Empower and Get On - Why don't they do it ? It's obvious.....isn't it ?

Have you ever wondered why your team members don't do what you think is obviously required?

Have you ever said to yourself "Do I have to tell them to do everything?"

Do you ever get tired of having to initiate all the major actions from your team?

If you answered yes to at least one of these questions then you may need a vacuum, a leadership vacuum.

At the moment your team are at some level 'dependent' on you. They will not show initiative because either their reticular activating systems (the 'radars' in their minds) are just not seeing what needs to be done or/and they don't want to take any risks because they believe they will be 'punished' in some way if it goes wrong.

If you are dominating the leadership space then you are shutting out the contributions of your team, you need to some extent 'remove' yourself from the leadership space and leave a vacuum so your team can fill it with their initiatives. 

Methods to create a leadership vacuum.

1 - Use a coaching process such as the GROW model - question your team members and wait and wait and wait for an answer

2 - Present your team with a question and leave them alone to come up with the answers e.g. "The best way to improve customer enthusiasm"

3 - Give them key values to operate within instead of rules e.g. the values of 'creativity' and 'profitability' will set your teams reticular activating system to notice opportunities to create profit.

4 - Encourage your team to try new ideas and if they aren't executed perfectly (the ideas, not your team members!) then coach them to a better result. Don't criticise them, especially in public, if you want them to have another go ever again. Also, here's a big one, don't take over and do it yourself.

5 - Ultimately, a leader needs to create a team that notices what needs to be done and gets on with it so the leader can get on. Download my book chapter on how to achieve this here

Your ideas , Comment - There are multitude of ways to create a leadership vacuum and this is a great opportunity to share your thoughts so please take a minute to add to the list of methods by clicking here, If we can get 20 by the end of today then we will all have a great toolkit to access. One line is fine. Comment or click post a comment below

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Have a fantastic week!

Kind Regards,

Adrian Heath

Comments

[Damon Hurst]

Great ideas and well expressed Adrian. Got me focused first thing in the morning, which is the outcome I want from emails from firms such as yours. Well done.
I was once told by someone who I thought was a great leader "You are only as good as the work you can pass on". "What does that mean?", me, the naive 21 year old asked. I didn't expect an answer, in fact knowing me at the time, I probably thought I had snagged him! "It mean's: a) You have knowldege about a particular subject. b) You want to share with others what you know. C) You've got the guts to sit in the vacum you create whilst you learn some new skills", was his answer. It's stuck with me for over 20 years that conversation and maybe relevant to where you are coming from? Keep up the great work. All the best. Damon Hurst. www.thirdmaninterim.com