“Leadership” and “simple” probably don’t go together very well in the same sentence. Who in their right mind would believe that leadership is simple? The challenge, however, is in training a new leader – where do you start?

Take a quick peek at Amazon – one might start with one of over 60,000 books on leadership (yes, really). If that isn’t confusing enough, you don’t even think about using a search engine on the word “leader.” Google returns over 230 million hits (surprisingly, the third entry is for a bike store – what did that cost?). A look at the first two entries on Google – Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster – are descriptive, not instructive, but if you go down that road – defining “leadership” – you will find a maze of different definitions for the word “leader,” and a number of different types of leader.

The bottom line? Leadership is anything but simple.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t cut it in the real world. Managers need direction. It’s not the technical aspects of the management role that tend to create the most challenges, it’s the leadership aspects of the role. Again, the problem is where to start? How can we get a new leader moving in the right direction?

Leadership 101: Three Keys to Getting Started

Stepping into a leadership role presents a number of potential challenges, but the very first, and singularly most important, is the challenge of creating trust with your new team. In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni pinpoints the first problem of any dysfunctional team as the lack of trust. Indeed, the failure to create trust between leader and follower negates the ability of the leader to have any influence whatsover – the very definition of “leadership.”

For most new leaders, then, the first priority is to develop trust. The three steps outlined below will provide a simple, effective template to developing trust, creating direction, and engaging your employees – even as you are adapting to your new role and “learning the ropes.”

1. Make communication your first priority.

Yes, it sounds simple. Simplistic, even. Perhaps you were anticipating something more earth-shattering, but the stark truth is I have yet to consult with a company that doesn’t have communication issues. Usually significant communication issues. Even companies that work hard at making communication a priority will readily admit the challenges associated with doing so. Research indicates that clear, consistent communication is vital to organizational health, yet it might be the most consistent challenge in any organization, of any size.

How do you make communication a priority? First, make sure you think about communication every single day. Ask yourself these questions: Did I communicate well? Who does this (decision, project, request, etc.) impact? Who needs to be apprised of these developments? Does everyone that needs to know have a clear understanding of the issues and the answers?

Second, make sure that all meetings get email follow-ups: provide a big-picture summary of the meeting, review who is responsible for what, and make sure that key details are clearly defined for everyone involved.

Third, create one-on-one meetings with your direct reports and communicate face-to-face. There is no substitute whatsoever for one-on-one communication, but you have to learn to focus as much on listening as you do on talking. You will find that your communication will improve in direct proportion to your ability to create a dialogue with your employees.

2. Give your employees something tangible to focus on.

Savvy leaders understand intuitively that people work more effectively when they have something clear to focus on – and to believe in. There is a significant difference between simply going to work and doing one’s job, and working with purpose. That “purpose” is an ideal, or a an elevating goal, or a clearly defined finish line that allows employees to contribute to something worthwhile.

A high-profile illustration is provided by Ford Motor Company’s recent turnaround:

…Ford seemed on death’s door. It suffered a $12.6 billion loss in 2006, when industry-wide car sales were strong. But last year Ford became the only U.S. car company to avoid bankruptcy, and actually posted a $2.7 billion profit… Ford also has begun regaining market share after years of decline. It’s even possible that when auto makers report their February U.S. sales this coming week, Ford might top General Motors for the first time in more than 80 years…

Ford’s recent success is already amazing considering the prior half-dozen years of near-fatal decline. If it continues, Mr. Mulally [Ford's CEO] will be credited with one of the great turnarounds in corporate history. His method has been to simplify, relentlessly and systematically, a business that had grown way too complicated and costly to be managed effectively.

“Improve Focus, Simplify Operations,” reads one of Mr. Mulally’s (Ford CEO) many charts, which he repeats like a sacred mantra.

Whether you lead a a small department, small company, or serve as the CEO of a major corporation, this is a powerful principle. Create a focal point – a clear objective – and get everybody rowing in the same direction at the same time toward that objective. Determine very early what the focus for your employees should be, and make it your mantra.

When Howard Shultz took over as the CEO of Starbucks, he made the company’s vision very clear: “We are not in the coffee business serving customers. We are in the customer business, serving coffee.” This was an incredibly effective way of guiding the day-to-day work of every single employee – the focus was on customer satisfaction first and the product second.

