The Slippery Slope of Support

In my previous post, I described William Oncken’s contention that a manager must leave the accountability for tasks with his team members rather than assume that accountability himself.  Oncken used the analogy of a “monkey on the back” to make his point, saying that a manager needs to keep the monkey (i.e., the accountability for the task) on his team member’s back rather than letting it leap onto his own.  I also noted the critique of Oncken's analogy by Steven Covey, who said that, rather than just blocking the monkey’s leap, a manager should provide the team member some measure of support in the care and feeding of the monkey.

Many leaders find this “support zone” to be strewn with banana peels, creating a particularly slippery slope. As a leader, you may think you’ve effectively coached a team member to create a good plan to deal with a problem … only to find yourself leaving the coaching session with more to-do’s on your plate than the team member. These to-do’s can take the form of such items as:

1) Redistributing some of the team member’s tasks so he can focus on his action plan;

2) Agreeing to go talk to others on his behalf so they can lend him some help;

3) Gathering information that he will need to implement his plan;

4) Monitoring his work daily and signing off on every step.

Certainly there may be situations when each of these actions on your part might be appropriate. On the other hand, many times these are really examples of retaining a monkey (or at least a partial monkey) rather than having it reside with its rightful owner – the team member.  For each of the above items, ask yourself the following questions respectively:

1) Do any of us have the luxury of focusing on only one problem at a time? Wouldn’t it be better for the team member to learn how to integrate his problem-solving into the rest of his workload?

2) Can’t he go talk to these people just as well as I can?

3) Can’t he find and process that information just as well as I can?

4) If I’m approving his every step, who’s really making the decisions about how to do the work?

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Many leaders accept monkeys from their team members with a certain degree of reluctance. Like a retail customer, they may vow that they’re not going to be sold anything they don’t want, only to leave the encounter with a plateful of monkeys.

On the other hand, as Steven Covey points out, “many managers are actually eager to take on their subordinates’ monkeys.”  One of the reasons, notes Covey, is that the leader may “subconsciously fear that a subordinate taking the initiative will make [the leader] appear a little less strong and a little more vulnerable.” I also think many leaders (especially new ones) still think of themselves as “doers” rather than “managers” of the tasks. Rather than navigating the uncertain frontiers of influencing and motivating others to perform, they just revert to the surer ground of grabbing the monkey and doing the job themselves.

Why do you think you may be taking on more than your share of monkeys? Do you just have a hard time saying “No”? Do you feel you’re doing your team members a disservice by not “helping” as much as you can? Are you concerned that, if your team members learn to solve their own issues, you won’t be needed anymore? How can you continually remind yourself of the importance of “leading vs. doing”?