I received a great challenge from a new subscriber a few weeks ago and it’s one that is a common one. It is also one that is pretty tricky to overcome and actually requires a bit of trial and error to figure out because everything is different.
Having said that, there are some underlying principles that can help all managers to avoid micromanaging, give trust and autonomy to their team, whilst not letting too many mistakes happen or standards to slip.
Here is the challenge:
I think the thing most personally challenging about being a manager is balancing wanting to fully release tasks and responsibility to team members without micromanaging how they’re doing it. And/or letting things slip in the name of “trusting my team.”
So, what do you do? Trust your team completely but know that mistakes are going to happen, whilst hoping that it’s for the greater good? Or hold tasks back because you can’t afford for mistakes to be made that may cost your team or company clients and revenue?
I sent a few initial thoughts to the subscriber and wanted to expand on them today.
If you have a specific challenge or question that you’d like help with, just reply to this email and I’ll send you a personal reply.
The core principle to keep in mind here is that if you want your team to develop well, you need to give them trust and autonomy. If you don’t, you’ll hold them back and it will also hold you back as a manager too. So do all that you can to give them tasks and projects that they own and are able to do themselves, but do so with the principles below in mind to avoid the chances of big mistakes happening.
Having said that, we’ll talk about how mistakes are pretty much inevitable and that you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable on this front!
Put tasks on a “what could go wrong” scale
A key thing to think about when you’re trying to give away autonomy and freedom to your team is the scale of what could go wrong and the impact of this.
Try to think about the tasks and projects that you delegate on a scale of seriousness and adjust how close you remain accordingly. For example, if a task is on the less serious side i.e. if the person gets it wrong, it’s not that big a deal because you have time to fix it, then you can afford to give them more freedom than the other end of the scale.
The other end of the scale could be tasks that have a tight deadline or are for a client/stakeholder who you can’t afford to make mistakes for. So with these, it’s a good idea for you to stay a lot closer to the task to ensure that things stay on track.
Allow time for feedback and correcting mistakes
When delegating a task, you should build in time for mistakes to be talked about and fixed – where possible, allow time within the tasks that you delegate for a review and for the person to fix problems themselves if needed.
A key reason why managers fail to delegate and give tasks to their team is that they don’t leave time for feedback and correcting mistakes before the work is delivered. This means that they feel like there isn’t time to delegate and they may as well do it themselves just to be safe.
The other possible outcome here is that you run out of time and end up fixing problems or correcting mistakes yourself, because that’s quicker than helping your team members correct things themselves.
Of course, this isn’t ideal and takes away a valuable part of the learning and development process for your team. Not to mention that if they see you taking a task from them and finishing it off or making corrections without their involvement, it can leave them feeling untrusted.
Avoid fixing mistakes yourself
Following on from the previous point, try to take a general approach of not fixing their mistakes for them – no matter how small. For example, something as small as a typo or spelling mistake should be flagged to them and they fix it.
It may sound pedantic and like it shouldn’t matter, but it really does. Your team needs to complete the process themselves and this means learning from their mistakes. If you correct all of their mistakes, no matter how small they are, they won’t learn them.
I made this mistake very early in my career when I would correct minor grammar and formatting mistakes from one of my team. I’d call out bigger mistakes and give feedback on these, but I wouldn’t bother talking about what felt like small mistakes that didn’t need a conversation.
This led to a problem whereby the person kept making the same mistakes over and over. Each deliverable was getting better on some fronts, but were still full of grammatical errors and formatting issues. This was because the individual simply didn’t know that they were making mistakes, so of course, they kept making them.
Once I changed this approach and treated small mistakes the same as big ones, it led to a huge change almost immediately. I felt terrible about it at first because I felt like a school teacher going through work with a red pen. But it worked and helped that person deliver much better work.
This ultimately meant that I could leave them alone more often and give them more trust and autonomy without worrying about mistakes being made.
Set clear outcomes on what success looks like
When you’re delegating a task and giving someone responsibility, you should set clear outcomes and let your team have some freedom to find their own way there.
This means that you’re being clear on what they need to do, but giving them freedom to figure things out for themselves. Of course, you can give them guidance and they can ask for help, but you’re explicitly saying to them that they can figure out the “bit in the middle”.
You can then set expectations that you’ll check in with them along the way and see how they are going, correctly and giving feedback if needed to ensure that they achieve the outcome.
I quite like thinking of this as 30% and 90% feedback. So you check in on a task or project around 30% through the task to ensure that things are on track and to help ensure a good outcome. Then the 90% feedback is when you do final refinement with the time that they have left.
Accept that mistakes will happen
Finally, accept that mistakes will happen and try to get as comfortable as possible with that. As long as someone is broadly moving in the right direction and learning from mistakes, then that means they are progressing and you don’t need to panic.
We all make mistakes, especially earlier in our career and they can help us develop quickly as long as we own them and take the chance to learn from them.
As a manager, if you take a position of mistakes not being acceptable on any level, then you’ll never delegate or give away enough trust and autonomy to your team to enable them to develop. This will hold them back and just as importantly, hold you back as well.
Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you drop standards or accept subpar work. But in the course of managing a team and giving away trust and autonomy, mistakes will happen.
To wrap up, do your best to give away as much trust and autonomy as you can to your team, but do so with the principles above in mind. Yes, mistakes won’t be prevented 100%, but you’ll be able to mitigate them as much as possible whilst still enabling your team to develop their own skills and experience.