Treat Your Team Like Children, and They’ll Start Acting Like Children

I’ll share an example from my own experience as a micromanager. I was organizing an event about a new and innovative methodology that, in my view, could revolutionize the engineering of complex systems. Preparing for the event meant creating in-depth expert content and developing targeted marketing communications. I assigned myself the task of delivering the actual technical content, while the experts in our marketing department would take care of the promotion facilities, communication with other speakers, and event follow-up activities. We started working, and I could not resist checking frequently on the status of all other activities, offering ‘helpful’ but overly detailed instructions, and not attending to my work. After a couple of days, I got the response: “If you think you know all this better than us, please do it yourself”. Now I was burdened with both tasks, and I wondered: “What happened?”

You are not the only expert working in your organization

At that point, I realized I was not trusting the experience of my professional colleagues. Instead, I was giving them detailed instructions in their own area of expertise. Their response was predictable: they started blindly following my ad hoc orders rather than using their own judgment and competence. In other words, they started acting like children in response to my infantile instructions. Over the years, I’ve heard reactions like these, which prompted me to reflect on and adjust my leadership style:

• I don’t want to do that.
• I don’t like this. It’s no fun.
• It’s too complicated.
• I don’t know how to do this.
• Are we done yet?
• I don’t know who to ask about that.
• You didn’t tell me it worked that way.
• That’s not allowed here.
• I’m hungry. Is it lunch already?
• I’m bored. Can we do something fun?
• Okay, if you say so. You’re the expert.

These responses are honest. When you take away ownership, creativity, and independence, what remains is indifference. In the end, that is the only logical response: once people feel that their competence is neither trusted nor respected, the work stops feeling like theirs. It becomes yours.

My takeaway:
Just like with real children, the behavior I get from my team is often a response to the way I behave. So when they act up, I should not start by blaming them. I should first look at myself.

And don’t forget to have lunch together and have some fun, that matters too.