Since the day you were old enough to talk, you’ve had the need for control. Leading comes naturally to you. As a kid growing up, you organized all the neighborhood games in the park. As you got older you formed clubs in school and other activities in which others could join. During your working career, you aligned yourself with leaders so you could quickly climb the company ladder to be a leader yourself. Eventually, you got there. Leading comes naturally for you, but is there a price to be paid? Is it possible that your need for control may actually be controlling you? If you happen to be a control freak, these helpful hints might help you to lessen your stranglehold on your need for control.
Your need for control may actually be controlling you
For natural born leaders, leading isn’t a choice, it’s a requirement. You leaders like to be in charge. While ego may play some role in the process, it’s really about being in control. You believe that if a job is going to get done right, you need to do it yourself. And you are more than willing to do it. You are satisfied when a task is completed and when you do it yourself, you know that it is a job well done.
While you are a driven, motivated and tireless worker, you may not be appreciated by everyone. With leadership comes status, and not everyone appreciates the person who gets all the attention. For that reason, prepare to have some detractors. Others may find it difficult to work with you, either because their contributions are never deemed good enough or because you won’t let them participate in your project. By trying to do too much yourself, you are easily overburdened with a workload that can become unmanageable. While the world needs leaders, a little flexibility once in awhile can help earn the respect of your co-workers who can help you do your job even more effectively.
How to lessen the stranglehold on leadership
Sometimes it’s hard for leaders to relinquish power and authority. But sometimes it’s necessary for the betterment of the team. Below find five ways you can help release your tight grip on leadership and let your team shine.
- Be willing to let others help you. You have a team for a reason, use them! While you may believe (and possibly even be right) that you can do the job better than anyone else, that will never change unless you let others try and sometimes fail, so they can learn what you know.
- Ask others for their opinion - and put it into action. By asking the opinions of other members of your staff, you are engaging them and keeping them interested. People have different perspectives and viewpoints. Someone may see a problem or solution from an angle that you simply never considered. Engaging these folks will not only give you additional resources, it just might help uncover the perfect answer to a solution that you’ve been seeking.
- Let a non-leader lead. If you want someone to develop into a great leader, you need to put them into a position where they can succeed. The only way to get there is to have experience. Experience is the ultimate teacher, because it includes a certain level of failure and when you fail, you learn. Let your people fail so they can learn to succeed! Let someone who does not traditionally lead a meeting be in charge once in awhile. You may be surprised at how positively they respond.
- Become a mentor. If you like to lead, then do it in one of the most meaningful ways possible; by being a mentor. You learned the ropes through real life experience. Help pass along that experience to others so they can elevate into your position one day. You don’t want to work forever, do you?
- Take a step back. Whether it means to delegate certain tasks or take a vacation, purposefully eliminate at least one task that you are used to doing regularly. Make that task become someone else’s charge. Train them the right way to do it and then wash your hands of it. Not only will this teach them new skills, it will be teaching you an important life lesson - the art of delegation.
Rewards for sharing control
Once you let go, the dynamics will begin to change. You will start to get more and more input from other members of your team because they’ll feel empowered. You’ll begin to see new perspectives which will provide new ideas and different ways of thinking. Over time, you will begin to see that your team can do the things you once thought only you were capable. You will begin to trust the team. The experience will show you that using the team approach gives you a more balanced end result, and very importantly, gives you a break and a little peace of mind. Now you can have time to do other things, like relax and have some fun.
Final thoughts
Being a leader is a natural gift. But there is a significant difference between being a leader and being a control freak. A very necessary part of running any business is to be able to trust your staff and feel confident that they can do what you need them to do. Relinquishing control may not come easy at first, but once you begin to see positive results, it will get easier and easier. You’ll look forward to delegating tasks and using that time to do other things such as take a day off, a long weekend or a full-blown vacation to that exotic destination that you’ve never had time to visit because you were too busy being a control freak all these years. Make today the day that you begin to loosen the grip on power and allow your team to thrive.