What is your team’s focus?

3. Give your employees a voice.

The third key to getting started as a leader is to encourage your employees to provide input. Effective leaders know that employees generally know as much or more about what works than most managers. They do the work every day; they hear the complaints from customers; they see the limitations of the current methods. Unfortunately, most managers don’t LISTEN. They don’t see the value in co-opting each employee’s ideas and opinions, usually because they have a mistaken notion about what management and leadership are all about.

On the other hand, effective leaders actively solicit the opinions of employees, and carefully consider their input, as described in a recent Center for Creative Leadership article:

“In most organizations, the costs of command-and-control are not accounted for — we don’t see what is not being done; we don’t measure missed opportunities; we can’t track potential efficiencies.”

As a result, top-down firms suffer from what Carney calls low “execution capacity.” “Whether working on a mundane task or a major corporate initiative, employees who aren’t engaged — and more so the actively disengaged ones — don’t go the extra mile that is so often critical to meeting deadlines or avoiding penalties or the loss of a customer,” he notes.

In contrast, when leaders give people control over their work, stop telling them how to do their jobs and focus on the goals, the hidden costs are replaced with numerous benefits. Employee stress goes down, absenteeism decreases and engagement goes up. Productivity improves and innovation is possible.

“Anybody who does a job eight hours a day is going to see ways in which that job could be improved or simplified,” Carney explains. “Giving them the freedom to do so can, when multiplied across an entire organization, reap enormous gains.”

Giving your employees a voice doesn’t mean that you will be able to accommodate every suggestion, or implement every idea. However, some great ideas will come out of those conversations, and, more importantly, your employees will recognize that you value their opinions. As there are very few things that are more powerful to a leader than to create a culture where individuals are valued, this is a powerful first step in creating a strong leader.

Conclusion

You will likely make a lot of mistakes in your leadership journey, but those mistakes will be fewer and less costly if you get started down the right path. Clearly, each of these three keys can be misused, even abused; but a strong and humble effort in these three areas will move you rapidly down the leadership path and prepare you for the many leadership lessons that are sure to come your way.

“I would love to see the boss do my job!”

Some employees are getting that chance. Undercover Boss, which debuts on February 7 after the Super Bowl, is the newest television show to join the onslaught of reality show programming. The idea is simple enough – take a corporate CEO and put him in one of the front line jobs in the company.  The objective is to provide the CEO with a glimpse of the everyday challenges associated with the jobs that drive the company forward. No, not administrative or sales positions, but the primary jobs that define the company’s work.

A good idea, though not necessarily a new one, as pointed out in a recent Harvard Business Review blog post:

More than forty years ago, Robert Townsend, the former head of Avis Rent-a-Car described how he had his executives spend time every month working behind a rental counter, and similar versions of this activity were documented many years ago in HBR and elsewhere. They serve as valuable, first-hand reminders for managers of how difficult certain jobs are, how hard their people work, and how silly or unfair some of their company’s rules can be. And that is where the opportunity lies.

No doubt, it is a great idea to have managers – especially executives – spend time doing the jobs they are responsible for managing. At the very least, a close observation of those jobs would reveal policies, procedures, rules, or methods that should be addressed.

Trading Places (in reverse)

Interestingly enough, an article crossed my desk recently that discussed a completely opposite approach – having an employee go undercover as the CEO. Well, sort of. Here is the idea as suggested by Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga:

I’d turn people into C.E.O.’s. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what, and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.

This is an interesting idea, and works on a number of levels. First, people like to have some control over their own destiny; to have some say-so about something of consequence on the job. It is one of the reasons why certain employees can be guilty of hoarding information or resources, or carving out an area of responsibility and protecting it like an endangered species. In pursuing some meaning or purpose in their work, or, in some cases, just attempting to provide a level of job security for themselves, those employees try to create a layer of control and authority that may not exist.

Making an employee the “CEO” over something specific is one way to provide the purpose that employee is seeking. Certainly, she should be adequately trained to perform the role. She should understand the expectations for the role. She should comprehend the impact of her role on other people and departments. Ultimately, however, by passing the authority and responsibility (within defined limits) for a particular item or area of responsibility to the employee, and designating her as the “CEO” of that area, is an excellent way to create value for her as a person and an employee.

