Mentoring vs. Empowering Your People
Nobody warns you about this, do they?
Turns out, the higher you climb in an organization, the bigger the gap is between your job description and what’s actually expected of you.
When you were a team member, you had tasks to complete. You were judged based on how well you did those tasks… and to a lesser extent, how well you played corporate politics.
As a manager, you made business decisions. Your performance was judged on the impact of those decisions. (And whether they made your boss look good... right?)
As an executive, you still have tasks to do... decisions to make... and even a bit of strategic politics.
But whether you like it or not, in the role of the senior leader, you’ll be judged more than anything else on your ability to motivate and manage people.
At that point what your job description says stops mattering... it was probably wrong anyway. I mean, does it say, “Your duties include dealing with a group of people who resist doing what you ask, think they know better than you, and pull in different directions”?
I’m guessing… no.
To make it worse, leaders often handle their team based on their own experience coming up through the ranks.
For example, consider Bob. Bob was ambitious and keen to learn. As part of a team, he desperately wanted guidance and mentorship. But his boss was way too busy for pointless stuff like helping his people grow and develop.
This left Bob feeling mostly abandoned and adrift. His productivity dwindled and he was almost ready to quit.
Fortunately for this story, Bob stuck it out, rose up through the ranks and eventually became leader. (I’ll skip the long and boring details including the rivalries, backstabbing, and marrying the boss’s daughter just to get a promotion.)
As leader, Bob made a decision: he wasn’t going to make the same mistakes his boss had made. He was going to be there for his team 24/7, and mentor them whenever he could.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Bob became not only the team’s leader but also their mentor. He adopted the Leadership Language of “Mentoring”... because that’s what mattered most to him on his way up the corporate ladder.
But here’s the rub. Bob’s team was comprised of experts in their field. They knew more than him about the work they were doing. A few even resented his constant guidance, which felt to them more like meddling.
Instead, what they desperately wanted was for Bob to empower them. They wanted authority to manage what they were responsible for. Some guidance here and there was fine, but most of the time it felt like he was wasting their time.
They didn’t get any of this, because Bob was busy speaking the language of mentorship and being their 24/7 coach. Which is great if you needed coaching at 2am. But they rarely did.
They were irritated that they didn’t seem to have the trust from the one person who could empower them. His desire to mentor pushed against their need for empowerment… and quite a few of them moved on to other jobs.
This is just one example of what often happens when leaders don’t speak the same Leadership Language as their team.
Over the next blog posts, I’ll show you what the 5 Leadership Languages are, and the impact they can have on your team.
Don’t make the same mistakes Bob made. Ask your team members to take this quiz and find out which of the leadership languages they need to hear from you. I think you’ll be surprised.
