A sales leader describes how her colleague Andy, a talented salesman, became a micromanager who rescued his team instead of letting them close deals. She calls this being a professional babysitter and warns it traps you in a cycle of constant oversight rather than building real leadership.
Chapters
They call me the cartel leader for a reason. Andy said I became the dude. I think that he was looking for a mentor or looking for somebody that can understand and push him and motivate him. And as a wife, I was like, how can I help him and push him to be the man that I know that he can be? He had this gift for sales and everything, and he really cared about people. But there were some things that went on, and he was managing people but almost rescuing them all the time. So he had all these sales guys always after him to help him close deals. But he never really taught him that. I told him a lot of painful things. You're not a real leader, you're a professional babysitter. So sometimes when you go into management, that's what, that's what you become. That's a problem. That's a professional babysitter. If you have that feeling right now where you're constantly having to look down on your phone, you are trapped in a prison and you're not going to be able to get out of it ever.