Being a hero, fixing all the problems, and continuing to do all the tasks you did at the level you are now managing is not the way to be respected as or to become a great leader.

The impact of managers who continue to do the job of their direct reports (DR) as well as their own may not be obvious at first. Rather than teach them how to do the job, the managers do it themselves.

The manager is not preparing their DRs for success.

The DR may feel disrespected and believe that their manager thinks they are unteachable and incompetent.
The DR may feel under-developed, soon gets bored, even sees a performance dip, because they are not given opportunities, plateau and then slide. The employees may eventually cut their losses and go learn somewhere else.
This is a huge loss for the organisation, impacting revenue and employee engagement.

Meanwhile the manager is getting super stressed because they do not have time to do their own job and the job of all their DRs.

Our underperformance will soon become clear when we have failed to put strategic plans in place, to create an innovative culture and to bring on new talent.

So why do managers and leaders continue to behave in this way?

Part of this is a fear of irrelevance that is keeping us in this groove. As we climb the pole to senior management, we become less the subject matter expert and more facilitator. The foundations of our identity have been built on our expertise and our skills.

Furthermore, doing the job we are good at is what got us here. But in the words of Marshall Goldsmith ‘What got you here won’t get you there’.

But it does feel damn good when we can fix other people’s problems.

So it keeps us fixing and micromanaging because the payoff to our ego is so high. While our identity is still packaged into the scientist role we have no idea what a new identity as leader will look like.
It doesn’t help that we are still hired, even at senior management levels for our scientific expertise and not our aspirations and competency as a leader.

And while I am not suggesting for one moment that leaders do not have to have an understanding of the what the business does, how it gets done and what challenges the workforce have, they do not have to know the nuts and bolts of every task. That is why good leaders employ people who are better at that role than them, and build a trust in order to delegate confidently and provide training and opportunities for them to grow quickly.

So what does the identity of a scientific leader look like? Does our focus need to be on inspiring and motivating future leaders, bringing out the best in our scientific workforce, creating a space for innovation and creativity? As Simon Sinek quoted “The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.”

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