So when I was younger, "The Wizard of Oz" would come on TV once a year without fail. And every year I watched it without fail (except the bit with the flying monkeys, they always scared me...). And every year I was always fascinated towards the end when I realized that as soon as the Scarecrow stopped being dependent upon Dorothy for guidance, he showed that he really did have a brain and was perfectly competent at understanding tricky situations, realizing what needed to be done, and even strategic planning (I figure that creating a plan to sneak into the Witch's castle counts as strategic planning, I have colleagues who would disagree with me but that is another discussion...).
So all this time both Dorothy and the Scarecrow were operating under the impression that he knew nothing, and it turns out that they were both wrong. Huh.
In my non-blogging life I am a teacher. I teach undergraduate and MBA courses in Leadership, Teamwork and the like. I periodically find that I have unintentionally begun to assume that my students have no brain, but I only realize it when a student writes a particularly good paper that makes me re-evaluate the way I look at the student, the assignment, all the other papers, etc.
Chris Argyris, of Harvard Business School, has written extensively about senior managers and leaders within organizations, and how their position begins to shape they way they think about themselves and others. Simply put, if I am promoted to a management position it must be because I am smarter than those who were my peers. Argyris talks about how this paradoxically makes it harder for those senior managers to learn, because they become psychologically invested in the tools, techniques and knowledge that helped them attain their current level of success. However, this same unconscious belief also makes it harder for us to find ways to put the team's collective brain power to use. After all, if I am the smartest (because I am the "manager") then any one else is at best the 2nd smartest person on the team. And why would I want anything but the smartest brain working on an important problem?
So this set of assumptions leads a manager or team leader to assume that he or she has to be the one figuring out all the answers. However this is a bad assumption for at least four reasons:
1) you may not actually *be* the smartest person on the team;
2) you may not be the best suited to solve this particular program (it may rely upon specialized knowledge, skills or networks that you don't have);
3) your primary job as manager or team leader is to get and keep the team running at peak performance;
4) if you are working on all the hard problems it is a huge demotivator to your team members.
One of the best articles on empowering others I have ever read was a 1976 article in Organizational Dynamics called "MacGregor" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W6S-4B7GPCN-2V&_user=1967573&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1139576761&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000053403&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1967573&md5=9cde3c8bb84920f12472867ce3e70ae7)
MacGregor is a fictional plant manager who spends the vast majority of his time playing golf. He forces his assistant managers to work with each other to solve all of the problems that they run into. He gives himself the tasks of strategic planning for his plant, and choosing who will be his next assistant managers. Its a wonderful tale about building motivation and engagement in one's direct reports or team members not simply by letting them do meaningful tasks, but by *forcing* them to realize that they are not dependent upon you as a leader.
So if you want your team members to start acting like the smart, skilled people that they are - don't simply request it, require it by changing your own behavior!
Good luck!
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