You don’t need to keep hitting people over the head - that’s assault, not leadership.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “unintended consequences of well-intentioned people.” Unfortunately, leaders can fall into the trap of unexpected outcomes due to a lack of self-awareness and understanding of emotional intelligence in attempting to demonstrate leadership by doing subordinates’ jobs with them (or for them).
Leaders are expected to to hold a number of positive qualities, for those qualities are the conduit a leader utilizes to convey a mission and motivate people to follow. People want a leader who is mix of a visionary, manager, coach, change agent, teacher, and decision maker. Balance in each of these qualities is important for achieving success. Leaning too heavily on a quality or failing to bring enough to the table can be problematic. When managing, too much can be a bad thing.
Empowering people to do their jobs, encouraging performance with maximum effort, and producing meaningful results are expected actions of leaders. Empowerment allows people to lead in their area of expertise or responsibility, or what Joseph Raelin refers to a being “leaderful.” Encouragement is the process of offering emotional and tangible support to do the job. The end product, if all comes together properly, will produce meaningful results - for the company in terms of recognition, profit, and successful goal achievement and for the people involved in a project who garner pride, self-esteem, respect, and satisfaction through their involvement.
Sometimes, though, leaders become overzealous in their involvement with those they lead as they attempt to lead from the front by actively participating in the details of a project or assignment with team members or employees instead of managing the big picture.
While the motivation for such leadership action can be pure and with good intention to “be a part of the team,” the action of direct participation by helping others perform their jobs and tasks comes across with negative messages - and consequences - from good intentions. The leader’s actions will be perceived as lacking trust in the employee or team member to do the job correctly (or do it at all), the leader perceives the employee as lazy or incapable, or a micromanagement of details is being undertaken. The result is repeated blows to workers or team members who experience fading morale, decreasing self-esteem, reduced or eliminated satisfaction, and loss of respect for the leader.
Emotional intelligence requires leaders to be cognizant of the impact of their actions when participating with employees to avoid assaulting egos and self-esteem. Developing leaderful people requires more distance than hovering.
As a leader, take the time to step back and assess your involvement in tasks or jobs performed by subordinates. If you find yourself doing the jobs of those who follow you, stop and step back. You’ll be surprised at how much healthier and fuller the results will be - in your project and the people you lead.