Amy can pinpoint the moment when she realised she was operating at the wrong level.
Up to that moment, she thought she was doing OK in her new leadership role.
When she stepped into this role, her first time leading a team, she was beyond excited. She knew the team – heck she’d been part of them. And now, she was their leader.
Amy had been exceptional in her old role. She was a technical expert and a star performer for the team. That’s why, when her boss moved on, she was promoted into his role.
Her style initially was very hands-off. She had been a siloed operator previously and assumed everyone else behaved the same way and took responsibility for completing what they needed to do.
She was slow to realise that the skills that had got her to this spot were not the ones she needed to lead her current team.
That moment when she realised she was operating at the wrong level was when she got the results from the organisation-wide engagement survey, and the comments made by her team about her leadership style were damming.
She was accused of micromanaging and almost standing over the team as they did their work. She often took work back from them and redid it. As deadlines loomed she took more and more work off the team, as she didn’t believe they were doing it the ‘right' way.
Amy was so anxious to succeed that she was acting autonomously and not engaging her team. She was working longer and longer hours and becoming frustrated with what her team weren’t doing.
Leading a team is quite different to being part of that team.
How does this resonate with you? Are you working long hours, and always trying to catch up on what you need to get done?
Click this link, to download my Task Audit template. Start identifying everything that is on your plate and work out if you really should be doing it all.
What are your tips to those people who can’t let go of their control freak part?
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