How to make your teams more independent[Storytime Saturdays]
How different leaders create teams with autonomy, independence, and initiative.
Hey, it’s your favorite cult leader here 🐱👤
On Saturdays, I will cover stories/writeups covering various people’s experiences 📚📚. These stories will help you learn from the mistakes and successes of others. These stories will cover various topics like Leadership, Productivity, and Personal/Professional Development. Use these to zoom ahead on your goals 🚀🚀
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Leadership is hard. I’ve interviewed over 30 Leaders, in fields ranging from education to generative AI Art, from startups to Big Tech firms. Wildly different challenges, cultures, stages of development, and processes. And they all had one common thing to say- the most challenging part of their work was dealing with people. This included clients and customers, but the leaders often expressed serious challenges in galvanizing their employees to work at a high level without supervision. They feel an urge to constantly micromanage and look over their employees’ shoulders since they feel like nothing ever gets done without them pushing for it. Ultimately, this is a negative experience for everyone involved.
Whenever you can, create the spirit of autonomy in your teams. By letting your reports have their autonomy you hit many benefits at once-
You improve their experience of working under you. No one likes micro-managers.
You free up your time and energy to study the larger trends, allowing you to make much better decisions. You can also then focus your efforts on the areas where you are needed the most.
You give the people working under you the ability to grow and tackle challenges. Not only will they do a better job than you would (since they do it day-day), but they will go on to develop better skills. This will allow them to thrive, strengthening your position and network.
In this article, I will be going over some of the techniques that multiple successful leaders have shared with me that they employed to get their teams running without the need for constant supervision. By leveraging these techniques, you will be able to create teams with a lot of autonomy, independence, and initiative. Whether you’re a leader looking to take things up a level, or someone who’s aspiring to get into management- you don’t want to miss this writeup.
According to the two researchers, self-determination is made up of three components: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. They defined autonomy as “the desire to be the causal agent of one’s own life.” If we think of entrusting employees with greater autonomy as the encouragement of self-determination, we can expect a greater degree of satisfaction, fulfillment, and engagement at work because the outcomes are likely to be perceived as the result of their own inherent ability. Similarly, it will serve as an intrinsic motivator to perform better.
-Taken from “Forget Flexibility. Your Employees Want Autonomy” by Harvard Business Review
How To Create More Initiative in Your Teams
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