Treat people as adults

Following up on trust, it took me a while to realize the next step on the trust ladder. I was given more responsibilities, I pushed myself and my teams to deliver them. While I trusted them to deliver, I always had this habit to keep checking up with people if they were going in the right direction and kept providing suggestions on how to go about. While as a manager this was possibly the right behaviour with respect to Project control, as a leader was it?

I did not realize it was not until several months later. There were a couple of times when people would assign a task to me and kept checking on the progress. During one such time, when work was a bit stressful, I felt why someone was doing this. Here I was a responsible adult who knew what to do and how to do, and if at all I had a doubt would approach them to get it clarified.

Why did people not trust me???

Around the same time, since some of my teams' deliverables were getting delayed I was exhibiting the same behaviour. I did not realize at that point in time, but a little later when things became normal, I went through the whole sequence in my mind. It dawned on me that I was caught in what I termed as the " Looking over the Shoulder " behaviour. And there were a couple of people who in their " Coffee with Raghu " sessions told me on my face, that I was kind of becoming a pain.

Letting go of this was the next lesson I learnt. People are responsible adults. I realized that if I treat them as adults and made it clear to them, they would deliver what was required. Rather than standing behind their shoulders and checking regularly if things were going correct. To be honest, it took quite a while for me to understand this problem and get over it. But once I did, I could feel that my stress levels went down. Not sure of my people though :)

Until next week..

ps: in one of my " looking over the shoulder " sessions, the person told me that " Raghu this is what I can do and if you need it better why don't you write the code", knowing fully well that I did not know coding :)


Comments

  1. Prakash chellamuthuApril 6, 2013 at 7:17 AM

    thanks for sharing this. Great one raghu.

    ReplyDelete
  2. venkatApril 6, 2013 at 8:10 AM

    excellent one!!!.. open talk!!!.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownApril 6, 2013 at 1:09 PM

    Everyone must share this to people who are leading/managing/mentoring a team in this industry.

    ReplyDelete
  4. karthik natarajan IyerApril 6, 2013 at 11:59 PM

    I cannot stop imagining this one as a 150 - 200 page book. With the close up shot of yours and a steaming hot coffee cup as the cover photo. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. SukiApril 7, 2013 at 10:48 AM

    Good one! But what would happen if you treat children like adults?

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownApril 8, 2013 at 10:07 PM

    You have always been a great leader... and this post proves the same again...

    ReplyDelete
  7. MahiApril 9, 2013 at 4:35 PM

    Very much true for matured team. But i am bit concerned when people are not able to understand what need to be delivered. At least for those kids, we should be Looking over the Shoulder. In general, i feel being leaders we have to be flexible to adopt the style what our team is looking for individually. Time is changing, people are not changing according to their leaders, and leaders need to be flexible to handle various expectation of the team. Its my personal thought.
    Hope you are doing great and having good time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. RaghuramApril 9, 2013 at 8:49 PM

      Mahi - The next post is on when not to treat adults as adults, leave alone kids. :)

      Delete

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