Keep one person between you and the problem
"Leadership experience you ask? Well, I have 13 people following me on Twitter." Monday Leadership Humor
I heard a commander of mine say this once, "Rob, always keep one person between you and the problem." It made me laugh. He was clearly joking as his meaning was, shield yourself from all wrongdoing. We had a ton of responsibility placed upon us as Army officers and military leadership counter-culture sayings like this eased the tension. Here are a few more to get you laughing: "It only hurts if you care," "False motivation is better than no motivation." My all time favorite: "Mistakes are for combat, we have our careers to think about." That one, indicating a toxic, zero-defect environment always brought laughter.
Let's come full circle and give merit to this blog's subject line. Keeping a person between you and the problem is a sound leadership practice when done for the right reasons. Here are a few.
Delegate/Power Down. Give responsibility to your people. Give them ownership of the task including problem solving.
Empower. Provide a threshold below which they have the resources and authority to solve the problem on their own. For instance, you could authorize a sales person to spend up to $1,000 to fix a customer's problem. Anything above that figure you could require the salesperson to contact you for approval.
Train. Nothing teaches a person more than when they have ownership of a task including the problem solving which comes with it. Real scenarios teach better than any class. You can invest a few moments teaching problem solving or delivering intent instead of throwing a person to the wolves but consider the training benefit of this approach.
This concept, shielding yourself from the problems in your organization, is not meant to isolate you from the responsibilities of leadership. Rather, it allows you to lead properly. Many of the problems leaders are presented with are fully within the ability of the presenter to solve themselves. Your role is to provide the opportunity. Spend time seeing the bigger picture, promoting vision and culture, not mired in fixing everything.
Just don't get anything wrong. I'm kidding!
Make it Personal!
Rob
Rob Campbell