Michelle said, “I felt guilty. Then I felt nervous. Then I felt relief!” 

Michelle (not her real name) is a manager of a team of six people. 

Her team missed the deadline on an important project. Michelle set that deadline herself, three months earlier. What now? What could she do to get the team back on track, without compounding everybody’s stress level? She needed a new goal, and a willing team, and fast.

But it wasn’t even this common management scenario that was causing Michelle to feel guilty and nervous. It was something else: my homework assignment to her. Here’s what I assigned to Michelle and to everyone else in the leadership course with her: Ask someone on your team to come up with a solution for a challenge that you are facing as the manager. 

Michelle was reluctant to do this. I asked her: Why the guilt?

Michelle said, “I felt guilty about asking for one more thing from anybody. Everybody is so busy. This was something I had just decided I needed to do myself. I’m the boss. But because this was my homework (in our leadership course), I did it.” 

Why nervous? 

“I didn’t want the team to wonder why I was asking for help with ideas. I don’t want them thinking I don’t know what I’m doing as the boss. Or that I’m trying to avoid accountability for missing the deadline.”  

What happened? Tell us about the relief part. That sounds nice.

Michelle told us that she asked David (not his real name) to propose a new interim goal and deadline for the team for this project. 

She said, “I felt the relief you feel when you get something off your plate. But also, David was excited to show me and the team his ideas. And to talk to people. He went and interviewed people on the team. It took time, which was the main reason I felt bad about asking anyone to do this, but it meant a lot to him to be asked.” 

And the result? 

“It’s definitely a different approach than what I would have done myself. So I’m a little nervous, but we will see what happens. He added a new phase with a new benchmark I guess, to the project. The team likes it, so that will help it work. I don’t think it’s any more risky than what I would have come up with, honestly. And it improved my relationship with David, which was already good, so that’s a big win. It really made me want to ask people for ideas more often.”

Whether or not you are the boss of a team, you want to get the best ideas out of your team, and try to lighten the weight of ideas and decisions that you carry on your individual shoulders. Here are some questions to consider: 

• How much idea-generation and decision-making do you keep to yourself, instead of asking for help and ideas from your team? 

• How might you get input and ideas? Who would you ask, and when? (Think about the situations when you have a short turn-around, and those when you have more time.)

• Is there anything holding you back from asking for input from your team? Perfectionism? Guilt? Politics (power dynamics) in your organization? 

Two related ideas to consider: 

• Keep a To-Decide List, or just put “Decide …” on a to-do task. It can help to distinguish decisions from other types of tasks and deliverables. “Post the job opening” is a task. “Choose the two finalists for the position” is a decision. Keeping decisions separate from other tasks helps you see where you can enlist other people’s input before the last minute. And seeing “Decide …” allows you to do that analysis work when your brain is at its best during the day or week. (For me, that’s mornings and midweek, thank you.)

• Make a clear distinction with your team between ideas and decisions. Avoid confusion and disappointment, by keeping the roles clear between the boss and the team members. This keeps things moving and avoids confusion and disappointment as the team gets used to generating ideas and recommendations together. “I am collecting ideas and I will decide” is very different from “I (as the boss) am fine with whatever idea the group wants to choose.” There are times for both.