Why Effective Leaders Sometimes Need to Let Others Take the Lead.

First let me begin with a couple of examples of how I was led, and the I'll explain what those examples can teach us as leaders.

EXAMPLE 1: When I was in the Coast Guard Auxiliary we would often patrol the local bay and adjoining large lake. We would do this most often in small boats with two man crews. The "vessel operator" both operated the boat and was in charge. I usually crewed with one particular vessel operator. Often when I was crewing with him he would temporarily put me in charge. We'll talk about why, and why this is important below.

EXAMPLE 2: On mutiple different occasions I was working the retail floor under a particular manager with whom I made a very good team. When I came to him with a customer situation he always had one question for me, "What do you want to do ? ? Even though he was the one with the authority, he did this to put me in command of the situation. I will have more on this later as well.

Its been my experience that situations where a leader might want to take a step back and let someone else lead fall into three broad categories. Those are Situational, Developmental, and Practical

SITUATIONAL: In the patrol example the operator was steering the boat, etc. I was the one standing lookout, tending lines, manning comms and other functions. When we would tow a boat for instance, because of how our duties were split I often had a better view of things as they were happening. For this reason among others it made sense to hand control of the "evolution" to me, at least temporarily. The retail example plays out a little different here. Most of the time in this case my manager was not the subject matter expert. I was, I just didn't have the authority to put into action my solution. In fact he would often tell other managers, customers and others that I had forgotten twice as much about my job, and the industry my department was in than he would ever it was not unusual for him to "loan" me his authority, once I had filled him in on my plan. This approach was taken because, this approach was the shortest, best way to a solution that would work for both our customer and our store.

DEVELOPMENTAL: As John C. Maxwell the noted leadership expert teaches often, the first responsibility of any leader is the development of his people. In the first example, putting me in charge even for short periods did a couple of things for me developmentally. It gave me real time, real world experience making critical decisions in a fast paced environment. Even just with two of us, it also gave me the same kind of valuable experience in leading others. This training paid great dividends to me when the time came to lead larger groups. The way the retail manager and I had things set up worked in a similar way. I would spell out my solution based on my superior technical knowledge. Then in addition to loaning me his authority, he would provide quick feedback based on his superior experience as a manager. In this way I got real world experience this time in making decisions that affected customers in a business environment.

PRACTICAL: Ask almost any manager and they will tell you that they would get a lot more managing done, if they didn't have so much managing to do. Oh, a manager's world ! Schedules to be done, purchasing to be done, training to track, accounting to be done, all just to get the doors open. Add to that managers work hard ! They need days off, vacations, get sick. They have meetings with other managers to go to, banking in some cases, last minute supplies to get. But while all this is going on, who is watching the nuts and bolt details of what's actively going on in the business ? Many managers are lucky enough to have assistants. They can take a lot of the load off. However I can remember a time I was working for a smaller format store that was part of a large national chain. In that company the store did not have assistant managers in most cases. In place of a salaried assistant manager they had designated hourly associates termed "keyholders." I was one of these trusted team members for one manager in two different stores ! This gave my manager the flexibility to put me in charge of the store when he needed to be away. It also meant he could be away when he needed to be, without closing the store. In my case this also helped satisfy our second point above, by providing me with valuable management experience in small bites. I can see a lot of small family businesses benefiting from this technique. If you lead a small team anywhere, it might benefit yours.

This is one of those pieces meant to get your mind going, so please don't stop here. I'm sure over time you can come up with even more ideas on how taking a step back now and then can make you a stronger leader. When you become a stronger leader, chances are your organization will thank you for it !