How to create responsibility in your team
How to create responsibility in your team
Cognitive ability significantly declines in the presence of your mobile phone.
Particularly if you have a strong attachment to it. (Which is more likely than not).
Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity | Journal of the Association for Consumer Research: Vol 2, No 2
That’s a study worth reading.
So, IQ changes depending upon whats in the environment.
In this case when there is a mobile phone in the environment.
If you’ve not noticed this on yourself just observe your kids when they don’t have access for a day.
Wow!
Anyway.
People with lower IQ’s make very different decisions to people with higher IQ’s.
That’s the reason we use IQ as a measure.
This is true even if it just temporarily dropped in a given environment.
This is something worth spending a long time thinking about.
It is the meaning our brain has attached to the things in the environment that determines its impact on IQ.
(The reality is that it’s far more than just IQ but this is a useful way of thinking about it.)
In the case of a phone.
The meaning associated with the phone could be:
Validation
Invalidation/ judgement
Danger
Comparison
Bad news
Good news
Reward
Punishment
All unconsciously attached based on the emotions experienced as a result of information coming through the phone.
Cool - with me so far?
In exactly the same way the people you work with hold meaning associations about you (and you them of course).
For the most part that meaning is unconscious.
Now let’s look at responsibility, what does it mean?
It means, the ability to respond.
Our ability to respond is dependent upon, in many ways, our clarity of thought ie IQ.
If you as a leader are the font of all knowledge.
They are the font of all ignorance.
If your first step is to explain where their idea is wrong/ or could be better.
You are the source of judgement.
If you are the source of good ideas.
They are the source of bad ideas.
Which is to say that if you are the devise of judgement, ideas, knowledge and skill - however well intended and kindly worded.
You diminish their IQ by your very presence and thus their ability to respond. (Which forms the meaning you attach to them).
Do they come up with no ideas in meetings?
Do they keep coming to you for answers?
Do they always seem to miss the obvious ideas?
Do they make common sense mistakes?
Do they avoid coming to you even when stuck and hide that they haven’t done what they said they would?
These are the symptoms that indicate this meaning association.
Once you are a leader your job is to maximise their responsibility and ability.
This is done by:
Never providing answers but by providing the questions you used to find answers.
Rather than giving feedback providing the framework that you use to assess work product and asking where what they’ve produced is in relation to that, and what they’ll do to close the gap between where they are and where they need to be.
Rather than sharing what you think, asking what they think. And if they don’t know what they think ask them what data they need to form an opinion.
Become the devise that INCREASES their IQ
Then you won’t need to be in those meetings.
They’ll come to you less.
You’ll get more done with fewer people.
You’ll have an even happier, even more empowered team.