them the authority to decide how to move forward with the task.
4.Practice saying "yes", "no", and "yes, if".
Learn to say "yes", "no" and "yes if ...... appropriately"It's an art and it's a science. Just as successful investors don't invest in every opportunity, we should also choose our time investments carefully. Evaluate each request and match it to the best value you can provide. For matching requests, actively participate. For those that don't match, you can say "yes, if......And find others to be directly involved to achieve the goal. This way, you can still provide advice and support, but you don't have to take on all the heavy lifting. This strategy could mean delegating tasks to others, reducing your direct input, or simply saying "no" in the business case, explaining that your energy could yield greater benefits elsewhere.
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Redefining Leadership: Anika's Path to Transformation
Anika has always been an all-encompassing leader, and she is always committed to every task of the team. But as her workload increased, she found herself unable to consistently engage in every detail. She realized that this approach to full engagement had led to slow team progress, increased dependency among members, and she herself was at risk of extreme exhaustion and damage to the team's credibility.
Anika decided to rethink her leadership role. She used to see herself as the "one who gets the job done," but this doer mentality limited her leadership potential. Reflecting on the past few months,She found herself missing out on networking with senior leaders and getting involved in business development, these are all stages to show her strengths.
She recognizesFocusing on the details of execution not only hindered her leadership of the bigger picture, but it was also a source of frustration for team members. In an effort to change this, Anika began to try to give the team more autonomy. She redefined her leadership responsibilities: ".I'm responsible for guiding people, priorities, and projects to make sure the work gets done with the right people on the right tasks.
Anika's next move is to review her schedule and assignments. By analyzing her time investment in meetings, work meetings, and meetings, she assessed the importance of each task to the team's success and found that she was devoting too much time and energy to some of the less high-priority tasks. These tasks become the best candidates to delegate to team members.
To effectively assign tasks to team members, Anika considers each individual's skills and development needs to find the best match. She prepares well for each assignment conversation, making sure to clearly communicate the reasons for the change and how to inspire commitment from team members.
This shift allowed Anika to drastically reduce her attention to detail while still being critical to the direction and momentum of key projects. Her influence was maintained, while the team's dependency bottlenecks were resolved.
In order to prevent herself from overcommitting again, Anika promised to take a "yes", "no" or "yes if ...... for new requestsAvoid engaging in areas that don't align with her growth and personal brand. She also invited a colleague as a consultant to provide an objective perspective when decisions are unclear.
Through these four strategies,Anika not only solves the problems she faces, but also helps team members play their part better. This approach allows each delegated task to become an opportunity to develop team members who will become more important and fulfilled over time.