How does telling your team what to do impact their overall performance?

Many humanitarian and international development leaders think telling their team what to do is essential, but relying too heavily on this approach can lead to an over-dependent, less empowered team. This episode explores how leaders unintentionally undermine team performance by over-managing and explains how to unlock your team's potential by shifting away from advice-giving.

In this 9 minute episode you'll discover:

• How the belief that leaders must "have all the answers" may be limiting your team and creating more work for you
• How to encourage self-reliance and confidence within your team.
• Gain practical tips for transitioning to a coaching approach that builds a proactive, high-performing team.

Ready to empower your team and lighten your own workload? Tune into this episode to start the journey toward a more confident team of true high performers!

WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE? QUIZ

Want to know how to lead better? It starts by understanding your leadership style. To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

This podcast empowers international development and humanitarian leaders to achieve high performance teams, fostering diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing, overcoming burnout and overwhelm, while maximizing impact and productivity.

Discover why it's better to not tell your team

what to do in today's episode.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the

podcast, helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater

impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and

empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm.

I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready?

Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader.

I hope you're having a wonderful week.

And today is the continuation of a several part series on what I like to

call "high performance syndrome" thoughts.

And remember, these are ways of leading and working, which we think

are making us perform better, but are actually doing the opposite.

So we've covered a few others previous to this, including why when we take on extra

work, it makes us less of a team player.

And how to gain more control over your time.

So today's high-performance syndrome thought or way of working is I

need to tell my team what to do.

And in this episode, you're going to discover why we believe we

need to tell our teams what to do.

What will happen if you continue telling your team what to do.

And then finally, how to stop giving advice and start empowering

a proactive, confident team.

So, where does this belief come from?

This thought that we need to tell our teams what to do?

After coaching and working with hundreds of leaders, my conclusion is

this belief comes from a combination of the thought that the leader

needs to know all the answers.

And that the leader is more helpful when they know the answers.

When you have the combination of these two ways of looking at things, then

you're going to automatically think that your role is to tell others what to do.

And I think culturally also, it's very interesting because in some cultures or

many cultures, we look at the leader as having the answers and as someone who

should be telling others what to do.

But I want to tell you today that this actually is not a way

of becoming a higher performer.

And that there are other ways of leading, which can be a lot more

empowering and helpful for you and your team if you want to create a team

that's actually higher performing and also will help you at the same time.

So.

When we tell our team what to do.

And what I mean by that is that your default, when someone comes to you is

to just tell them the answer to their problem or give them advice or a solution.

What happens is we create a team that's dependent on us.

One that needs us for the answers.

This means that we slow things down where, when we're not able to give

them the answers because we are not available or we are absent.

And it also means that our team stop thinking for themselves,

they are not as confident.

And it also creates a higher workload for you because you're

the one that's everyone's depending on for all the answers.

So what, because I do think that there is no all, or one way of leading,

like in terms of a leadership style, I think it is good to have a balance.

Sometimes we need to tell others what to do.

I call this more of a managerial or consulting way of leading.

But what I find is most leaders default to this.

In other words, they automatically are more heavy on the

managerial or consulting side.

And what I try to encourage leaders to do is take on more of an empowering

or coach approach style, where you ask others what they think they should do.

Now, so it's good to see when is it necessary to use a more

managerial style or to give advice?

Well, When your team has little or no experience.

In other words, you can ask them what they think they should do, but they might

not know because they have no experience.

Or they don't have knowledge or information on what they should do.

And then finally, also, when you are talking about a high risk situation,

whether that's a tight deadline or a reputational risk, there's a very

important donor visit or security risk.

Those types of situations you're also going to want to be more managerial

or tell your team what to do.

However, there are many other situations where it is not necessary

to tell our teams what to do.

And I would argue you actually are creating lower performers when you do it.

And those include when your team does actually have the experience or knowledge,

or they've done something before so that they should know how to do something.

And when you have a bit more time and your priority is their growth and development.

Because this is a really, really effective way of helping your

team grow professionally is just by having them come up with their

own solutions, their own answers.

And telling them what to do less.

So the big obstacle here that I see is how to get or break the habit of giving

advice or telling your team what to do.

In other words, how to use a coach approach more often?

Coach approach being where we ask others what do you think you

should do rather than give them advice or tell them the solutions.

So the way that I've taught my students, this in my course "Becoming the Modern,

Humanitarian and Development Leader", but also the way I look at it as a coach

and someone going into a conversation.

Is to set the intention that you want to learn from the other

person that you know nothing.

You make no assumptions.

You want to be curious and you want to learn from them.

I like to think "this person knows what to do and what is best for them".

And if I really believe that, then I'm going to ask them what they think.

I'm not going to tell them what to do.

If I really truly believe that they have the capability to solve

their own problem, then I'm not going to tell them what to do.

Because a lot of times we don't know necessarily what is best for this person,

because we are not in the situation.

And so if you're operating from the belief, the person has the experience and

the knowledge to solve their own problems.

Like I believe in my team.

I believe that they can solve their own problems, that they have the ability

to come up with their own solutions.

Then you will tell them what to do less.

You will automatically give them less advice.

But another thing that I suggest after having taught this to many,

many leaders, once again, Globally from all different backgrounds and

cultures, is that it's really important

if you start to use this way of leading of telling your team what

to do less, in other words, more of a coach approach way of leading.

It's really important to.

Introduce this to your team to not just switch from one

leadership style to another.

But to tell them that you have the intention of wanting to help

them grow and gain confidence.

And so you're going to start asking them for their own

solutions and ways of doing things.

And you're going to tell them less.

And this is really important.

I have actually dedicated a whole series of tools and systems in order to be able

to do this, which I share in my course.

But I encourage you to try this over the next week.

Tell your team that you want to build their confidence and part of that

is asking them to come up with our own solutions that you're going to

be telling them what to do less so that you can hear from them more.

And build their confidence.

Build their motivation.

And also it will help you because you will have less workload.

You will be able to focus on higher level, more strategic things that you've been

wanting to, but you've been putting off.

And so you will all become higher performers.

All right.

Until then.

Keep evolving bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do?

Or do you let them figure it out for themselves?

Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's

working for you and what's not.

To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?"

You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting

your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz

fill out your quiz and click submit.

So what are you waiting for?

Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now.

Your team will thank you for it!