Many of us have suffered the frustrations of our work proposals getting stuck in the inbox of our bosses. We’ve likely spent hours crafting a work proposal with an extremely tight deadline, only to find this missed by 4 days because our head of unit has not responded in a week. This can quickly kill our productivity, motivation and innovation without much effort.
So we can certainly recognise the negative experience of being stuck by a bottleneck. But what if the bottleneck for your team is actually you without realising it?
I’ve certainly seen my fair share of bottlenecks from my corporate experience. Often this comes from a mixture of reasons, though it usually comes with the perception that the leader is either uncertain or too overwhelmed to make real decisions.
Although the easy answer would be to simply label our leadership as incompetent, I see this as a overly simplistic response; there must be more to this phenomenon when we see capable individuals falling into this trap as they lead teams. This is particularly bizarre when we see individuals getting promoted for their ability to ‘get things done’, and yet when we see them leading a wider team, efficiency and productivity can often plummet.
I’ve actually coached around this issue before, though individuals rarely see themselves as bottlenecks at first. Instead, the issue relates to general trust and empowerment around teams. Unfortunately, the capable individual who was promoted for being effective now is responsible for making other people effective, which is a very different skill set. The individuals tend to stick to the same skills that got them this far, rather than reassessing the needs of their new job.
This can often lead to leaders asking to check every document or note from their team. They may want oversight of every detail or process, and to have input at each stage. This fits in their idea of ensuring high quality and taking pride in their work. Indeed, it is how they have operated to get the promotion in the first place.
Unfortunately, being a leader means having only a limited amount of time with a far greater amount of responsibilities. Such leaders can therefore get completely bogged down in editing small pieces of work (or even micromanaging it), whilst the rest of their inbox is ignored. And when faced with middling results, rather than reassess this approach, leaders often double-down and simply work longer hours to get through everything they are responsible for. This has the negative effect of building a culture of long hours, and one where your employees may be waiting until 8pm for your yes/no response to their email.
I would much prefer leaders to see themselves as conduits rather than bottlenecks. Their aim is to facilitate the successful passage of their team’s work into the wider organisation, whilst giving key support and input at the appropriate stages. What this requires is a far greater level of trust in the abilities of their staff, and acceptance that no one is going to be perfect from day one.
Currently, whilst we hear much about collaboration and trust, we often see the real story in how our managers behave. I’ve seen both sides of this, from a story about a PA who wasn’t even allowed access to their leaders emails, to an honest and open discussion about upcoming challenges from another leader. The former gives the sense of insecurity and control, the latter that the leader is a reasonable and approachable human.
So if you’re a leader, think about how your work is perceived by your team. You may be inadvertently working yourself to the ground, and with it, making your team perform much worse.
Do you have any stories of ‘bottleneck’ leaders you want to share?