Part 6: The 24/7 Open Door Policy
Followers with overdependence on executives at the top of the organization burden leaders in the middle of the organization with sluggish responsiveness and an inability to execute the strategy they’ve been charged with. On the other hand, executives can handicap the middle of the organization if your people can’t get their questions answered, get appointments on your calendar, or get responses to, or feedback on, work you’ve asked to see. While there is no formula to determine exactly how much time should be made available to others, recognize you’ll never feel you have enough of it to give, and they’ll likely never feel they get enough of it from you.
So setting that dilemma aside, the challenge is how to negotiate with each of your followers exactly what they need and how best to provide it. Don’t let militant gatekeepers prevent access to you, and don’t offer unlimited access either. Set clear boundaries and enforce with followers the need to work within them. And maximize the impact of your time with the creative use of governance that gets teams of people access to you versus a series of one-on-one conversations.
What they really want
What followers really want from their executives is reliability. They need to know that if they have problems, you’ll be there to help them find solutions. If there’s something they can’t make sense of, you’ll offer helpful perspective. If they can’t get someone in an adjacent department to cooperate, you’ll run interference. While the amount of time you spend doing these things will obviously vary from person to person, when followers conclude that you aren’t reliable, the amount of time you don’t spend with them becomes the issue. While you can’t and don’t want to become everyone’s answer ATM machine and you need to build in self-sufficiency among those you lead, knowing you are there as a resource to guide, support, roll up your sleeves, challenge, admonish, and just plain help bolsters their trust in your leadership and helps them more effectively decide when and how to engage you most effectively.
For info on the full study, go here.