The Most Common Mistake Leaders Make

I have a list of topics that I have put down to write about and this was one of them.  What prompted to me to start writing on this was a sharing by my teen son who was currently involved in an annual school event preparation. 

As per past year, my son signed up to design and make props for the team’s upcoming performance because he enjoys creative and hands-on work.  He put in good effort in finishing the required props as soon as possible as the timeline was short.  His efforts were recognised by his team leaders and he was asked upon for his ideas and opinions of new work pieces.  He also started to step up in motivating his peers to soldier on with the work, as exhaustion slowly kicked in over the week.  He bought drinks to motivate his small team and had plans to prepare some snacks the following week to get his team to push ahead.  This despite that he was never formally made a team lead of his sub-group. 

By the end of the second week, he was asked upon to join the seniors to work on a more complex piece the following week, tasked to remind the logistic team when they fell behind their work, and to put in his idea for a new prop that they might need.  He came back physically and mentally exhausted.  Without a formal authority over the logistic team, he met with the team’s unpleasant responses.  He was falling sick after putting in long hours when other members secretly whizzed off in the middle of the work day.  While he is currently still very committed to the making the performance a success, the mental and physical exhaustion was clearly taking over.  He slept through the whole of Saturday with only one meal.

Sound familiar?  I am sure it does.  It may be something you have often observed at work or experienced it yourself, where one gets a pat on the back for a good job done with more work than he is paid to do.  Whenever there are new work pieces, it seems that the leaders are dishing them out to the group of team members who are good or top performers, because they are dependable and always get the work done.  That would seem to be the most logical thing to do and require the least effort from the leaders to coach a more junior or less experienced employee to do the same task.  What happens next would be a predictable cycle of seeing the capable employee taking more and more work.  He may be rewarded with a promotion or a bigger performance bonus.  But exhaustion would kick in and he either gets burned out first or decides that he have had enough of doing more work, clocking insane hours while others are having work life balance.  This perhaps, the most common mistake most leaders made.

As a leader, you may ask – what could be done differently then?  Your workload is insane as well, and some team members are either just too inexperienced, or not dependable to see through a project.  You are stretched and have no time to coach them.  In order to get things done, the best solution is to allocate the job to someone who is capable to deliver it.  Unfortunately, rewarding the high performing employees with more work is not the best solution.  By repeatedly assigning new tasks to only the dependable and high performing employees, this is what will happen:

1. The dependable and high performing employees may enjoy being trusted upon with new tasks and be developed further through these new experiences.  However, it would come to a point where they would call it enough and leave the organisation.
2. The junior and less experienced team members are deprived of good development opportunities and they continue to not develop skill sets needed for work.  Overall, the team’s capabilities and strengths will stagnate and dependent on the trusted few.
3. The junior and less experienced team members may feel disengaged over time as they may feel left out of important work pieces that may offer them visibility needed for career advancement or development.  As a leader, this is one key role and responsibility for each team member.
4. Lastly, such leadership practice will build an unhealthy team culture where there may be some who are doing just enough to get by, leaving others to carry the heavy weight.  Team morale and unity will definitely be affected over time.

Overall, the team will reach a point where majority will call it quits. 

What a leader could do differently is to explore possibilities of balancing the workload of the trusted members, and at the same time providing opportunities to develop the competencies of the rest of the team.  For example, assigning the work piece to the trusted member with the support of a junior member so as to provide opportunity for the experienced member to develop leadership skills, and at the same provide the junior member an opportunity to gain new experiences. As each member become more skilled and experience, the whole team benefits.  Should any member be not pulling up his socks to avoid taking up new tasks, it should be addressed in a 1-on-1 so that he knows what he is expecting for his bonus and career development.  In this way, a leader not only develops an engaged and competent team, but also established a healthy work culture.