Phase 3 – Enlightened People Motivation – “Why do we Love to Supervise?”-12.05.16

by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good (wo)men to do what (s)he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it,” Theodore Roosevelt.

 jaded-worker-120516

    

    Time and again this writer asks the above headline question. Too often he comes back with a number of the same conclusions, knowing full well that when people are supervised they are not as creative or productive: except, maybe, in short bursts.

 

Give someone a team to lead and 70%+ of the time it’s like a “red rag to a bull.” They think in terms of supervising that team. Ironically, it’s the 20%+ who don’t resort to classic supervision that obtain the best overall people results because they lead instead. It almost seems counter-intuitive doesn’t it? Note the jaded face.

 

Before we go too much further, it seems appropriate to clarify the difference between classical supervision and enlightened leadership. Classical supervision finds those “in-charge” looking over people’s shoulders, second guessing them, and actively controlling their working lives: whereas, enlightened leaders aim to empower people, give them the benefit of the doubt, and keep them focused. What is your approach?

 

While we’re at it, there’s a big difference between control and focus. Control, in its extreme form, is constantly checking-up on people to determine if they’re following policies and procedures – it’s rather like referees blowing their whistle every moment a player slightly deviates from game rules. We’ve all witnessed player frustration and truculence when that happens: where, sooner or later, player misbehavior starts erupting everywhere and the referee loses control. Ironic, isn’t it? Players come away lamenting a miserable rather than an enjoyable experience: all because of control.

 

Focus, on the other hand, is all about keeping people concentrating on the desired outcome. But only after discussing potential approaches and then leaving them to accomplish it through their own lens as much as possible. It still allows for cursory monitoring, although done with a sense of trust that the team member concerned has the necessary know-how and resources to accomplish the required outcome. No doubt you can see the distinct difference?

 

If that’s the case, why are we so drawn to supervision? Without putting them in any order, some of the potential reasons are:

» Past Role Models – For historical reasons, emanating from the industrial revolution and beyond, we have developed a strong supervisory mentality. It promotes a wisdom that people are under-educated, tend to be lazy, and need to be “driven.” Hence they need to be supervised.

From this philosophy we have produced legions of supervisors. Each  generation inculcates the next generation with the same thinking. Their superiors became role models for the next round of supervisors. We’re all guilty of doing the same routines, even though societal changes demand that we take a different track, because they’ve always been done that way.  They become habitual.

» Command and Control Environments – These were especially developed by Fred Taylor and his cohorts, in the name of industrial efficiency, during the early part of the 20th-century. It was further reinforced by the military mass-mobilizations related to a number of wars. We became stuck in a world of control and squeeze.

Like any other inverted “U” phenomenon: at one side,  if you supervise too little you experience lack of control and inefficiency; at the other, you induce overkill along with red-tape and inertia. In the middle is the sweet-spot, which leaders are particularly knowledgeable about.

» Parental Conditioning – Parents who grew up in these earlier eras became over-indulgent supervisors themselves with their kids, too. Even though those kids eventually rebelled against it during their teens, they ultimately settled down and perpetuated the mold. Today they’re known as helicopter parents – always hovering.

Those few parents, who broke the mold and empowered their offspring, within more mature and reasonable guidelines, likely raised more mature and productive kids.

» Our Own Personalities – Some of us are endowed with more controlling personalities, which may have been reinforced by parental or prior organizational influences. It’s important for us to recognize our inclinations and decide if they’re a help or hindrance, in terms of maximizing people performance.

 

Having established the classic supervisory, micro-management side of the coin, we can also identify those managers-supervisors on the other side – people who Patrick Lencioni, a popular writer of a series of management-leadership books, defined as abdication managers-supervisors, quote, “These are the people who know little about what their direct reports are working on, and defend their approach by citing their own busy schedules, or worse yet, by proudly using words like trust, autonomy and empowerment.”  You particularly see a lot of this in government or institutions, where supervisors rely on the system to move their people along. The supervisor just becomes a paper and people-pusher. Lencioni’s obviously not writing about enlightened leaders, who know how to fully leverage the latter factors he refers to, and use them as powerful motivational and developmental tools.

 

Even so, perhaps we should consider the below spectrum, which shows the two extremes as well as a hybrid, middle-ground possibility of leadagership. Above that we can reserve some space for enlightened leaders, who will draw upon micro-management only when absolutely necessary or in crisis situations.

                                                                        Enlightened

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _l_____ Leaders _____l_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Micro-management                            Leadagership                       Abdication-management

l____________________________l______________________l_______________________________l

Heavy supervision                            Empowerment                       Negligible supervision

 

 

In conclusion, this writer believes that micro-management or supervision is not necessary on a day-to-day basis, if people are properly led. If you babysit your people, they will either act like babies or leave. If you abdicate your people leadership responsibilities, then your people will abdicate theirs, too, or leave. If you offer them leadagership, you will encourage a decent level of responsibility and performance and, if that responsibility and performance is then encouraged, it will flourish beyond your best expectations.

 

Supervision is the inverse of leadership and we often use the former due to our inability to lead. If you lead, situations will invariably turn out better than your best expectations. Your people will, more often than not, enjoy your leadership but resent being overly supervised. They lose their personal respect and dignity when supervised.

 

Ultimately, Leadership Solutions’ staff surveys show that even the more enlightened organizations miss out on 20-30% potential performance: especially if they mix their leadership activities with too many classic management tools and behavior; such as, grillings, performance appraisals, directives, mandates, fear, micro-mgt., control, know-how limitations, resource restrictions, and so on. The optimum solution is enlightened leadership where its tools define a compelling vision, respect, achievement, camaraderie, trust, along with providing sufficient know-how and resources. Enlightened leadership provides a nice balance between a firm focus and being purely inspirational.

 

It’s interesting to note: in a New York Times sports article for early December 2016, the writer Mark Vorkunov commented on the Knicks basketball coach, Jeff Hornacek – ‘Instead of peppering his players’ minds with repeated reminders of their flaws, he has decided that ignoring their shortcomings might be best. After all, he says, the Knicks were poor free-throw shooters until they finally just stopped talking about it.’ Say no more…about supervision.

 

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