How often are you an enabler of your team's poor performance? - SmartBrief

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How often are you an enabler of your team’s poor performance?

2 min read

By Mike Figliuolo 05/26/16

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: How often are you an enabler of your team’s poor performance?

  • Never — I hold everyone accountable for their work: 14.89%
  • Sometimes — I occasionally let them get away with things: 75.84%
  • Often — I clean up their messes and they keep making them: 7.58%
  • Always — I struggle to hold them accountable for their work: 1.69%

Give them an inch… You’re the guardian of the standard. When you let your team members slide by and fix their shoddy work (or even worse – do it for them because it’s “easier for me to do it”) you’re an enabler of that bad behavior.  Sure, it’s hard short-term to teach them and get them to fix their work but long term we all know it’s worth the effort.  So take the time to shift from being an enabler to building your team’s skills.  It’s best for everyone involved.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of “Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results” and “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”