Second, people develop confidence in themselves and create satisfaction in their work when they have the ability to achieve something noteworthy. At the same time, employees vary in the level of talent they bring to a job, so in assuming the title of “CEO” over something that fits their skill-set and talent level, they have the opportunity to create personal success and directly observe their own contribution to the success of the team.

A word of caution: It is a good idea, but like so many ideas, proper execution is critical. An effective leader will prepare the employee to assume the role of “CEO” rather than simply apply the title. Promotion without preparation is the key to disaster.

In a November 2009 Fast Company article entitled “How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn’t Dumb,” Nancy Lublin writes, “Mission statements are like corporate Hallmark cards. Often written in a bland cursive font and plastered conspicuously at headquarters, these aspiring epigrams are pretty words in Air Supply-like rhythm.” Need proof? Here’s a fairly standard example:

“Committed to building a family of the world’s best fashion brands offering captivating customer experiences that drive long-term loyalty and deliver sustained growth for our shareholders.”

Wow. Eliminate the word “fashion” and you could drop this gem into just about any company in the world. It does, however, contain many of the approved business buzz words: committed, customer, growth, shareholders. (The company? Victoria’s Secret.)

How does your company stack up? Quickly, off the top of your head, write down your company’s Mission Statement.

Welcome back. Some of you were curious enough to go look at the framed version in the conference room, or pull out your faded, dusty HR Manual and check inside. In my experience, less than ten percent of employees know the company’s Mission Statement. Which begs the question: why do companies create Mission Statements? If your people don’t know what it says, they almost surely don’t live by it, so what good is it?

Mission or Confusion?

Let’s take a look at the details of your company’s Mission Statement. Is your company dedicated to ‘unparalleled quality’ and ‘superior customer service’? Focused on ‘serving your customers’? Do you ‘provide value to your stakeholders’? Maybe your Mission Statement reads something like this classic:

“[We are]…engaged in socially responsible operations, worldwide. It is dedicated to provide products and services of such quality that our customers will receive superior value while our employees and business partners will share in our success and our stock-holders will receive a sustained superior return on their investment.”

As it turns out, this isn’t working out real well for General Motors. And no wonder – among the many problems the company has, their Mission Statement is about as motivating as yesterday’s leftovers. Again, you can cut-and-paste that generic dribble into just about any company in the world.

In 1989, Carl Larson and Frank LaFasto published a book entitled “Teamwork: What Must Go Right, What Can Go Wrong.” In researching high-performance teams, they discovered that these teams shared a common characteristic – what Larson and LaFasto called a “clear and elevating goal.” Their research revealed that a clear and compelling mission is a critical component of team success. High performance teams, they said, “have both a clear understanding of the goal and a belief that the goal embodies a worthwhile or important result.” Lublin’s Fast Company article points to survey results that arrive at a similar conclusion:

Mission statements don’t have to be dumb. In fact, they can be very valuable, if they articulate real targets. The first thing I’d do is forget the exact words and remember the reason for a statement in the first place. In 2006, Wilson Learning surveyed 25,000 employees from the finance and tech industries. Respondents said they wanted a leader who could “convey clearly what the work unit is trying to do.” The same applies to mission statements, which set the tone. Employees, vendors, and clients don’t get stoked by fuzzy mission statements. They will line up behind concrete goals.

Muddled mission statements are simply an exercise in futility. Employees rarely have any idea what they say, and they certainly have no influence on day-to-day workplace performance. On the other hand, a clear and elevating goal can galvanize a team, giving your employees something they can line up behind.

Want a great example of a clear and compelling Mission Statement? Here’s one that has created a legion of followers:

“These are the voyages of the Starship, Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: To explore strange new worlds; To seek out new life and new civilizations; To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Clear enough?

In many circles, leadership is seen as stepping up and “getting things done.” Which, by the way, can be true, but in many circumstances is not such a good idea, because stepping in and doing the job for someone is a quick way to stifle learning and creativity.

Effective leaders learn when to allow their people to pursue their own ideas, and, more importantly, are willing to give them the latitude to make mistakes. It might be easier to simply do the work for them, but trying and failing (or making a mistake or two) is a powerful learning tool. Good leaders know this because they have been down that road themselves; they have made mistakes and gained valuable insight and wisdom from the process. Saving their employees from that experience may seem like a good idea at the time, but the long-term benefits are compromised.

