Ahamed has been leading a product line at Ring-ring technologies for the last 3 months. He has 4 Product Managers reporting to him. Prior to this, Ahamed was an individual contributor (IC) and was given the leadership position owing to his contributions as an IC PM.
Ahamed started feeling overwhelmed in the first few weeks itself. There were too many things to keep a tab on. Add numerous meetings to that, it got really tough. There was more work than he could chew.
Three months later, two of his team members resigned in quick succession. Their side of the story was that things were too much top-down (from senior management) and they don’t get enough freedom in deciding what to build next.
Ahamed initially felt ‘yeah, that is how the culture here is and I couldn’t have done much about it’. Questions like – “What would people think of me when half my team has resigned?” struck his mind.
The realization
After honest deliberations, he realized that he was actually part of the problem. To get to a clearer root cause, he took feedback from people around him – his team, and other stakeholders.
His team felt he was acting more of a messenger from senior management than a leader. Team members who knew him prior to this role pointed out that he was not like this earlier. Ahamed was undermining his own authority and projecting the messenger image about himself.
The root cause…
He realized why his team felt something like this about him –
To keep up to the pace of the role expectations, he had started taking shortcuts (unconsciously).
When initiatives were added to the company’s roadmap, he started giving relative importance purely based on where the initiative came from. The higher in the hierarchy the requestor was, the more attention he gave. He avoided critically analyzing initiatives, asking the right questions, or providing honest feedback to the management. He thought that the shortcuts saved time.
In the process, his communication style also changed. When he introduced new projects to his team, he started using the names of authority figures in the company to support the project instead of debating and answering tough questions. His tone was – “This initiative is sponsored by the CEO. This has high visibility and is important. So let us get it done”. This seemed to have made life easier for a while but backfired a little later.
Corrective action:
Ahamed sought help from his boss. He understood that he tried to do more than what was humanly possible. This was the root cause of his behavioral problems.
He discussed the role expectations with his boss. He and the boss were on the same page on the expected outcomes from him. But the surprise came from the tasks that Ahamed was expected to do and not do.
For example, getting customers to love the product (outcome) was an expectation but personally getting involved in customer escalations (tasks) was not the boss’ expectation.
The boss expected Ahamed to motivate his team, get them focused on the right things, review their approach and guide course correction if things didn’t work as expected. Ahamed realized that he spends hardly 10-20% of his time on these things.
This alignment of expectations was an eye-opener for Ahamed. It helped him to march forward and succeed.
Learnings
When things get overwhelming, leaders tend to use proxies like power instead of using a solid decision-making process.
This behavior is more frequently exhibited by new leaders and results in loss of credibility sooner or later.
Leaders should own outcomes instead of tasks. This approach reduces getting overwhelmed, helps setting an eye on the right things, and delegate fully wherever the team is capable of delivering with minimal oversight
3. Bosses of newbie leaders play a very crucial role to set them up for success. Candid conversations, guidance on what is expected out of the role and what is not can help a long way in making the newbie leader successful.
Questions
You may be thinking – ‘Well, this story is simplistic, I have my own problems here!’.
Some of the objections could be –
1. What if my lack of deep involvement causes a big issue – a failed product, a bad PR. Can I afford the risk?
2. I don’t have a get great team here. I have to hire for potential and groom people. So I need to manage my team closely till they can fully perform on their own.
These are valid concerns and we will address them in the next couple of posts.
