5 Rules for Leading Without Over-Functioning

Episode #351 5 Rules for Leading Without Over-Functioning

ARE YOU HELPING YOUR PEOPLE, OR HURTING THEM?

I came across an awesome quote just recently thanks to one of the leaders in our inner circle, Natasha Read. It was a quote from Maria Montessori, who devised the Montessori method of teaching.

This method focuses on the development of a child’s inherent initiative and ability, allowing them to develop at their own pace. It emphasises growth through independence and experimentation.

The quote is an absolute blinder: “Everything you do for me, you take from me.”

This hit me like a pie in the face. I immediately thought of the principle of Work at Level, which is a critical part of the No Bullshit Leadership framework.

There are lots of good reasons to not over-function for the people you lead, and this might just be the most compelling of them all. When you do your people’s work, you’re not saving them — you’re stunting their growth!

In this newsletter, I go into the Work at Level principles in the sort of depth that I normally reserve for our Leadership Beyond the Theory cohorts. I begin by outlining the key principles of working at level; I explore why it’s often hard to work at the right level; I into the negative consequences of dipping down; and I’m even going to give you a simple five-point plan to stop you from giving into the temptation of doing your people’s work for them.

WHAT IS “WORKING AT LEVEL”?

The concept of working at level may be new to some of you, so I want to clearly outline the principle up front.

Working at level means doing the job that’s required at the level of the organisational hierarchy that you’re at – and this implies that you have to spend as little time as possible doing work that should be done at the levels below you.

The fundamental principle is that the role at every level is different. Each role has a unique set of outcomes, and it has a unique time horizon. There has to be an obvious distinction between the work that leaders do at each different level.

If there isn’t, that may be a sign that one or more of those levels shouldn’t exist.

Working at level means that you have to think and act in line with the objectives and timeframes that are inherent in that role It means that:

• You have to recognize which work is appropriate for your level, and delegate everything else to the levels below you;
• The decisions you make, and the results you achieve, have to be appropriate for the scope of your role; and
• That scope becomes broader at each new level you ascend to.

The bible on working at level is a book that I recommend frequently, The Leadership Pipeline by Ram Charan, Steve Drotter, and Jim Noel.

Let me give you an example to bring this to life.

There may be several performance areas that leaders are measured against in your company: their management capability; their commercial results; their safety leadership; and so on.

One of the most common and quantifiable measures for leaders – at every level – is some form of financial outcome. But the nature of that outcome is going to be entirely different depending on what level you’re at within the company.

In a frontline supervisor role, the necessary financial outcome might simply be to not overspend on the annual budget that’s been allocated to your team.

If you’re at the CEO level, on the other hand, the necessary financial outcome might be to achieve a certain return on invested capital (ROIC) each year, or to produce total shareholder returns (TSR) across a three-year period, that’s in the top quartile of a chosen set of peer companies.

For each level in between the frontline supervisor and the CEO, leaders will be charged with delivering financial outcomes that are appropriate for the scope and time horizon of their level.

When translated, this simply means: do the job you’re paid to do, and don’t spend time doing the jobs that the people below you are being paid to do.

If you do the jobs of the people below you, you’re not working at level, and this is what we call “dipping down”.

This is an extremely common mistake that many leaders make – most don’t even know they’re doing it… and those who do probably won’t admit it.

WHY DO WE WORK AT THE WRONG LEVEL?

What’s likely to hold you back? Well, the working at level principles sound pretty straightforward, but dipping down is incredibly common for leaders at all levels.

Ultimately, it’s way easier to just roll your sleeves up and do the job yourself than it is to lead an under-performer to do their job to the required standard.

But most leaders won’t admit that they’re avoiding the hard work of leadership. Instead, they rationalise and they tell themselves a whole lot of little white lies. Little white lies like:

• “I’m leading by example.”… or
• “I’m just keeping my finger on the pulse.”… or
• “I wouldn’t ask my team to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself.”… or
• “I’m leading from the front.”… or
• “I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”… or
• “I always deliver.”… or
• “I need to be on top of the detail.”… or even,
• “My people already have too much work so I can’t give them any more.”

Let’s just pause here for a minute: do you tell yourself some of these things?

They sound incredibly noble, so you can easily fool yourself into thinking that you’re doing the best thing for your people.

But are you really doing it for those reasons? Are you really dipping down to help the people you’re leading? Or are you doing it… for you?