Deborah Dunsire, M.D., is the president and chief executive of Millennium, a pharmaceutical company specializing in oncology medication, and she was named the 2009 Healthcare Businesswoman’s Association Woman of the Year. In a recent NY Times interview entitled “Stepping Out of the Sandbox,” she discussed the idea of allowing people to fix their own problems:

The light bulb didn’t pop to full intensity right away. But I heard gentle feedback that, “You’re in my sandbox and we’re not accomplishing a lot being in here together.” I’ve also heard feedback from a team I worked with that said, “Gee, we know you’re good at this stuff and you’ve done it, but sometimes we need to kind of bang our heads a little bit more without you fixing it.”

I grew to understand more and more that the job of leadership is developing people, and that it involves not doing everything for them, but sometimes allowing them to stub their toe. The work may not come in perfectly, but the learning was much more effective, and people felt empowered to own the outcome in a different way. Putting that into practice was very hard for me because it’s very hard for me to see a problem and not try and fix it.

Again, strong leaders often rise to their positions in large part because of their ability to solve problems and get things done. Unfortunately, this may translate into becoming a particular type of leader – one who steps in to fix rather than to teach or coach. What effective leaders understand is that their primary role is to develop their people to be effective in their jobs, not to create a team of assistants to the leader.

Let Employees Develop Their Ideas

One particular application of this idea is the situation where subordinates present ideas or argue for a particular course of action. As Dunsire points out, if the leader identifies every potential flaw, employees will soon learn that discussion is a waste of time:

When a person is presenting a position, I’ll find any flaws in the logic. But when you’re senior and the other person is more junior, it becomes inappropriate to always point them out because it shuts down that person’s ability to discuss. So I learned to ask questions in a different way, because the feedback I got was that I just laser in on the flaws in the argument and start peeling them down and that feels very uncomfortable…

The last thing you want to do is really destroy somebody. I think that ability to argue and win would be better suited to a criminal courtroom than a business setting. There’s nothing wrong with the strength of being able to do that. The trick is how you manage that in the situation you’re in.

In many ways, this may be the most difficult lesson for young leaders to learn. Your employees will never reach their performance potential, nor will they enjoy working for you if they feel they have no room to grow. The quickest way to give that impression is to protect them from every potential mistake, or point out every flaw in their ideas.

The notion of leadership has been examined from just about every perspective imaginable. Take a run through the business section of your favorite bookstore and you will find no shortage of leadership ideas.

On the other hand, if you read enough, you will find a number of consistent themes that good leaders share. Several of those key leadership traits were mentioned by Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, in a recent New York times interview (He Was Promotable After All, by Adam Bryant…read complete article here):

Q. What is the most important leadership lesson you have learned?

A. What I’ve really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership. However, you need a dose of realism with it. People don’t like to follow pessimists. I’d say that I’ve also learned, in general, to be more patient. I’ve learned to be more focused. I’ve learned to listen better and manage reaction time better. What I mean by that is not overreacting to things that are said to me, because sometimes it’s easy to do that.

Q. Tell me about your best and worst bosses.

A. I’ve worked for some great leaders. Roone Arledge was a consummate perfectionist. He drove everybody to levels of perfection or to come as close as possible to it. You exhausted every possibility there was to make something great or make something better.

Tom Murphy and Dan Burke taught me the importance of trust and managing people. You could learn from them but you also had the opportunity to go out and take those learnings and actually apply them on your own. There was a decentralized approach to the way they ran the company.

To lead a company or to lead a team, a good leader must first of all be competent. It is all but impossible to gain credibility with employees unless you have, or rapidly develop, a high level of understanding and competence. However, this is not typically where leaders fail to garner support. More likely it is one of the five things mentioned by Iger that create a disconnect with employees: a lack of patience, a lack of focus, the failure to listen, the failure to trust people, or the inability to create optimism in the organization.

How do you grade in each of these five areas?

My experience is that focus is usually not a problem, but both patience and listening can be a challenge. Leaders tend to be right more than they are wrong, so they develop a lot of confidence in their abilities and their answers. However, really effective leaders surround themselves with talent and learn to listen carefully to what those talented people have to say – especially when the opinions offered vary from their own.

