How Leaders Can Free Their Time And Get A Team Fired Up
“It's not that the team didn't want to help me, it's not that the team didn't want to take on extra work. It's that they needed to know that A, I needed the help and then B, they needed to know how to help.”
Today’s clip we have Nick Casares, the Head of Product at Polyient. He shares with us how we was able to get more support from his team.
Transcript
Being humble enough to say hey I need some help. You know I think leaders often times are leaders because they're willing to Bear the brunt, right?
They're willing to do the work and take on the extra assignments and get things done which is essential, you can't be a leader without those qualities but at the same time we are also people who tend to take on too much and tend to say yes to things when we should say no or I need help.
And there was a very pivotal Moment during that experience where you know, it was probably several weeks before the event, you know, and some things we're coming down to the wire and the pressure was just high.
And I realized that you know I really needed I needed some help from the team that I wasn't asking for and that was that was an important thing. I needed to realize that I wasn't asking for it. It's not that the team didn't want to help me, it's not the team, didn't want to, you know, take on extra work. It's that they needed to know that A I needed the help and then B, they needed to know how to help.
So it was bringing that to them, you know, being honest and open about that where people said, oh, you know, let me take that off your plate, or I can volunteer some extra hours here or there and, you know, it really did change the tone, you know.
I think from that moment forward people just felt like we were on the same team again. I think that's a great. Kind of busting that myth that the leader has to know everything and do everything, right?
There's a sense and I've worked with several leaders where we work with them, over time to like, give off control, There was a tech company that I was working with and the leader wanted to do everything and he had to learn how to start giving people space and allowing people maybe not to do it at a hundred percent, but be okay with 90 or 80 percent of the vision.
And within, as you started to shift within a couple weeks, people then started coming to him and he started even collaborating with them more and people felt more engaged and comfortable to actually approach him because he opened up the door for it.
And made the space saying, look, I know, I'm like this and I know that I can't do it all on my own, and it team stepped up, just visiting him time and time again, saying, hey, we need help with this. What do you think about that?
And then they would take the task and go. Do it instead of just leaving him with it, so allowed him the space Also to then focus on the more important things and it allowed the team to feel a lot more comfortable.