Leadership Nudge – CONTROL IN AN EMERGENCY
This week we are going to talk about the connection between control; how much authority we are giving to the team, and the competence and clarity that the team has; how well the team technically knows the job and understands the why. What we are asserting is that there is this stable domain of operations where these two things are related.
We can enter this diagram in two different ways. One way is to say, “Hey, if I want to move up the control plane and I want to give more control to my team, I need to have a team with more competence and clarity. I need to build competence in my team and talk more about our purpose.”
At the same time if your team has a certain level of competence and clarity, that will dictate how much control you can give them. In other words, if you are way down the control plane because of some sort of emergency or crisis, it could indicate that your team may not fully understand what is going on. In other words, in situations where your team is operating with low levels of competence or clarity the leader is going to take more control.
The reason for taking back control is not because it is an emergency. It is because of a low level of competence or clarity on the team. If you can train for emergencies, you can release control in emergency situations and teams actually perform better.
My leadership nudge to you this week is this:
Do something today to build competence and clarity in your team so that six months from now when you have that crisis or emergency your team is ready to act with intent.
Let us know how it goes!
