Sleeves Up, Hands-On: Get Involved When You Lead
How often do you hear about a detached, completely hands-off leader that inspired his team to achieve great success?
Not often.
Gilbert W. Fairholm, a noted professor and author, said this about leadership: “Leadership is not a starring role. True leadership describes unified action of leaders and followers (stakeholders) working together to jointly achieve mutual goals. It is collaborative.”
In my years of experience as a CEO and in other positions of leadership, I tried many different approaches to participate in teamwork and day-to-day processes. Small businesses, startups and growing tech enterprises all can benefit from a hands-on leadership approach -- as long as you develop a strategy that works.
The Benefits Of Hands-On Leadership
Well-balanced hands-on leadership can have a lot of benefits for business owners and decision makers. Hands-on leadership helps you:
• Understand major shifts in your business and/or market: Staying hands-off prevents senior managers from understanding changes in consumer and employee needs. Occasionally participating in otherwise mundane business processes can give insights to improve productivity, employee morale, sales and more.
• Develop a rapport with your employees: Working the occasional shift or participating in work activities helps you develop a rapport with -- and earn the respect of -- your employees. Hands-on leadership helps them feel like you have a real understanding of their workday and the challenges they face. Close relationships with your employees can help turn them into brand advocates.
• Preserve your vision in a growing enterprise: As your business grows, it’s only natural to participate less and less in daily activities. You may even delegate some major decision making to trusted individuals. But if you stay involved with a hands-on approach, it can help your business grow while preserving your central vision and company culture. Steve Jobs’ hands-on approach as CEO of Apple is a good example of this.
• Prepare you to act quickly when changes arise: When major changes arise in your business, you might feel compelled to become more hands-on than you were before. If there’s a major market shift, you adopt a new business system, undergo a merger or your general manager suddenly quits, you need to get involved to get your business back on track.
If you already have knowledge and expertise in the day-to-day operation of your business, you’re ready to act quickly and efficiently when changes do come up.
How To Be An Effective Hands-On Leader
Leadership and management are two different things. A hands-on leader isn’t in charge of overseeing every business process. A hands-on leader is someone who simply never fully separates themselves from the day-to-day operations.
Here are some examples of effective hands-on leadership traits you should aim for:
• Regularly communicating with your core teams about their work
• Coaching on different business tasks
• Offering feedback to teams and individuals
• Leading by example
• Soliciting feedback from your employees directly
Your hands-on leadership strategy can be systematic or opportunistic. Work the occasional shift, learn how to use your new CRM system and help get employee buy-in or temporarily take on additional duties when you lose an employee.
Too Much Hands-On?
Micromanagement is a pitfall to avoid. Some employees might benefit from micromanagement when they first join your tech company. But don’t stifle the creativity or productivity of star employees just because you want to be involved.
Use hands-on leadership to help set goals and make improvements in your company. Then, take a step back and allow your employees to implement it.
In my own efforts, I’ll admit that integrating myself into team activities seemed rather disruptive at times. It got better when I started looking for opportunities where a hands-on approach had the most potential to help, such as in a crisis situation or major company transition.
When decision making doesn’t affect the major trajectory of your business, refer back to your employees to make their own decisions or work things out democratically.
How Hands-On Should You Be?
That really depends on the size of your organization. I found I was much more deeply involved in day-to-day business activities in my pure startup days at Dizzywood than I am at Softonic.
That’s because I knew the benefits of gaining expertise in a wide range of business tasks to help direct vision and growth for a smaller business. Successful startup leaders often work alongside employees and turn them into advocates for their vision and message.
As your tech business grows, delegating will become more important for productivity and scalability. Get to the point where you trust your employees to do their jobs well and build a relationship of mutual respect. Once you’ve done that, your hands-on leadership is no longer needed -- other than the occasional check-in, crisis or change in management.
For the hands-off leader of a larger organization who’s trying to reconnect with employees and consumers, try taking baby steps. Participate in some high-level management activities that you wouldn’t normally so your employees can get used to having you around and offering suggestions for improvement. If that goes well, you can try to dig deeper into individual departments, helping out in areas that could really benefit from your expertise.
A hands-on leadership style can do a lot to guide the direction of your business and drive your bottom line. But don’t be hands-on simply for your sake. Make sure it benefits your employees as well by improving productivity, morale and the overall effectiveness of your company.