In his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell defines leadership as influence, pure and simple. I don’t disagree with that. Unfortunately, I watch young entrepreneurs on a regular basis doing all the work, thinking that is what a leader does.
Leaders need to know what the end result looks like. It does not mean they need to do it themselves. I know how my drive thru should run, but if you see Arthur actually running it, something went epically wrong.
Knowing when to step in, and when to allow a team member to grow is part of being a leader. Stepping in, as they veer off course is part of being a leader. Leaders need to evaluate the process, or have a team to evaluate the process.
If you are the type of leader that needs to have your hand hand in everything in order to make it happen, pause and re-evaluate. It may work for a sprint but it wont go the distance. The captain going down with the ship only proves that the captain is stupid enough to be shark bait!
I recently watched a young leader, one who has tremendous potential making these critical mistakes. He was the banner hanger, the organizer, the graphic artist, the connector, the go to person for registration, the purchaser, and many other hats. His event had a loss of over 350k! When asked about it, his response was, he had no one to do it. He was going victim to is inability to trust others to help him.
If the theory of your income is directly proportional to the people you touch is true, you limit yourself if you don’t allow others to help you.
If you’re going to lead by example, make sure you show them how to lead while trusting them to do what is expected. If they don’t, well then promote them to customer status. Quickly.