How Do I Help My Team Take Ownership? (3 Steps to Stop Micromanaging)
TL;DR: You can’t demand ownership from your team; you have to create an environment that fosters it. To help your team take true ownership, you must clearly define the intended outcomes (not just the tasks), give them the space to make decisions, and stop rescuing them when they make mistakes.
If you’re a leader, you’ve probably asked yourself this question at some point: “How do I get my team to take more ownership?” It’s a common frustration. You want your team to step up, take initiative, and handle problems without needing you to hold their hand every step of the way. But ownership isn’t something you can simply demand or assign. It’s an environment you have to intentionally create. If you want your team to take true ownership of their work, here are three essential steps you need to take as a leader.
1. Make the Outcomes Clear (Not Just the Tasks)
When you assign a project, are you just giving your team a list of tasks to complete, or are you explaining the larger goal?
If you only give them a “paint-by-numbers” set of instructions, they will only ever be task executors. To foster ownership, you need them to buy into the bigger picture. Make it explicitly clear what the intended outcome is and why it matters. When people understand the destination, they are much more likely to take ownership of the journey to get there.
2. Give Them Decision-Making Space
If you are making all the decisions, then you own everything. It’s that simple.
You cannot expect your team to feel a sense of ownership if they don’t have any skin in the game. You have to give them the authority and the space to make decisions along the way. This means stepping back and allowing them to choose how to approach a problem or execute a strategy. When their decisions directly impact the outcome, their level of ownership naturally increases.
3. Stop Rescuing Them
This is often the hardest step for leaders. When your team makes a mistake, there are going to be consequences. And while mistakes aren’t fun and consequences can impact the bottom line, you have to stop swooping in to save the day.
As Ed Catmull writes in his book Creativity, Inc., you cannot eliminate mistakes, but you can reduce their frequency and limit their impact.
As a leader, your job is to set the boundaries and create a safe space where your team can experience some discomfort. You have to allow consequences to come into play so that growth can happen. Yes, you probably made those same mistakes years ago and already learned the lesson—but they need to learn the lesson now. Give them the opportunity to do that.
Ownership is an Environment
Remember: Ownership is not something that you demand. It is an environment that you create.
When you make the outcomes clear, provide decision-making space, and stop rescuing your team from their mistakes, you offer them the environment they need to step up. And when you do that, they will grow beyond what you thought was possible.
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By Jeff Kozutek, Executive Coach and Keynote Speaker at Core Authenticity.
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