This is where Maria Montessori’s quote is so relevant, “Everything you do for me, you take from me.” When you dip down, you rob your people of the opportunity to grow… they aren’t stretched or challenged… they don’t build resilience by having to work through difficult problems…. they don’t learn any new skills and capabilities… they don’t get that feeling of accomplishment that comes from doing hard things.

Instead, they feel as though you don’t trust them… they feel like they’re not good enough… and they eventually work out that they don’t really have to do the jobs to a higher standard, because anything they do that doesn’t meet the mark, you’re going to swoop in and fix it later.

The key to overcoming your instinct to dip down is to realise that every time you think about it, you’re facing a very simple trade-off:

The trade-off between getting the job done quickly, and giving the person below you the opportunity to grow and develop.

Do you think it’s better for your people if you wrap them up in cotton wool and demand nothing from them?

Or do you think it’s better for them if you stimulate their development and give them the opportunity to thrive?

Like I said, it’s way easier to do the job yourself than it is to lead someone else to do their job when they’re not doing it properly.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DIPPING DOWN

Let’s look at some of the deeper psychology behind why it seems so attractive for leaders at all levels to dip down.

1. The desire to preserve your professional identity.

You’ve built an identity in your area of technical specialisation, whether it’s finance or marketing or law or IT. If you’re good at your job you’ll be promoted soon enough, and every new level you’re promoted to takes you further and further away from that specialization – away from your original identity.

It’s hard to let go of, but every ambitious person, at some point, has to choose to let their identity evolve into becoming a professional leader. The sooner you accept this, the better: it’s inevitable and it really is a head game.

2. The urge to keep your technical skills current.

This is closely related to your identity, but it’s subtly different. As you lose touch with the technical work, you feel your skillset becoming obsolete… but this is how you’ve always measured your worth – your market value.

If you have unique and valuable technical skills, it’s easy to see where you fit in the world. But as you evolve to become a professional leader, your market value is less obvious. 

It takes a real leap of faith to embrace the new skills of leadership, and to believe that those skills will ultimately hold value. But you’re replacing old capabilities with much more valuable ones, even though that’s hard to see at the time.

3. Tangible vs. intangible outcomes.

The outcomes from leadership work are often intangible, and that means that doing a great job as a leader can be a lot less satisfying than delivering quantitative outcomes as an individual contributor.

But the outcomes from leadership can be a hundred times more powerful – it’s just that the results don’t show up for quite some time:

• Standing back and letting someone below you learn and grow can take days longer than it would have taken you to do the same thing yourself;
• Lifting the performance of one of your people can take months;
• Changing team culture can take years.

Leadership takes relentless focus for long periods and, even then, the outcomes are uncertain.

No wonder it feels better to just deliver some sh!t whenever you can!

4. Doing is easier than leading.

This is especially true at lower levels. If you’re a frontline supervisor, you have direct line of sight to the work; your technical skills are probably still current; and you can see who’s delivering and who’s not.

You also haven’t yet had the chance to fully develop your leadership capability. But every time you dip down you rob two people of opportunity:

1. You rob the person below you of the opportunity to learn and grow; and
2. You rob yourself of the opportunity to build your leadership acumen.

THE IMPACTS ARE BROAD AND FAR-REACHING

Hopefully, I’ve already convinced you that dipping down is bad… but wait, there’s more!

Let me put the icing on the cake here: as well as the individual repercussions for both you and your people, there are some broader consequences at the team and company level.

The first (which I’ve already mentioned) is that, every minute you spend doing someone else’s job is a minute you’re not spending doing your own job.

At some point, your workload’s going to become unsustainable. When this happens, you’re going to start dropping the ball; your team will lack clarity and direction; your people are going to be working on things that don’t drive value; and they won’t be getting the feedback they need to recalibrate their performance.

This is where teams fail, targets are missed and every objective is put at risk.

The second broader consequence is that people become demotivated and complacent because they know that, regardless of what they do, you’re going to swoop in at the end and change it.

They feel as though they’re being micromanaged; the trust and respect that’s needed to build high performance disappears; they don’t feel capable and confident – instead they’re constantly second-guessing how to please you, so they can keep you out of their knitting.

Your team capability sags over time, and you end up with a culture of mediocrity.

The third broad consequence is that, when you dip down it’s impossible to manage your talent. You will never see who’s really capable of taking on more unless you stretch and test every individual.

When people resign themselves to the fact they don’t really matter, they’re going to start acting like it – and you dull your own ability to see who’s likely to be a leader in the future.

