Today I want to talk about leadership in the workplace. How can you create an autonomous group that is productive, highly creative, and engaged?
The fundamental thing that you need to learn to do effectively is how to delegate and not micromanage. It’s really difficult from a management perspective to learn this, but if you do you will see unprecedented levels of production, engagement, and retention on the teams you oversee.
Here are the baseline things to do when you are creating an autonomous group. As you delegate, give them parameters within which they can make decisions that are away from the standard. Give them the authority to make those decisions and take risks. In doing so, you need to be able to create a space where they can make mistakes and you are able to back them up and help them learn from them should they happen.
If a person feels like there will be significant personal ramifications for failures, then it’s difficult for them to take those risks that could be beneficial to the projects they are working on.
What I would recommend to help you delegate to your employees without feeling completely out of control as a manager is to have them send you an outline of what they accomplished during their workday. This way you’re able to keep a record of their progress on an ongoing basis. This will help you, as well as help them see what progress they’re making.
Lastly, if you can delegate without micromanaging and allow your employees to feel autonomous, what will happen is your people will feel fulfilled, creative, like they are trusted and respected, and they will be able to grow quickly in terms of their skillsets and abilities.
If you have any other questions about this or any other leadership topic, please give me a call. I would love to help you.