010: Empower Your Team

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today. We're talking about empowerment, and it's ugly counterpart micromanagement. Empowering your team requires a commitment from you to develop them along with you being compassionate as they make mistakes while they grow. It requires you to be humble and take risk. But I know you can do it because the rewards will be great. Welcome to the finance leader podcast. Where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLane. This is the podcast for developing leaders and finance and accounting. This is Episode number 10 and today I will discuss first what drives you as a leader. And then we're gonna talk about empowerment and micromanagement. Now let's get into the show. I want to ask you a question. What drives you as a leader? How do you think you're gonna advance your career? I want you to consider this question also. What's your level of respect for people today? We're gonna be talking about empowerment and micromanagement. We're gonna talk about the two differences as people lead their teams. One is very focused on growth and the other is focused on control and fear. And the goal of empowerment is to develop, grow and then trust your team members to complete tasks and eventually so that they could make decisions on your behalf. That's the ideal state. When you commit yourself to empire in your team members, this requires you to take risk and have that long term view of what your team can accomplish. Now, listen to me. It will make you doubt yourself while you coach, mentor and learn to let go of your fears and then let go of control. Your team members are gonna make mistakes. What will you do? How will you handle it? Are you gonna take back control? No, we're not gonna take back control. What you're gonna do is you're gonna smile and you're gonna support them with compassion. As you help them figure out how to become better, you're gonna have to learn how to take criticism from your boss and those above you. But keep hold of that vision of what you're trying to accomplish. You're trying to build a team that can do things without you trying to build a team that can do tasks without you having to monitor and control every step of the way. You're trying to build a team that can make decisions that can become better. That could help the organization without you having to make every decision for them. And when you keep hold of that vision and you create that team, the rewards, they're gonna be great. You're gonna be able to focus on other things. You're gonna build a focus on bigger tasks, bigger issues, how to build the business, how to build a better team, how to support senior management and senior leaders and the executive team. You will have a team who can get things done without fear. They will be happier. They're gonna feel empowered to get things done without you controlling every move. Now I want to talk about micro managers and how they operate, and they operate out of fear and they operate out of arrogant. Micro managers are usually tormented. They usually have loss of anxiety and lots of security. Oftentimes they have a feeling of either inadequacy or they feel that they need to control every aspect of every decision of every step of every task. So they appear to be something that they really aren't. They try to control the output. They try to control what everything looks like from the outside, and they'll say that others don't perform to their standard. I want to focus on two types of micro managers today. The first is the typical arrogant and ambitious one who is more general in common in the business world. This person is a climber who's gonna control all decision and wants to be out front. He wants to be seen, is doing everything. It wants to be seen as the hero. This person is going to be the one that's going to speak to upper management to the executive team. They're gonna control every piece that's leaving their office. It's only because they can climb the ladder. They don't focus on developing others. They're gonna climb that ladder and then they're going to be gone. They're very common. They aren't so worried about the work that's being done, but they're definitely focused more on the appearance of what their team is doing and the appearance of the work is being done, and the impact of their actions, at least the perception of the impact of their actions to senior management so they can just go ahead and get done what they need to get done, and then they climb the ladder and they're gone, and then the next person comes in. Now the 2nd 1 is more common to the finance and accounting profession, and that's where I want to spend most of my time. The 2nd 1 is very common in our profession because we pride ourselves in our technical confidence because we want to produce the most accurate results. And this type of micro manager is very stuck on the technical aspect of the task. I want to step back just a little bit, and I want to talk about what produces a micromanager number one. If their boss micromanages, then they will probably micromanage. Also micromanage every aspect because it's tough having a boss. It's a micro manager and you don't want to. But it almost forces you to be one because they're gonna come in and control also down below you every step in every aspect and be so detail oriented that you almost have to control everything just that they leave you alone. Another reason that micro managers are produced is that if the organization you are in has limited opportunities or at least perceived limited opportunities and everybody is going to be controlling