Resist the Urge to Control

If any of the teams I've supported see this, they'll think I should've follow my own advice lol. Truly, it's something I am working on. Think on this... as Leaders, when we try to control, or provide the answer, we stop critical thinking and ownership from occurring within our team.

In L. David Marquet's book "Turn the Ship Around", he discusses the idea of learning to let go as a method for establishing control. Push authority to the individuals withe information. On the teams I've supported, I tried to find more and more ways to empower our leaders to make decisions on their own provided they understand the impact of their decision, our team's/company's goals, and were intentional in their action. One measure for establishing this level of empowerment was to create procedures/policies that tied into the company's vision, our music team's mission, the intended outcome of the procedure/policy, and our guidance for how to execute. But then, also to indicate that at the end of the day we cared most about the outcome and that our values were followed in achieving that outcome... if the execution had to change/evolve to fit the circumstance, that's fine, as long as the outcome was achieved. What we discovered was a team that started innovating new ideas, leaders began leveraging their teams for their own creative thinking, and the leaders I directly supported became servant leaders to their teams.

To this day, I continue to find more ways to support leaders so that they can grow as owners of their worlds and as empowered individuals. To all leaders, whether I support you directly or not: resist the urge to control!