Colin Powell (retired four-star general in the US Army) once said, “The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
Like you, I run a team. I get it. We’re busy. And sometimes we wish people would just figure out their own jobs, and stop dumping problems at our feet. We have enough of our own!
And then Colin Powell’s admonition gives us pause. Imagine the silence we would experience if our people stopped reaching out for our guidance and partnership. If our phone goes silent, we failed.
But this doesn’t mean that we are required to rescue people.
- We don’t need to think for them.
- We don’t need to fix each crisis.
- We don’t have to give them all the answers.
- We don’t even have to tolerate repeated questions.
But we better hope they keep seeking our assistance.
And here’s how we can encourage our people to do just that:
- regard each problem as an opportunity to develop people
- insist that people bring us new and different problems
- demand that people identify two solutions for every problem they unload
- coach, mentor, and train people so they learn and grow into bigger problems
- urge people to capture their learnings in job aides and quick guides
Regardless of how busy and stressed we are, we want our “soldiers” to call on us. We want them to have confidence in us as their intrepid leader. We want them to know that we always care about their success.
That’s how we earn the title “boss” day after day.