In the same way, optimism is usually not a critical issue, but trusting people often creates a challenge. With success or failure riding on the outcome, weak leaders may resort to doing things themselves. This common mistake can have a dramatic impact on the organization’s performance.

Stop and evaluate yourself in these five key areas – there is the potential to make a huge step forward in your leadership ability.

People usually do their best work when the task at hand is something they believe in. It’s not that people won’t work if the task is mundane or fails to serve their interests, they just don’t develop the same passion and intensity they would for something that is truly important to them.

The challenge is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to connect every job – or any job all the time – to something that is inherently motivating to the employee. Great managers overcome this hurdle by creating a mission and vision for the company and finding people who share a passion for that vision.

The weakness for most managers, assuming they have created a compelling vision for the company, is communicating it effectively. This issues was discussed in a recent article from AMA’s Leader’s Edge newsletter (March 2009):

So, why don’t leaders focus more of their time and energy on communicating to inspire others? The simple answer is that they feel they are too busy with their own tasks. Many are struggling to keep their heads above water, trapped by demanding schedules of travel, meetings, and day-to-day activities. Yet, if leaders don’t find the time to physically connect with their people, to communicate an inspiring message and mission, they ultimately fail.

["How to Motivate Like a CEO" by Suzanne Bates. March 2009.]

Whether you lead a team, a department, or a company, it is critically important to “connect” with your people – and connect them to the organization. The nature of the organization is irrelevant. The key is that people are more focused, more enthusiastic, and more willing to go the extra mile when they are inspired by the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Bates explains:

Leaders who connect people with the company and its message and strategy find it far simpler to accomplish their goals. These leaders harness energy and talent and drive their organizations forward. You can see the difference in the way they behave: they preside over an organization of people who are working, not just for a paycheck, but to achieve their own potential as individuals. They want to make a difference. They believe that what they are doing matters and it motivates them and ignites their passion and creativity. They become energized by the possibilities and feel connected to each other by a common purpose.

What exactly can you do as a manager to harness this powerful idea? Here are some ideas to consider:

• Work with your team to create an identity (Who are we?)
• Set your standard of performance to be the very best at what your team does
• Recognize and celebrate excellence at every opportunity
• Make one-on-one communication your most important priority

Take time to create vision and purpose for your team – you won’t be disappointed.

“Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.”
Henry Ford

Everything about the economy is bad these days. Unemployment is rising rapidly. The housing industry is in free fall. The automotive industry is collapsing. Experts believe that GDP may actually shrink this year. At the same time, consumers are being squeezed by rising credit card rates and dramatic losses in retirement fund accounts. For any business, these are uncertain times.

For many companies, the knee-jerk reaction to this situation is to slash budgets, lay off workers, and batten down the hatches. Too much risk. Way too much uncertainty. Unfortunately, these decisions are often misplaced or mistimed because they are made outside the context of a strategic plan. This is critical: in the absence of a defining strategy, any decision is potentially a good one – or a bad one. How can you really tell? The point is that many businesses tend to flounder in uncertain times because they lack any semblance of a plan to guide their decision-making.

The question, however, is whether or not there is opportunity in this current economic uncertainty. Invariably, the answer is yes, and the savvy business owner will seek to identify and capitalize on those opportunities. Case in point: when auto dealerships began to suffer from declining new car sales, some immediately revised their market strategies to capitalize on used car sales. Auto Data Corporation reports that, while new car sales were down 30 percent in January 2009, sales of pre-owned cars increased 10 percent. Some dealerships are revising their business models to initiate programs to aggressively acquire used cars, provide longer-term used-car warranties, and improve repair and maintenance services for customers.

Those businesses that see opportunity in uncertainty will invariably flourish.

Success, however, always begins with a plan.

Creating a vision is critically important for an organization. Vision not only creates purpose, but it unifies the organization and provides its guiding principles. A majority of CEOs agree that this particular skill is among the most important for their position:

The Center for Creative Leadership collected data from 146 CEOs between September 2007 and September 2008. They were asked to select the top five factors for success in their current position from a list of 13 items. The ability to communicate a strong vision emerged as the single most critical factor according to 75 percent of the CEOs surveyed. [Quotation from CCL Online Newsletter. Leading Effectively: Think and Act Beyond. March 2009]

Although CEOs find that communicating a strong vision is very important, the question for us to consider is whether or not this is a critical skill for a mid-level manager, department head, or other team leader.

