At the core of leadership is change that leads to better results. Some leaders try to get more out of their teams and organizations by simply working harder and longer. Smart leaders, however, have figured out that they can get better results by reducing efforts in a few key areas.
In their new book, Lead Inside the Box, Victor Prince and Mike Figliuolo offer 3 Ways that Smart Leaders Work Less to Get Better Results…
1. Work Less by not Micromanaging Exemplars
The Exemplars on your team are easy to lead. They know what they are doing. They consistently exceed expectations and they get along well with others.
Because they are easy to work with, leaders often spend more time with their Exemplars than they need to. Reviewing the work of an Exemplar seems like a vacation compared to working with other people on your team who need closer supervision.
When a leader spends too much time reviewing an Exemplar’s work, not only is it an inefficient use of their own time, it can be counterproductive as well. Exemplars have earned the right to more independence at work and they may be demotivated by micromanagement.
Spending less time with them will yield better results.
2. Work Less by not Enabling High-Cost Producers
Like the Exemplars, High-Cost Producers deliver more than their share of results. However, they incur greater costs to produce those results. Some of those costs take the form of relying on their leader to do work that they should be doing themselves. This could be making decisions for them or cleaning up messes they make along the way.
By doing the work for the High-Cost Producers, leaders are not just being inefficient with their own time, they are also training the High-Cost Producers to continue to be reliant on them.
Smart leaders free up their time by not doing the work for their High-Cost Producers and by holding them accountable to do the work themselves.
Pulling back in the short-term will produce higher returns in the long-term.
3. Work Less by not Covering for Detractors
The members of the team who do not produce expected results are called Detractors. AND they require a lot of help from their leader.
Detractors may not have the skills to do the job or they may just lack the will to get the job done. Whatever the reason, their leader ends up covering for their shortfalls by doing the work, or rework, themselves.
In the short-term, this may get the job done. Yet covering for the Detractor’s failure to deliver results drags down the whole team.
Smart leaders stop doing the work themselves and shift focus to help the Detractor get up to the expectations or to get them out of that role so someone more productive can step in. By shifting their focus in the short term to fixing, not covering, the problem, leaders can get much higher returns in the long term.
By making these three changes to routines, leaders not only get better results, they free up time to invest in other activities at work or outside of work.
To help you determine if you or your team members fall into these performance patterns, take this simple online assessment.
For a full description of these and other employee performance patterns and strategies to lead them most effectively, check out the new book, Lead Inside the Box.
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