CONTROL IS AN ILLUSION

I am planning to use some corporate parlance in like micro-management in this blog. However, I seriously believe that this writeup has far bigger implications. It extends to professional as well as personal areas of our life.

Almost all managers are professionals who have grown to those management positions through a variety of work experiences. In all probability, they would have performed similar roles at the capacity of an individual contributor before getting the opportunity to lead other individuals performing similar responsibilities.

However, we all understand that the challenges of individual performance are completely different as compared to managing people. Unfortunately, we almost never get out of the shoes of our past avatar of an individual contributor, even when we transition to a position of leading others. Most often, we are aiming for the team members to work exactly the way we have done in our past. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that we are supposed to teach our team members all the best practices that we have learned through grinding in those roles for years in the past. However, we are always supposed to account for the individual capacity to innovate as well as changing times.

All individuals are created differently. Each of us has our strengths and areas of development. Statistics show that we can squeeze the best out of any individual, mostly, when their strengths are backed.

This is where we stumble into a catch 22. We somehow are programmed to teach the ways and manners that we have practiced in the past, rather than the capability to innovate and use each persons’ strengths to their best. We start to control and influence them to work as per our comfort (our past experience).

We forget to account for the individual’s capability to use their strengths to their best. We also forget to account for changing times. History is continuously proving that times are changing at a faster rate every year. Our past experiences might become pre-historic really quickly. We have all seen that youngsters seem to have the capability to pick up new and time-appropriate skills much faster than the experienced lot.

The other challenge with imposing our ways on our team members is the fact that we don’t give them the space enough to start loving their work and getting inspired. Motivation becomes external or fear-based, rather than intrinsic. Accountability becomes outward. This probably means that we might get the work done today through this controlled mechanism, but surely, we won't be able to create long-term self-motivated performers.

I almost always visualize control in the analogy of holding the grains of sand in our hands. The tighter we try to hold it, the lesser it will remain in our hands.

I also somehow believe that this is the same challenge we face while motivating our children towards building skills. Inherently, we use the same process that our parents have applied while bringing our next generation up. We almost always forget to account for changing times. However, I am not a domain expert in this field :). Giving respect to the tough roles of moms and dads in bringing the next generation up, I will not offer my theoretical advice in this area.

In the professional world, I am certain that we have to, almost always, release control to get long-term results. In the long run, we will all realize that the lesser we control, and the more flexible our management approach is, the better the team performance will be. This is a really important skill needed for any individual performer transitioning into the role of a manager as well as any manager transitioning into the role of a leader.