every little bit for a very limited promotion. They're gonna get Maur fearful and more controlling and tryto get that one promotion. And that's what happens. And it creates a system of mistrust and controlling, and it just creates a cycle you like to be in an organization has lots of opportunities, lots of ways to get promoted so that everyone has a perceived chance to get promoted. And then people won't be as mistrustful or as controlling with their teams. They could take a little bit more risk. Third reason, as sometimes people believe that they can only advance on their own work, that they only can rely on themselves. And that's what happens. They try to control the tasks and the output because it's only on their hard work that they can get promoted. Another reason is especially that goes back to that second reason of limited opportunities that they will perceive others as threats, including their own team. So they don't well their team members to advance or allow the team members to grow because they're afraid that their team members are gonna take away an opportunity from them and thus they become a micromanager and controlling of every piece of information. That leaves the team every decision that's made every step of every task, and then they will not allow their team members to get in front of other people. And they will try to put fences around them because they perceive them as threats and they're gonna try to control everything. So those air, the four things I just want one of the highlight of how micro managers can be produced. So I want to get back to what happens in the finance and accounting field and how we produce micro managers. We often promote in our field the person who is more technically competent. These people are praised for their vast knowledge that hard work their attention to detail. These people know the science of finance and accounting. They are advanced in Microsoft Excel. They know data information systems, and they know how to solve technical problems. This is how they get promoted because they're perceived as problem solvers. Perceived is getting things done correctly in this field. They produce the numbers that senior management is looking for and the processes that senior management looking for they provide the backstory and the narrative, and they're very good at doing their projections and their journal entries. In their analysis. They're very technically savvy. They know how to solve a good projection. You know how to solve a good problem to grow the business, and then they get promoted. However, they probably lacked people skills very focused on their work. They're very focused in knowing how to get a good spread sheet together. Good analysis, a good projection. And what happens when they do get promoted is that they don't trust their team members to do the same level of work that they do. They become fearful of letting down the person who promoted them or fearful that they will look incompetent. And then that circle continues. They're gonna want to control every calculation, every aspect, every step of every task, because they're fearful of producing some work that's not quite up to the same level that they did individually. So they give out a task to a team member. They're gonna check every calculation because they were promoted on their great technical ability on their ability to produce a good analysis or whatever job that they were doing, and they they want to produce the same work, they wanna have the same level. And I understand that. However you need to grow that person just like you grew and your technical ability, you need to also grow that same person. You need to teach them and coach them and mentor them and let them take a little bit of risk. Have them a little bit of room to grow and develop, so that circle continues, and then people could become frustrated and they feel like they're being controlled with they are. But where we want to go is empowerment. We want to build teams around trust, and leaders need to be willing to take that risk. We need to be creating healthy competition that you should be creating competition between the person and the standard that they're supposed to achieve. As a leader. I want you to know that everything that you accomplished that successful and every time that you have a failure. All of these can be teaching points. You can use it to teach your team to become better become or excellent. I want leaders who invest in the team that are also willing to accept average performance today, but knowing the team will improve because you've taken risk with a team member on a tough task and you haven't controlled every aspect, you've given good guidance and you let them run with the task. And maybe it's not quite to excellence today. Maybe it's average you coach and mentor them to show them where they get better without a condescending attitude but with an attitude of growth and compassion. We need to focus on having Maur autonomy at the individual contributor level, and I want the leader to be focused on coaching and developing. And again, this is all built on trust and risk taking. We need to have the right attitudes to make it work. Now I'm gonna ask you another question. Can you be a hands on leader but not micromanage? And I believe you can, because I believe that I've done that. It's about sharing information. It's about focusing on coaching and mentoring, and it's about how to respect others. And it's about respecting opinions. And it's about treating people with dignity, and I want to go back. It's about sharing information. It's about setting a person up for a task properly. You