In yesterday’s episode we talked about trying to regain control when we feel like our environment is out of control. But when it comes to leading a team, provide support not control.
Ultimately, our goal as business owners and leaders is to exceed our customer’s expectations. To do that, we start to believe that we must have the perfect business and the perfect product. But right out of the gate, we never achieved that. It’s impossible when you are the only person in your business. We’re not good at everything, nor can we accomplish everything alone. So we start from a place of imperfection and then we hire hoping we can get closer to perfection as a result. This is where it starts to get dangerous for some business owners.
Once they have a team, they start to critique their team and they try to control the output. They provide feedback, but the intent of the feedback isn’t to make the team member a better employee, but instead the intent is to make the them, the business owner, personally feel better. Those individuals try to control the output of a team because they have felt out of control in the past. This is damaging the to the team.
My challenge for you today is to reflect on the interactions you have with your team. Are you giving feedback to build others up and help them grow? Or are you giving feedback to have control and demand perfection? If it’s the latter, realize that none of us are perfect and we all have different styles or methods. You want those differences to exist in order to create a strong team. Embrace the difference, don’t try to control it. Remember, provide support, not control.