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What's the one leadership behaviour that makes your team's heart sink when your name pops up in their inbox? The one that kills discretionary effort, drains initiative and keeps you buried in low value work? Well, that would be micromanagement.

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Welcome to the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more access to the experience of a success, successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host, Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence.

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Hey there and welcome to episode 391 of the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. This week's episode Do Hands On Leaders Get Better Results? There are different schools of thought on when and how leaders should get involved in their people's work. Some pundits call it leading from the front, showing your team that nothing is beneath you and that you're prepared to get your hands dirty to help them to deliver. But there's a sinister side to dipping down into your team's work. Organisational design and performance depends on leaders at each level doing the right job, not the job they drift into to fill the gaps their people leave when they don't perform. I'm a massive advocate for leaders, knowing their role and staying in their lane. So I got to tell you, I was mildly triggered when I came across an article in Harvard Business Review which was titled the surprising Success of Hands on Leaders. Is this research telling us that dipping down into your people's work and micromanaging your team is the latest performance panacea? Well, today I'm going to go deep on the concepts of working at level, capability building and micromanagement. I'll begin by taking a look at what it means to work at the right level. I'll explore the HBR article about hands on leaders and I'll finish with six tips to prevent you from becoming a micromanager. So let's get into it. Every organisation has some form of structure, but obviously the larger a business becomes, the more people are employed and the more structure is required to keep it all together. There are many vast, complex businesses that span multiple industries and multiple countries. These companies have many layers of leaders to control the flow and execution of work. Just think about how many layers your current organization has and ask yourself, is it clear why each layer exists? Working at level is really simple in principle. Whichever level you're at, you should only do the work that's appropriate for that level. To be clear, that means you don't do the work of people at other levels. That's what they're paid to do. But this is much easier in principle than it is in practice. The concept of organisational levels was studied deeply by Canadian management consultant Elliot Jaques in the back half of the 20th century. His stratified systems theory laid the groundwork for modern organisational design. Now, Jacques observed that as you ascend through each level of an organization, the complexity becomes greater. And along with that increasing complexity, the time horizon for the work at that level is longer. Let me bring this to life with a quick example. If you're a frontline worker in, say, a customer service role, your job is to answer incoming customer queries and complaints. Despite the obvious pressures and difficulties of the job, it's not a particularly complex task. And the time horizon for your job is really short. It's today, this hour, this call. Even if you did look beyond the immediate day to day demands of answering customer queries, it would only be to try to improve your own ecosystem. For example, to suggest improvements to a call centre process or to rewrite a telephone script. And if you did that, you would demonstrate a level of proactivity that would probably see you earmarked as a future leader. In summary, though, at the front line, your job is finite. It's relatively simple, and it has an extremely short time horizon on which to focus. Let's contrast this with the chief executive of that same business. As CEO, your number one job is to ensure the perpetuation of the business. That means navigating an uncertain economic, political and regulatory environment. It means making strategic bets about which products to invest in and which markets to compete in. It means thinking about building the workforce capability of the future. It means managing multiple stakeholders with competing interests. The complexity at that level is many multiples of the front line complexity. And the time horizon you focus on isn't measured in days, it's measured in years. I'm sure you can see this operating implicitly in your company right now, but it doesn't necessarily mean that each organizational level is optimized. The difference between frontline and the CEO is pretty clear, but the difference between, say, a general manager and an executive is much less. So the bottom line of stratified systems theory is every level must have a unique purpose, every level must have a unique set of deliverables, and every level must have a unique time horizon. If you aren't clear on this, you're going to be tempted to dip down. That is, to do the work that rightly belongs at the levels below you. And if you Focus on your people's work. At that level of detail, you will slip quietly into micro. Working at level becomes trickier the higher up you go. In your very first leadership role, you'll most likely have quite a small team. You'll be what we call a leader of others. You don't have any leaders reporting to you, just individual contributors. Your work may not be strictly confined to leadership