New leaders tend to spend a lot of their time and energy in fire fighting. They tend to move from one firefight to another until they put off all the fires. Unfortunately, there is always some fire or the other in fast-moving firms and so they can continue this eternally until someone (usually their boss) steps in.
It is very obvious that fire fighting is not the best use of one’s time and more so at higher levels. New leaders also understand this (largely) but why do they continue wasting their valuable time?
Here are the reasons –
1. Popular leadership theories and stories invoke statements like “Leading from the front” and new leaders take it literally.
Firefighting appears like a great way to support a team member, get his/her support, and also appear like a great warrior in front of other stakeholders.
2. Leaders confuse accountability with responsibility.
When someone says “the buck stops with the boss”, the leaders think they have to put in all effort directly to demonstrate that they are responsible.
3. A person got promoted to lead a team simply because of certain expertise (e.g. He/She was a great Product manager). Firefighting is a way to use that expertise and make one feel good about using their current set of skills.
4. Not knowing what to do / what not to do in the new position, a sense of insecurity starts building. Fire fighting is a great way to fight that insecurity and prove to oneself. The new manager ends up positioning him/herself as the go-to person thereby attracting more issues that should have never been on his/her plate.
But wait, all the above reasons are only symptoms and not the root cause.
The root cause of (or solution to ) all these lies in the lack of a clear definition of leadership role & the associated tasks.
Leadership roles are generally vaguely defined and the leadership tasks (list of activities) are rarely (in fact, more of ‘never’) defined well in most organizations.
The worst part is that ‘what a leader should NOT be doing?’ is not documented or explained. For example – A leader is not told that they don’t need to very closely follow each team member’s day-to-day work but spend more time on setting them up to succeed.
How to solve this? Creating a well-written description of what tasks leaders need to do and what they are generally not expected to do. Since leadership is as much of an art as science, the description should allow flexibility for the leaders to mold their roles depending on the team and situation.
Alternatively, the boss of the newbie leader can guide them closely in the first few weeks.
What other mistakes does a new leader make? Tell us in the comments.
