As we came out of the 1970s with the Cold War drawing to a close and new threats rising from every corner of the map, the Army knew it had to change its culture. I described that decision in We’re All In.
We had to build junior leaders who could make real strategic decisions, which meant building a framework of trust and empowerment, then giving those young leaders the authority to decide on their own.
There was real risk in doing that. Handing decisions down the chain feels dangerous to any institution, and it felt dangerous to ours. But the approach paid off incredibly well, as we saw during the first Gulf War and many campaigns since.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, commanders empowered junior leaders to make tactical decisions with strategic implications every single day. Forces were spread across hundreds of square miles, and time-consuming centralized decision-making would not work in such a dispersed environment. Our junior leaders continually stepped up above and beyond our expectations, and they did it because they were trusted and empowered.
The culture shift was not a rapid process. It took the better part of a decade to move our culture from one dominated by compliance to one characterized by commitment.
If you want to see what happens to an organization that refuses to make that shift, look no further than the Russian military in the Ukraine War, now entering its 4th year. They have lost dozens of Generals because they insisted on clinging to the Culture of Compliance.
The Russian Generals had to engage in combat personally because their junior officers had no decision authority when the battlefield dispersed. They completely failed to adapt.
With the Listen series complete, we now turn to the third of the Big 6 Leadership Principles®: Trust and Empower. And the logical place to start is with the habit that kills both, the one I warn every leader about, including the version of me that used to do it. Beware the urge to micromanage.
The Insecurity Underneath the Urge
In my experience, leaders who micromanage are inherently insecure. They do not believe their organizations can survive without them, and because of their over-involvement, that ultimately becomes the case. The micromanager creates the very fragility he fears. A self-fulfilling prophecy in action.
I know this pattern from the inside. Most executives rose because they were excellent at the work itself, and stepping back from that work feels like losing the thing that made them valuable in the first place.
I have been that guy, standing over someone’s shoulder telling myself it was attention to detail when it was really just me not trusting the person I had put in the position. I have been exposed to the Big 6 for a long time, and most of what I know about them I learned by screwing them up. Trust and Empower is no exception.
The Information Age makes it worse, because our tools now let a manager watch everything, all the time, from anywhere. We have never been better equipped to control our people, which is exactly why the decision not to matters so much.
Shallow leaders call micromanagement high standards. They call it attention to detail. It is neither. It is a leader answering his own insecurity at his team’s expense.
What Micromanagement Costs You
There is a significant difference between All-In Adaptive Leading and micromanaging, and that difference shows up in a team’s morale and overall productivity. A micromanaged team learns quickly that initiative gets stifled, so people stop offering it up. Instead comes compliance, delivered at the speed of your own calendar. Every decision waits in line for you.
Then you pay for it a second time in retention. Empowerment can be seen as the embodiment of trust, and people can feel whether it is present or not. One of the clearest indicators that trust and empowerment exist in your organization is that people want to be part of your team. They feel valued.
That sense of belonging translates into vastly improved retention rates, and the money and morale you save compound year after year.
Turnover has a price tag most leaders underestimate. Replacing an entry-level employee typically runs 30 to 50 percent of that person’s annual salary. Replace a mid-level employee, and it climbs to roughly 150 percent. Lose a senior leader, and you are looking at something closer to 400 percent. The micromanager pays that bill first, because the people with the most options are always the first ones out the door.
The unempowered junior officers in Ukraine are the extreme version of a pattern I see in conference rooms every month. When no one below you has ever been trusted with a real decision, no one below you can make one when it counts.
Next, I share the test that tells you whether you are leading or micromanaging, the delegation discipline that grows your next All-In adaptive leaders, and the new Trust and Empower Workbook and Facilitator Guide. To read the rest of this article, visit this link.
Enjoy the journey!