work either. You'll probably have an assumed level of output from being on the tools yourself. And with the flatter organizational structures that are being implemented in large businesses, there's an ongoing need to do technical work at higher levels. Certain industries even expect hands on work from leaders at senior levels, so law, education and consulting come to mind. As a leader of others though, it's really easy to dip down into your people's work. In fact, it's almost expected that you're going to do that. But if you do, you develop some bad habits that can be quite difficult to shake. When you get promoted to the next level, you end up in a leader of leaders role. You have other leaders reporting to you who have their own teams below them. You can't do the work of your individual contributors from that position, or at least you shouldn't. Leading through other leaders is a completely different proposition. You can't grab the value levers yourself. You have to give your direct reports the clarity of objectives, the resources and the capability to deliver without your direct involvement in the actual work. And this is where many leaders flounder. It's no surprise there are so many micromanagers, because they're never coached and mentored into how to make that transition. And there are some very plausible reasons to explain why leaders dip down. For a start, when you're promoted, you have to leave your comfort zone. Simply letting go of your technical work in those early leadership roles is really hard. You're good at it. You've spent years building your expertise and knowledge. It's what defines your value in the market. And besides, your technical skills are probably what got you promoted in the first place. Let's face it, a lot of your identity is tied up in your technical Persona. Then there's just the pure loss of control. You rationalise that no one can do it as well as you, which might be true. If you do it yourself, you know it's going to get done the way you want. It's easier, it's faster, and it's more reliable. So why not just roll your sleeves up and do it right? Or you may be covering for a weak team with poor capability if your team members are underperforming or not delivering. Dipping down into their work is one way of getting the job done, but you're over functioning for them. Let's face it, it's a lot easier to do the work yourself than it is to lead someone else to deliver it to the required standard. But every time you dip down you lose visibility and you squander opportunity. The visibility of finding out what an individual is truly capable of and the opportunity to let your people do it themselves and build their capability. This of course can be justified with noble rationalisation. I lead from the front. I always get the job done. I wouldn't ask my people to do anything I'm not prepared to do myself. All of which is complete bullshit and it sacrifices long term performance for short term expediency. When I saw the title of the HBR article the Surprising Success of Hands On Leaders, I immediately thought here we go. Another excuse for leaders to justify interfering in their people's work. The authors look at a few companies that have been extremely successful and attribute this success to certain leadership and cultural behaviours. It begins by stating senior leaders should focus on the what purpose, vision, strategy goals, resource allocation and assembling a capable team to protect their time. For those high level priorities they have to delegate the day to day operating decisions. The how to their subordinates. Many CEOs would claim they care about execution. What distinguishes the leaders of these high performing firms is their sustained and close attention to behaviours and systems. They are teachers and system builders. The article explores five core principles. Principle number one they obsess over customer metrics. Not just how a customer benefits the company, but the metrics that reflect how the company benefits the customer. They focus deeply on how the business creates and delivers value for its customers. Well, how do I interpret this? Okay, it's just about strategy and how strategy drives the operating model of the company. Nothing about this screams hands on to me. It should be a focus of every single leader and it starts at the top. Principle number two they architect the way work gets done. This is about shifting decision rights closer to the front lines and equipping those teams with the tools and frameworks that allow them to act. It often requires leaders to give up control, to redistribute authority and to remove the need for upwards approvals. And it reduces the friction points that slow teams down. What's my spin on this? Well, this is the whole point of leading IT level, pushing accountability for decisions downwards so that they're made as close to the action as Possible. Okay, so at this stage I'm still reading patiently waiting for the hands on bit. Principle number three, they use experiments to make decisions. Now, everyone from frontline workers to executives is expected to propose ideas and test them through structured experiments. This is the formal implementation of the scientific process. How do I interpret this? Well, it seems like a sensible process for regulating investment in new ideas. It removes opinion, conjecture and politics and forces a focus on value. Is this an indicator of hands on leadership or is it just the process of understanding value at every level of the business? Principle 4. They lead by teaching the toolkit. This is getting a little bit more hands on. Now, the authors use the example of senior executives at Danaher getting involved in training their leaders in the principles