Whenever I see an underperforming team, I look first to the leader: and the leader is the first person to go. The way I see it, you’ll never know whether the team is any good until you see how they respond to a decent leader. So replace the leader first, and see how the team responds. You tend to work out pretty quickly who’s who in the zoo.

The fourth broad consequence is that decisions flow too high up in the company. One of the key elements of a great decision is that it should be made as close to the action as possible.

When you dip down, decisions start to rise up through the structure. In most companies, every decision is simply made too high up the chain.

The people below you will always have a natural tendency to seek security, by knowing that their boss agrees with their decision. So they’ll happily see their decisions float upwards for approval… and if you dip down you’re just fanning the flames of that problem. That slows down the decision making process and kills team momentum.

Finally, the fifth broad consequence is that accountability is weakened. We know that single-point accountability is the key to execution excellence. If you dip down, something interesting happens: instead of being able to hold the person to account for delivering on their agreed objectives, you start to carry that can for them.

If you get involved, the accountability shifts from them to you. This shared accountability kills people’s sense of urgency, and breeds an all-care, no-responsibility culture… and that is absolute poison for your team’s performance.

THE 5-POINT GUIDE TO STAYING AT YOUR LEVEL

To finish, I’m going to give you my five-point guide to stop you from dipping down:

1. Manage the trade-off by assessing risk.

Sometimes, the stakes are high and sometimes… they’re not.

Your decision on whether or not to step in and assist one of your people, or even to do their job for them, should depend entirely on the risk posed by non-delivery.

For example, for low-risk tasks, where a less-than-perfect outcome isn’t going to be the end of the world? Let them go! Give them the learning opportunity.

For tasks with potentially significant consequences or broader ramifications, you may need to step in to get the result.

But if you do step in, just remember to close that loop. You need to go back to the individual who caused you to dip down and explain that that can’t become a habit – that they need to be able to do their job independently, competently, without your constant intervention.

You need to coach them, in an effort to get them up to the standard and to give them a clear timeframe for achieving the required level of independence.

2. Look at outputs, not inputs.

You want to judge people based on their results, above all else, and the easiest way to stop dipping down is to look at results first.

If the results are being delivered in a satisfactory way, that should be enough for you. It’s going to curb your temptation to impose your own style and way of doing things on the individuals who work for you.

If you’re deep in the inputs, looking at how they do their job, you’re going to be sorely tempted to tell them to do it the same way you would. But you should only dive down into the inputs if the results aren’t there.

When COVID hit five years ago and work-from-home became the norm, the leader who had already worked out how to manage via outcomes, instead of managing via inputs (like time at the desk), had a massive advantage over those who didn’t.

3. Don’t give directions – ask questions instead.

One of the most common ways to dip down is to give people directions on how to do their job… telling them which option to choose… or what decision to make… or who to consult… or how many meetings to have.

One of the best ways to guard against this form of dipping down is to turn your directions into questions. So instead of saying, “I think option three is the best.” Ask them, “Which option do you think is the best, and why do you think that?“

This has two massive benefits:

1. It gives the individual the opportunity to think for themselves; and
2. It gives you the opportunity to learn more about their capability and judgment.

4. Stay out of the widgets.

Don’t get drawn down into the detail of the problem unless it is absolutely necessary. You need to be able to trust the person to do the job they’re being paid to do.

And, if you don’t trust them, you might need to get someone you do trust.

Particularly as a new leader, your tendency is going to be to dive into the detail to help your people with their work. Why? Because you can. But you’re not doing them any favors.

5. Stop thinking about yourself, start thinking about your people.

Are you supporting their development? Or are you robbing them of the opportunity to grow?

As long as you succumb to your own needs, you’re going to find it difficult to serve your people. We’ve spoken about the natural barriers that you’re likely to face:

• Your desire to preserve your professional identity;
• The urge to keep your technical skills current;
• Your need to see quick, tangible outcomes rather than slow-burn, intangible outcomes
• Not to mention the fact that doing is easier than leading.

WORKING AT LEVEL IS FUNDAMENTAL TO YOUR SUCCESS

Working at level is a critical capability that you’ll need to master.

Hopefully, now you know why that’s the case, and you know how to avoid the common pitfalls.

Just think of your people – what do they need? How do you give them the opportunity to grow and thrive? Are you supporting them to be successful?

Or are you stunting their growth by dipping down and robbing them of the opportunity to develop?

The bottom line is: if you’re constantly dipping down, there’s no way you’ll be able to build a strong, capable, and dynamic team.

And in the world of leadership, that’s pretty much all there is…