Career Tip: Let Go of the Little Things
By Kristen Hayer
When I was a new manager, my assumption was that because I had been promoted, all the tactics I had used as a successful sales rep were: 1. Why I had been promoted, and 2. Useful in my new role as the leader of my team.
Wow, I was wrong. I spent the next 5 years of my career making my first few teams miserable because I was a micromanager with perfectionist expectations and limiting my own career by doing so. I spent the 5 years after that trying to undo the damage and learning about leadership.
The biggest thing I had to learn was that people can do the same job, successfully, in different ways. The result is what matters, not the means. As a process-driven person this was an incredibly tough lesson. I spent my early years in the United States. Here, there is a prescribed process for success. I learned early that it isn’t just about what you do, it’s about how you do it. Luckily, I got to spend ages 11-18 in Papua New Guinea (a story for another post). This gave me a broader perspective, which has come in handy as I’ve developed my skills as a leader. However, when I landed back in the US for university, I immersed myself in the American culture once again.
After college, I spent several years in sales, and was successful. I’m persuasive and friendly, and combined with taking the time to learn a lot about what I was selling, it worked. Then I was promoted. If any of my first sales team happens to be reading this article, I apologize. In hindsight, I was a terrible manager at first. I sincerely thought that my job was to make everyone like me. I thought that because I had been successful and gotten promoted, that it was my job to replicate myself across my team.
That couldn’t have been further from the truth. I learned, over time and after many mistakes, that the job of a leader is to enhance the unique skills and abilities of each member of your team. Everyone brings something special to the table. If you try to make everyone perform the way that you perform, you’ll miss out on the unique abilities of your team.
This is tough, however, because it means you need to let go of the little things. As a leader, you can put a framework around what you need in terms of results and milestones, but you can’t get into the weeds of how someone should do the work. Dictating the “how” is problematic on two levels:
YOU HAVE TO MICROMANAGE EVERYONE
If you’re a leader right now, I know you feel this! You do not have time to manage your own work and the work of everyone on your team. You just don’t. You have to trust that you have hired or inherited smart people who can do what you need them to do. You need to let them do things in their own way, or you’ll spend all of your time managing them, and none of your time managing up. This will limit your own career progression.
YOU MISS OUT ON THE SKILLS OF YOUR TEAM
I know you got promoted because you’re awesome, but your version of awesome isn’t everyone else’s version of awesome. Hopefully you have a diverse team. Leverage that diversity, knowledge, and skill by letting your team drive initiatives, build programs and work with the customers in the way they think is right. This is true empowerment, and when you empower your team, great things happen.
If you’re a leader, I would recommend looking at how you manage. Do you require every detail to be “the way I would do it” or do you provide a framework for success and measure the results? If it’s the former, I would recommend making it a priority to let go of the little things. Does it really matter if the font is correct, or the presentation was delivered exactly how you would have delivered it? Probably not. Push yourself to release the details. Your team and your career will thank you.
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