Will empowerment survive a return to the office?

When COVID hit in March of 2020, my team and I (like many others) were brutally thrust into a virtual environment. We are not a big team - only 3 direct reports and 15 individual contributors. Yet, despite all of my agile training and leadership development courses, I found myself clinging to three check-ins a day with my team (8am, 12pm, and 4pm). At first, I insisted all 15 show up. Then I “made due” with just my 3 leaders. Eventually they convinced me to go to two times a day (8am, 4pm), then once a day (8am), then twice a week (tue, thu) and now we talk once a week on a 45 min leadership call.

And guess what I learned? I am NOT the air traffic controller talking down the student pilot of a 747 (my mental model for the value I added pre-COVID). No, I’m more like an alarm clock snooze button…just reminding them to do something they already knew they had to do.

This is not to say that I don’t add value…after all, I wouldn’t even get up in the morning without two good hits of my snooze alarm. It’s just to say that I didn’t add the value I thought I did.

I can laugh now, but I didn’t then. I was convinced if I didn’t talk to them that they would get lost in the complexity of the work and lose sight of what was important…Let’s just say, they tolerated me.

At first, this caused a crisis of conscience for me. What was my role if it wasn’t to direct the planes and avoid disaster?

Thankfully, there was a lot of good literature out there to help me soul search this question (e.g., The One Minute Manager by Blanchard and Johnson, or Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley, or Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins).

After much study and self-reflection over the course of the last 18 months, I have come to redefine my role as a leader as:

• Salesman: Sourcing new problems for me team to solve
• Coach: Holding each of them to a higher standard than they hold themselves
• Matriarch: Creating a psychologically safe, learning environment
• Storyteller: Articulating our value inside and outside our group
• Thought leader: Asking the questions no one else dares do (or can)

So, yay me! Right? Wrong. Here’s the danger I see looming on the horizon.

What keeps me up at night is going back to an in-person environment where I can once again indulge my secret desire to involve myself in everything that is going on. Passing by Bob’s desk and asking, “Hey, what ya working on?” Stopping in the lunchroom and asking Teresa, “How did that meeting with Billy go?” Or my favorite pastime, sticking my head over the cubicle and asking, “Want to talk about that deck for Friday’s meeting?”

It’s addictive! Way more addictive than most leaders are willing to admit.

Being “in the know” and “in the flow” of your team is exhilarating for most leaders. We feel like that air traffic controller, keeping everything organized…avoiding disaster…adding value! BUT IT IS AN ILLUSION. We control very little and more often than not we are simply indulging our own pleasures in “having the answer” and “pointing out the obvious.” Our teams, meanwhile, patiently tolerate us and go about their work.

So I started to ask myself, how could I prevent myself from falling back into this trap? Well, I don’t really know for sure yet because we don’t go back until September, but here are five ideas I have:

1. Clearly define the outcomes (not activities) by which I will judge success
2. Do not add meetings to my calendar that are not there today (especially ‘alignment’ meetings)
3. Continue to excuse myself from meetings my employees have with other leaders, even if those leaders are my peers or seniors (again, taking up space in meetings doesn’t add value)
4. Define what a good week looks/feels like for me as a salesman, coach, matriarch, story teller, and thought leader…everything but an air traffic controller.
5. Ask my team to give me feedback frequently during the first few days, weeks, and months of this new normal.

With any luck, I’ll make it through this return to work with my new leadership awareness in tact. Hopefully many of you will as well.

I encourage you to share your thoughts, tips, and advice in the comments of this post so that all of us can learn together!