Understanding when to treat adults as adults

This is in a continuation from last week's post on " Treating people as adults "

My leadership journey was one full of hits and misses. Sometimes, I got it right and sometimes terribly wrong. Last week I had mentioned that people need to be treated as responsible adults, but there is a catch. I learnt this in the hard way, through a couple of missteps.

My problem began when I started to treat people as adults, blindly and without realising two things -

- one: the situation - sometimes it was tough, probably a complex delivery, tough timelines, tough client, new technology etc.
- two: sometimes, adults do behave as kids :)

By not taking into consideration the above 2 scenarios, my blind trust ensured that there were a few times, that I fell on my backside and pretty hard too.

So, the next learning was not to come to a conclusion blindly, "that people can handle things", but look into the situation, be aware of the person's ability to perform a complex task, and definitely keep checking in with the person on the progress. I learnt that sometimes people do expect you to check in, so that they can let you know their difficulties, their problems and be open with you.

As for adults who behave as kids, treat them as kids.

During one of my discussions with my leadership team, I brought up this topic and wanted some advice. First he said, understand if the person you are assigning is a task is equipped to do it and only then asssign it but ensure that you mentor the person, provide the guidance. Second, until you are comfortable that a person can deliver something completely new, do have a Plan B.








He gave an example from thirukkural

ps: In a one-on-one discussion with this person, I told him why he waited to give me the advice. He said "I wanted you to make your first mistakes, go through the process, so that you learn better". 


Comments

  1. MahiApril 15, 2013 at 2:35 PM

    Good Article Raghu. I think you are having good time. Hence you can think and write it. I have a question .. may be you have answer in another few posts.
    Here my question goes, How can you find the person is kid or adult in the first time....do you have any technique. Some people speak a lot but fails during execution :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownApril 21, 2013 at 5:46 AM

      Good one Raghu. Trusting your people and holding them together through tough times makes one a good leader.

      Delete

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