Leigh Thomas Brown, a real-estate broker, micromanaged his team into burnout until he adopted the "80% Approach" through Strategic Coach. He now lets staff handle mistakes with a "happiness money" fund they can tap without permission, and says this trust unlocked growth where control had failed.
The number one leadership trait driving teams crazy has to be micromanagement. I mean, you've been micromanaged before, haven't you? Where somebody's staring over your shoulder or demanding more TPS reports from you, and you feel like you can't ever make them happy. And when you realize you can't make somebody happy, don't you just stop trying a little bit? Don't you start saying, "You know what? It's never going to work, so I'm just going to pull back a little." Your creativity gets dampened. Your excitement to come to work is lessened, and you just don't feel it anymore. Well, how do we turn that around, y'all? Well, this goes back to the person who's doing the micromanaging, and is that you? Well, I'll tell you who a micromanaging leader is. It's the person who's really successful. You've done something amazing. You've built a great business. You have got so much opportunity because you're really smart. You might have built great processes and great efficiencies. Your customers love you. You close the deals. And you're so good that you've built out this team. However, you are afraid of trusting them with all of your awesomeness because you're not giving them the great training that they need to replicate the success that you've built. In fact, you're probably telling them to not be creative because you want them to do things exactly the way you want it done without without any deviation. And the truth is, friends, your business and your team are only going to grow when you learn how to empower people to not just have successes, but to also make mistakes. I can tell you this personally, as a real estate broker, I've been at the very tippy top of the success ranks. And when I got there, I was miserable to be around, because I knew that I was really good. And I demanded my team to be better than good. They had to be perfect. And when they screwed up, man, I came unglued on them. And then, as you can probably imagine, I had a revolving door in my office to the point where other agents were like, "Heh heh, you're working for her this week? Good luck." That had to change. That wasn't going to be a sustainable business model for anyone. And frankly, you're not leading when you're keeping other people from growing. So, I went to a coaching program called Strategic Coach. You may have heard of Dan Sullivan. And at my first meeting, I was so strung out because I had so much business going on, I could barely pay attention. When I did finally tune in, it was to absorb one of Dan's books. It's called The 80% Approach. And once I read it, I had that moment of, oh, I got to fix me. So my team is going to operate better. I can't drive them crazy if I want them to stick with me. And if I want them to grow, and I do, and I did. So here's what I learned in the 80% approach. When I, as the leader, was expecting 100% perfection, I was never going to get it. So I was demanding something that was unrealistic, which meant that my micromanagement was unrealistic and kind of mean, and it was never sustainable. The 80% approach says, if you trust your people to hit 80% of your marks, that's really good. In school today, I think 80% is an A. We can discuss later if it's really an A, but it's a B. Even back in my day, that was a B, and a B is solid. I'll take solid from my people, absolutely. And what you'll find, friends, is that when you tell people there's room to make mistakes, they'll try really hard not to make them. As it turns out, your greatest team members never want to fail you. They never want to make mistakes. And when you take the pressure off and tell them it's okay if you do, They'll actually make fewer mistakes. So if this number one leadership trait driving you nuts is micromanagement, there is a way to fix it. It starts with pulling back, telling the people around you that if you make a mistake, I've got your back. In my real estate business, that looked like a bank account that we call happiness money. It's always funded. And what I have told everybody around me is that if we make a mistake, if I make it, if you make it, if the consumer made it and just is lying to us about it, I don't I don't care. We're going to solve it. And you know what? You don't have to ask my permission to use that bank account. I'm going to trust you to use it for the right reasons. And as I have grown over all these years, I've watched my team members use that money judiciously. They are thoughtful about it. They don't want to use it. They want to solve first. And by goodness, they do. So if you too, friends, want to pull back own your micromanaging, and trust a little more, you're going to find that your business scales to next-level achievement. And it's all right within your reach. Now, if you want more tips on leadership, strategic planning, growing your business, hit the bell, send me a comment, subscribe, share this with a friend. And whatever challenge you're having, drop me a comment. I won't even mention your name when I discuss it because we do all learn better together, especially when we're honest.
