The Scenario: 

• Greg gets promoted to a “leader of leaders” position.
• Greg assumes that he will have to increase his hours, so adopts 60-hour weeks.
• Greg doesn’t scale up his leadership style and still works as if he’s leading a small team.
• Greg’s direct reports grow increasingly frustrated with his inconsistent leadership style of sometimes micromanaging, sometimes ignoring, sometimes doing things others can do, or sometimes creating fire-drills to get deliverables done.
• Greg’s manager sees him not getting things done and puts more pressure on Greg.
• Greg steps it up to 80-hour weeks.
• Greg’s direct reports start leaving, citing Greg as an ineffective leader.
• Greg’s manager signs Greg up for a class on how to scale as a leader. Greg doesn’t go because he’s too busy.
• Greg’s family grows increasingly frustrated with his not being present and part of the family.
• Greg puts on ten pounds due to poor eating habits and lack of exercise.
• Greg’s manager makes the difficult but needed decision to demote Greg.
  

As a young manager I was on a particularly difficult assignment that had attention all the way up to the CEO of the company. The executive leading the project was a very seasoned and intentional leader who executed as well as anyone I’ve ever seen drive a crisis initiative. His ability to stay on top of the work was like nothing like I’d ever seen from other leaders in the organization. During my annual review with him, I asked what he saw as a crucial attribute of a successful leader. Without missing a beat, he gave me two words which continue to shape me as a leader: follow up.

Through the years I’ve seen how follow-up (or lack thereof) contributed to a team’s ability to successfully deliver results. Organizations that have follow-up in their DNA simply execute more friction-free than those who don’t. The leader stays better aligned with the work happening in the organization, and the followers better understand and execute to the leader’s expectations. I’ve seen it in my own experience as a leader. As my leadership skills matured and my follow-up ability became more autonomic, I saw first-hand how we were able to get things done more effectively. I also saw another benefit--my timely follow-up behavior reduced the number and magnitude of crises I had to deal with. I was more on top of what was happening, was better in sync with the team, and more engaged when the team needed my help to get something done.

Some time back I was the executive sponsor responsible for developing a facility strategy for a new line of business. I empowered one of my project managers to develop the strategy which we would jointly present to our management. We both had visions of what we expected in the strategy but I didn’t ensure our points of view meshed.. My project manager was very competent in her job; however mind-reading was not one of her skills. The day before we were due to present the strategy, I did a walk-through with her. It wasn’t anything like I envisioned, and I knew the strategy in its current state wouldn’t be well received by our management. We went through a fire drill to get the strategy to a state where I thought it would be better received. We survived the review with our management, but it didn’t go nearly as well as it could have gone, and we went through a lot of pain (including a sleepless night) to rework the strategy.

Colleagues, I feel your pain on this issue.

Scenario #1: You’ve got a critical position that needs to be filled by a qualified candidate, and quick. For every day the position doesn’t get filled, your in-box fills up a bit more with work to be done because your unfilled position hasn’t been staffed. You see tons of resumes and have interviewed scores of candidates, but the rock star you’re looking for isn’t emerging. You refuse to “settle” for a mediocre candidate, but the work is piling up and you’ve got to do something. 

As a child and young adult I was very independent.  Regardless of the situation, if I was doing something I was determined to do it myself and not ask for anyone's help.  In my eyes asking for someone's help was akin to admitting defeat or somehow showing others that I was weak or incompetent.   My attitude was "If someone else can do it, I can do it".   How Naive.