give them every piece of information. You can give them good guidance on how to accomplish the task. Maybe you give them a tip or two. How to get it done. Maybe tell them of, ah, a few people that they need to go see to get some information, help them accomplish the task. And then they share information back with you about statuses and about where they are. We set up milestones, and we set up reviews, but we don't go into each step of the task of how they get there. We don't say we'll go do Step one and then come back and show me the result. And now go to step to and come back and show me the result. Have them do it, finish the result and then give him an opportunity to go speak to you, the senior leader of the person that has requested the information. And then, if it's not quite up to your technical standard, then you teach them better. You teach them or down the road, you teach them how to do that. But you let them do it for a win. Today I want you to ask yourself how much do you control? Have you had the honest conversation with yourself? Do you allow your team members to get tasks done without you watching and checking every step of every task? And I want you to go through these next couple of steps that you take a little bit of risk the next time that there's a task that requires some interaction with your boss. I want you to hand that to a team member. I want you to give them the best guidance you can to get the task done. I want you to tell them that they can come back to you as much as they need to for additional guidance or clarification. And then once they're ready and then finished with the task, I don't want you to check every detail of the task. I don't want you to check every calculation. You can check the results, and you can have them pitch it to you and have them explain how you're gonna how they're gonna explain the task. And then you're gonna go Let them present that to your boss. Whoever needs it done without you going there now, if the meeting went well, good job to everyone. Keep doing that. Keep getting better. But if it didn't go quite as well as you as you hoped it would be, let's not get upset with those results. I want you to be encouraging and then talk about what happened and then figure out a way forward and teach how that person can become better. I want you to coach without being condescending and then have them rework the task if it needs to be done and then let him go do it again. This is a step process for you to take a little risk with a team member and focus on that growth and remind yourself what's the end state? We're gonna have a team that's better, Bill to make decisions on their own and be able to get some things done without you watching every step of the way, and that frees you up to do other bigger tasks for the organization. It's gonna be a win win. You have developed the members you're also gonna develop and gonna focus on bigger tasks, and the organization is gonna win. In this episode, we talked about empowerment and micromanagement. Now, before I end this episode, I want to share a couple of statistics. I found an article by the American Society of Public Administration, and the title of the article is damaging effects of micromanagement written by Linda Barnes in 2015. And she lets out a few statistics from some research that was done. And I'm just gonna quote right out of the article. Some of the statistics and these air not surprising. And the 1st 1 is that 79% of respondents of the survey that was done had experienced micromanagement. Not surprising, and approximately 69% said they considered changing jobs because of micromanagement. Following that, 36% actually changed jobs because of micromanagement. And finally, 71% said being micromanaged interfered with their job performance, while 85% said their morale was negatively impacted. I'm not surprised at all by those statistics. From what I've seen in my career. Those are very accurate. Micromanagement affects everyone. It affects growth. It affects morale and effects people satisfaction with their jobs. They don't want to work for a micromanager, and even if they decide to change jobs, they're probably gonna end up with another micro manager again. so just challenging you all to do a self assessment, Continue to take some risk, grow out of that in maturity of being a micromanager. You could be hands on without doing it. And just encouraging you to continue to focus on the growth of your team so that you can benefit your team could benefit. The organization can benefit. All right, this concludes season one of the podcast. I appreciate all of your support. Next week, I'm gonna have a bonus episode out as I lay out what is coming next in the podcast. I appreciate all the comments. I appreciate all the support and the feedback. Thank you so much. We're gonna have a lot more coming out. We're gonna continue to focusing on leadership development because I believe, as I have said before, that leadership can set you apart from your peers. And as you are developing your leadership, senior leaders are gonna notice it. I hope you enjoyed the show today. You can find this episode on Apple podcasts, Spotify and many other podcast platforms. You can download the show notes by going to steven McClane dot com. Please join our community on Facebook. The finance leader podcast Facebook Group. This will be our community to grow within the finance and accounting profession until next time you can check out more resource. Is that Stephen mclean dot com And sign up for my updates. So you don't miss an episode of the show. Now go lead your team and see you next time. Thank you.