One of my favourite quotes 💡📌

^{"There is a crack, a crack in everything.}

^{That's how the light gets in"}

Leonard Cohen

Leadership Spotlight ✨✨

• ‘I’d like to have a look at that email before you send it please?’

• ‘Let me know when you have that meeting with our VP, I will join you.’

• ‘Are you sure you would like to use that approach? I think you should use this one instead.’

• ‘Why are you using those colours in the presentation? Please use the ones I sent you yesterday.’

The above are words uttered in workplaces all over the world, every day.

They tend to come from one of the absolute worst species populating corporate floors: the Micromanager.

One would think they would be extinct by now. It is the 21^st century after all. (then again look at who’s running some of the most important offices in the world these days so who am I kidding?)

Micromanagers thrive on details. Details to them equate to control. And control equals power.

If they lose control over the details however, they feel completely lost.

They respond by fight or flight: even more micromanagement, sprinkled with a touch of aggression, or needing to take a forced break from work.

See, micromanagement is essentially driven by fear.

(Which is why a short-term tactic to survive micromanagement is to give pro-active updates on a regular basis so they feel in control of what is happening. This is never a long-term solution though so either the micromanager goes or you need to go!)

Does any of this sound like a leader to you? No, right.

Leaders are not a fearful species. Not by far.

Yet so many aspiring or new leaders I work with, get stuck in the details. They say they want to be a part of the strategy and the bigger picture yet they say they do not have the time to do so.

Why?

Because they spend all their time doing the work. They sit in the same meetings their teams attend. They are part of the brainstorms and building stuff.

That is what got them promoted up until now. It is their key to success.

It won’t get them to that next level though.

Next level leadership requires letting go. And boy is that hard.

Removing oneself from all the action (because that’s what it feels like at first) feels utterly foreign. They’ll come up with all sorts of excuses – not unfamiliar ones to the micromanager:

• “It won’t be good enough unless I’m there!”

• “This how I’ve always done this – I know my job and it’s done like this.”

• “I do not have the time to teach others how to lead the meeting and build that thing.”

• “I once tried to delegate this one project and it went all wrong and my boss will have my head if I let that happen again.”

• “There is nobody in my team who is capable enough of doing this.”

Sounds familiar?

Look, nobody said this was going to be easy.

YOU, however, have chosen to take the path of leadership and nobody ever said it was going to be easy. And that’s ok, because you don’t DO easy.

So you start right HERE:

• Trust people

• Make it a habit

• Block time in your calendar

• Focus on what’s in front of you now

• Think beyond the realms of your immediate team

 Let’s expand those so you can kick this off right away:

• Trust people

  It’s very simple really: if you do not start trusting people, you will only ever get more on your plate. You will never be able to take a break, relax and have a cosy evening with your family. If that’s your thing, go for it.

  For 99% of people, that is not sustainable (or fun!) in the long run.

  Trusting people is the alpha and omega of delegating. You hired people because they had what it took to do the job. So let them do the job. Trust them and SAY out loud that you do. You’ll be surprised by the results.

•  Make it a habit

  Chances are you are a DIY person in all areas of your life. So any task thrown at you, you will add to your own pile. No questions asked. You grind away and complain about all the work but deep down, you believe that this is how it’s done.

  Except it’s not.

  Whenever something new lands on your desk, ask yourself: is this for me to do? Or do I simply need to facilitate the doing? Is there someone in my team who is especially well equipped to do this task?

  Start doing this over and over again: question who needs to do things. Ideally, the answer should not be you.*

• Block time in your calendar

  Your calendar probably looks like advanced tetris of some sort. If you’re lucky, there’s time for toilet breaks and some food every now and then.

  Delegating tasks means explaining them to people. Which is hard to find the time for on your tetris calendar screen.

  Except you are going to take some time out one evening or early morning or (dare I say) skip part of the tetris game for an hour. Take one meeting where one of your team members is already attending and kindly let the organisers know you will not be attending. Use that time to sit down with one of your other team members to delegate one task.

  Rinse and repeat.

  A few weeks in, your calendar should start showing blank spots. What to do with those? Remember all the strategic leadership stuff you wanted to work on? Tadaaaaaa: you now have the time.

• Focus on what’s in front of you now

  Don’t overcomplicate this. Look at the top three tasks on your desk right now. Pick one, think about who could take this over, sit down with that person and hand it over.

  Pro tip: book a check-in with the person a few days before deadline so you can jointly review the status and make any adjustments if needed. Over time, you won’t need this anymore since your team member will be running this one completely solo.

• Think beyond the realms of your immediate team

  One thing is that you believe nobody in your team is capable of lifting a certain task. You should then ask yourself whether this is a matter of competence or a lack of training. If it’s competence, you might want to reconsider that person’s match for the role. If it’s a lack of training (which often tends to be the case), you start there. You’d be surprised by the results.

  Sometimes however, teams are overworked and there is simply nobody in your immediate team to take on an additional task. How about the wider organisation? Are there others who do have the space for more work? Or, dare I say it, could you get AI or another tool to do part of the job for you so you only need to tidy up and add the last touch before finalising?

*Bonus points: once you have started trusting people and turned delegating into a habit, a real leader will give credit and praise to the people doing the stellar work. Because real leaders groom new leaders…

Start small. Keep going. Be amazed at the results in a few months time.

You’ve got this.

My right now resources 📊🔎

A short overview of stuff I’ve been engaging with lately

• Book 📚️ Dit Kald by Nana Askov (a book in Danish on Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell - next on my list!)

• Music 🎵 Schwer by Paul Kalkbrenner (my go-to when doing deep work)

• Watching 🎥 Ted Lasso on Apple TV (I know, I’m late to the game)

• Podcast 📻️ Super Soul Special: Shonda Rhimes: Change Your Life by saying “Yes” (and “No” Too) by Oprah Winfrey in her podcast Oprah’s Super Soul

• Software 👩‍💻 Mistral’s Le Chat - the name alone I mean!