The answer to this question, I believe, is unequivocally “yes.” Keep in mind that the vision may be one that originated with the CEO, the owner, or the leader of the company, but every manager needs to communicate a strong vision to his/her team because vision creates purpose for a team. Great teams always rally around a common purpose, a clear and compelling objective.

The challenge is that, in many companies, a strong vision doesn’t exist or is not communicated effectively. This creates a void that a strong manager will rush to fill because top performance is essentially unattainable in the absence of a clear and compelling objective.

If there is not a guiding purpose or vision articulated within your company, get with your team and create one together. Help them find a common goal, a compelling objective they can work towards together. When people find a purpose for doing their best, they will find ways to do just that.

As a manager, what would you say is the ultimate objective of your employees? If you answer is “to do his/her job well” or “reach their performance objectives” you would be consistent with the answer given by most managers. However, while job performance is certainly essential to success, it is all too easy to overlook the point that, ultimately, every employee’s objective is to to serve the customer!

Stephen Covey has said that management is “efficiency in climbing the ladder of success”, while leadership “determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” In this case, the good leader makes sure that his/her employees understand that their primary responsibility is to delight the customer – internal and/or external. This small, but critical, detail is often completely overlooked!

I had the opportunity to experience recently what happens when companies forget this key concept (read the painful details here). “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us; we are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

Mahatma Gandhi In “doing their job”, two employees that I encountered completely forgot that customers are the reason they have a job function to perform. I made a special trip to a doctor’s office to pay an amount due for an office visit made by my son the day before. When I presented payment, I was informed that the office couldn’t take my money because “the invoice hasn’t been built yet.” I suggested that they might take the money and then apply the payment when said invoice was ready. No dice, they said.

No, seriously.

A company works very, very hard to create customers that pay for the products and services that, in turn, pay salaries and create a profit for the stakeholders. Does it make sense that employees receive little, if any, direction on how best to serve those customers?

In some cases, the “customer” is an internal one. For example, the payroll department serves the company’s employees by providing an accurate paycheck with all of the appropriate bonuses, deductions, withdrawals, etc. How effectively this job is done directly affects the morale of all of the company’s employees. Those in payroll should be instructed to see these internal “customers” as their first and foremost responsibility.

Internal or external customer; it doesn’t matter – every job should be connected to a customer in some way. Here are some keys to keeping your employees “customer-focused”:

1. Identify each employee’s internal and external customer(s)
2. Create expectations for serving those customers
3. Train your employees to serve those customers effectively
4. Discuss the importance of attitude in serving customers

Every manager seems to struggle with time issues. In most instances, there is the feeling that there is never enough time to get everything done – even by coming in early, staying late, and answering emails at all hours of the day. Many wind up feeling chained to the office, which often times translates into serious challenges with work/life balance.

Part of the problem is that managers often fail to develop the capacity of their employees. If this is the case, when they have to (or choose to) solve every problem or be involved in every decision or issue, they inevitably become a bottleneck in the team’s performance. Unfortunately, the amount of stress this places on managers is enormous.

Here is a portion of an email I received recently from one of the participants in a client training class:

“It has been a learning process since I became a manager, but I know that sometimes
I concentrate more in trying to fix every issue out there rather than taking the time to
develop my people. I know they’re capable – it’s just lack of training.”

This is fairly typical of most managers, not just new ones. Managers are routinely hired because of their technical capabilities or performance history, so, in the absence of training or a good role model, they tend to view management as solving problems, making decisions, and telling people what needs to be done. As a result, they often fail to comprehend the value of working to develop the performance capacity of their employees. However, if they don’t figure it out in a hurry, they wind up stressed out of their mind and complaining about the lack of time to get anything done.

On the other hand, when employees are trained well, and effectively empowered to solve many of the problems and issues that were previously left to the manager to handle, the “bottleneck” problem lessens dramatically. As a result, the manager discovers they have much more of what they need the most – time.