It seems that sometimes you need to appear ‘lazy’ to be an effective as a leader.
What do I mean by this? One CEO, a long standing client, did such a good job at surrounding himself with the right people, he would spend most of his time on strategy and big picture thinking. As his ego is not tied to his title as ‘Grand Poobah’ he spends little time looking over the shoulders of his leaders.
His time is spent making sure his lead team works like a well oiled machine.
They are fully engaged, have a lot of fun as a team and are achieving high productivity levels. There was an exciting energy working around such proactive leaders.
However, to one senior manager who’s work history highlighted that ‘success comes only from working long, hard hours’ his CEO’s approach seemed ‘lazy’.
Where is he? What is he doing? How can he get the results he does when he gives people ‘too much’ rope?
Developing Accountability While Having Your Finger On The Pulse
After working with the company’s lead team, when it came to group discussions, his style was to throw a provocative question into the mix and then withdraw. This allowed the team to have an unbiased, healthy debate – the CEO only wanted the outcome that he painted at the beginning. He saw his lead team as a ‘Professional Team’ versus ‘A Team of Professionals’ – they would make the decisions collaboratively and own the outcomes.
Although seeming to be ‘lazy’ he had his finger firmly on the business scorecard pulse; he knew exactly the numbers in his business and where the thinking was with his leaders.
He allowed his leaders a lot of rope, building a high level of trust – but at the same time established very clear lines of accountability and high expectations.
His style was refreshing, unusual, but very powerful.
Better being perceived as a ‘lazy manager’ than managing through control and lack of trust.
At Bridgeworks we specialise in facilitating higher levels of engagement and performance. Ask us how we can help you
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