On what it
means to give people space to learn without losing grip on your guidance.
Teamleaders,
parents, managers, and affiliated roles must all lead but also personally
progress. How do we make sure our subjects learn ánd grow without fearing you
lose control of your leadership and personal growth? Control is a prominent
attribute in your leadership role, you control the outcome of the employees
subject to your leadership. Alternatively you control the actions and
consequences of your offspring. However how
we exercise control is the defining factor in true lasting success of the
subjects. Often today “fear-based” management is a very common and control-facilitator:
“if you do not achieve this there will be [severe] consequences”. It works, but
that’s all. It works because we have a survival instinct, an innate instinct to
listen to the alpha. It has always been fear governing that instinct, we need
it to survive.
However as
the physical “alpha” becomes less and less important, so must our “fear-based
management” since asserting the alpha has evolved. We must redefine our
leadership structure to again re-invigorate the reasons why we do what we do
but mostly how we do what we do as
the preceding is a direct effect of the latter.
“Alphas”
must be decided on who knows best, not who fits best in the current
(potentially ignorant) situation to continue in an uneventful straight line
with (at most) minor bi-yearly changes. It is time to make the operational
aspect of the workplace as dynamic as management teams consider themselves to
be.
As our
society continues to become more educated we must not forget to raise the bar
of achievement in the workplace, not only for employees in the name of more and
higher targets but especially for our leadership / management roles. As people
start to question “why” leaders must be able to answer “this is why” or at
least be able to provide the information with which the employee can grapple
and find peace.
