leaders allergic to leading leaders

One of the hardest challenges for a leader in a growing organization is building and trusting senior leaders who report up to you. In early days, at smaller scales, you can not only get away with running around supervising everything - that might be the smartest and best thing to do. Cruelly, your success at this usually brings your team and opportunities to a size where Manic Omnipresence is not possible. Where your dogged attempts to maintain it actually hold the team back and limit everyone’s impact. 

I have seen excellent, talented leaders struggle with this in schools, the private sector, and government. I don’t have a silver bullet to offer. My prompt to you, if you’re a leader in an organization that is big or is gonna get bigger, is to invest in that next layer of leaders now. Cultivate your internal prospects; always be recruiting from outside. Give people big responsibility, coach them on carrying that responsibility, hold them accountable for the results with the understanding that their goals are your goals, too. 

This will probably feel bad and look bad at the beginning! These leaders will not be as good as you were or are, to start. Tactically, if the thing they’re responsible for is urgent and stakes-y enough, you may need to lay your hand on theirs while they hold the wheel. 

In The Strategy Paradox, Michael Raynor points out that the time horizon leaders are responsible for lengthens in direct relationship with seniority. Front line workers may need to think in terms of weeks or quarters. Senior leaders think in halves or years. Responsible CEOs and boards reckon with multi-year timelines. 

Getting your leadership tiers set and trusted with big, critical portfolios is a play for the long haul. It raises the ceiling of what your team can accomplish. Refusing to do this caps what is possible. 

-eric