Ever feel like you’re the human bottleneck in your team? You know, that leader who’s drowning in decisions while everyone waits around for your sign-off?
Your team needs to be empowered to help you with decision-making.
Here’s the thing – when we try to make every single decision, we’re actually shooting ourselves in the foot. Projects slow to a crawl, team members start checking out mentally, and before you know it, you’re buried under a mountain of choices that your capable team could’ve handled.
Many of my senior leader clients speak to me about how to avoid being the bottleneck for decision-making and how they can empower their teams to be more independent.
Some key things have helped my clients to overcome this and to empower their teams.
1. Alignment: Have regular alignment conversations in which you agree on priorities, strategies and behaviours to achieve a certain outcome.
2. Check Congruency through short daily or weekly check-ins to see if actions align with what was agreed.
3. Debrief after key project milestones using a Debrief Formular ™ that develops empowerment and independence.
We practice what we preach! My team does this after every workshop (sometimes daily when things get super busy). It keeps us sharp, aligned, and actually enjoying the work. This ensures constant adjustments, alignment and growth.