Leadership Tips: Don’t (S)mother Your Staff

Welcome to our newest blogger, Mary Brodie! Mary’s day job is at HP but she has a lot more going on than that! We love her leadership tips and “insights from the trenches” of leadership and hope you do too! Welcome Mary below. – InPower Editors

I’m often told that I have a unique management style and approach. I believe in leading through influence. Throughout my career, I have learned that you can get more done by influencing others to see things your way rather than using authority and being generally “bossy.”

Mothering isn’t a Management Technique

There are 4 key lessons in the Art of Influence that I learned that got me to significantly change my approach to management.

• Lesson 1: Mothering isn’t a Management Technique
• Lesson 2: Influence and true leadership is communication – or rather, listening and understanding
• Lesson 3: Influence others to move blocks out of the way
• Lesson 4: Appearance really does mean a lot

I’ll be reviewing the first lesson today – and other lessons in future posts.

Lesson 1: Mothering Isn’t a Management Technique

I was trying hard to make the creative team deliver the projects “entrusted to my care” on-time – 12 hour days, lots of stress, trying to control everything, and I was becoming visibly tired. I saw my project manager job as being like a mother with child. It was exhausting.

One day, the VP I reported to gave me a present – a statue of a line of baby ducks following a mother duck – and some leadership tips. I was puzzled why I got that gift. She told me that it was to remind me that it wasn’t my job to make sure that people did their job – I wasn’t hired to be a mother duck. I needed to give people the opportunity to take responsibility and succeed (which most people want to do anyway) or not and fail the team. I couldn’t protect my “babies” (projects) from failure. I had to change my perspective and help the team understand why a project was important. I needed to motivate them to get the work done on time.

Summary

To be a successful leader, you can’t be a mother or baby sitter. You have to do 3 things:

1. Stop seeing your projects as your own personal creation
2. Get your team to understand your goals and motivate them to make it happen
3. Trust people enough to know they will meet deadlines

What about you? Have you ever gotten your staff confused with your children? Too personally wrapped up in getting things done to help you staff help you? Too jittery trusting your people to give them the space to succeed? I’d love your insights below!

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