of kaizen. This is the Japanese word for continuous improvement. It requires leaders to know the customer and what they want to observe, to understand the problem, to analyze root causes using data, and to brainstorm countermeasures. This enables you to develop a rapid prototype. Now, my interpretation of this is that a senior executive taking time out to engage in the training isn't outlandish, but I would probably use a slightly different approach. I would invest in having someone else train the leaders without my personal involvement. And once they were trained, my job would be to support them and hold them accountable for delivering results to the required standard. Finally, principle number five. They strive to be better, faster and cheaper every year, forever. This is absolutely critical. Leaders need to build systems, habits and norms that embed continuous improvement into the culture as a standard business practice. And my take on this is that every leader at every level should be striving to create a culture of better, faster, cheaper, but crucially, not at the expense of the big ticket value objectives that you're trying to pursue. Okay, so the concept of the hands on manager described in the article isn't so much about leaders operating below their level or micromanaging. It's not about doing things that your people are being paid to do. It's not about rolling your sleeves up. It's not about focusing on an inappropriately low level of detail. It's about being a strong leader who creates the conditions for performance. A leader like this understands the mantra, nose in, fingers out. How do you make sure you don't become a micromanager? Well, perhaps start by not rationalising away your bad habits. Here are six tips for making sure you don't slide into micromanagement. Tip number one. Psychologically, you need to focus on the trade off decision. Do I do this myself or do I stand back and support the person to do it. You're trading off short term delivery with long term capability building. As I said earlier, you have to get the job done. So your decision has to be guided by your assessment of the risk. What if the person doesn't deliver? How big a deal is that going to be? Tip number two, look up and out, not in and down. You'll be tempted to look inwards and focus 90% of your energy on your team, but it helps to be conscious of this and look outward to your peers and boss. If your tendency is to focus on the issues above your level, you'll be way less likely to get drawn into the detail below your level. Tip number three, build capability. Nothing will drag you down faster than lack of team capability. If your people aren't competent, both individually and collectively, you'll be forever dipping down. You won't have a choice, so hire the right people, move the wrong people out and spend your time on improving their capability and performance instead of compensating for their shortcomings. Tip number four, Learn to inspect outputs. Many leaders rely on inputs to manage their teams. Things like time at the desk, hours worked, number of emails written, amount of talk, time in meetings and so on. None of this matters. If you can work out how to inspect outputs, you'll be able to lead for results. And this is when you can truly drive a step change in team performance. Tip number five, hold people accountable for delivery. Many leaders accept a never ending litany of excuses from their team, and you've probably already worked out that some of your people are masters at finding a thousand ways to explain how the dog ate their homework. Strong single point accountability is the only way to kill these excuses. And finally, tip number six, if you do choose to dip down, follow up with feedback and reset expectations. It has to be a one off. You can't let dipping down become a predictable pattern. If you make a risk based decision that you're going to dip down and do one of your people's jobs for them, it can't end there. You have to follow up with a conversation that goes something like, look Marty, I had to step in to get the result this time, but I can't keep doing that. It's not my job, it's your job and you have to be able to do the job to the required standard without my constant intervention, otherwise this simply isn't going to work. Now that sends a pretty clear message. It lets you get the job done while taking advantage of a teachable moment, knowing how to stay in your lane. Work at your level and build your team's capability are critical skills for every leader, no matter where you are in your company's hierarchy. If you don't master these skills early, the higher up you go, the more you'll be exposed. Learning how to keep your finger on the pulse, or being hands on, as the HBR article calls it, without dipping down, is one of the more subtle elements of leadership. Your objective should be to exercise restraint and leave a vacuum for your people to fill, rather than you stepping in to fill the gap yourself. This creates a virtuous circle, your people's job satisfaction improves, you build speed and momentum into your culture, and your own personal effectiveness increases tenfold. All right, so that brings us to the end of episode 391. I really hope you enjoyed it, but as I'm sure you know, listening is easy. Leading is hard. That's why we created Leadership beyond the Theory, our flagship program that turns insight into action and action into results. This is where we unlock the secrets of elite leadership performance and give you the tools that you need. Lead at the right level. I'm looking forward to next week's episode. What happens when you work for a weak boss? Until then, I know you'll take every opportunity you can to be a no bullshit.