You want to give your team room without losing the thread
This is for you if you wonder whether you're the reason the team has gone quiet. Status updates still land, but the pushback and half-formed ideas have thinned out. No one decided that; it just happened, and now you feel it.
Start with the fear, because it's pointed at the wrong place. "Am I micromanaging?" turns it into a question about who you are, and that's a question you can turn over for weeks without getting anywhere. The better one is smaller and easier to sit with: which of your defaults has the team organized around, and what is it costing you in what they say?
You have a pace, a way of deciding, a level of detail you like. From the inside it looks like the work, so you're the last to see it. The team isn't: decide fast, and they stop bringing you unfinished things. Over months they shape themselves around your grain, and the honest stuff stops reaching you.
Your own report holds that outside read. Understanding Styles names your working style and its defaults. Uncovering Your Blind Spots names the strengths you turn up too high, each the shadow of a real strength.
Now do this.
- From Understanding Styles, pick one default and write it as the team would feel it: "I decide fast and expect a quick reply."
- From Uncovering Your Blind Spots, find the blind spot that is the shadow of that same strength. That's the quiet cost your default can carry for someone who works differently. Write it in one line.
- Take it to the team, and go first. In a 1-1, name the default out loud, then use the questions below to get past the polite answer.
- Pick one change you'll make and one thing you'll keep, and say both back.
You finish holding one default in plain words, the cost only the team could name, and one change you said out loud. That breaks the quiet: you made it safe to tell you by telling on yourself first.
Coaching questions
These aren't a script to read in order. Once you've named your default out loud, pull the one or two that fit the person you're with.
Opening it up, so it's safe to answer
- I know I tend to [your default]. Where does that help you, and where does it get in your way?
- If you could change one thing about how I run things, what would it be?
- What do you find yourself working around instead of raising with me?
Getting past the polite version to the real cost
- What's a half-formed idea you didn't bring me last month?
- When do you wait for me when you'd rather just decide?
- What have you stopped telling me because you know how I'll react?
Turning it into one change
- If I changed one default, which one would give you the most room?
- What would tell you it was actually different, and not just said once?
