This is a tough skill to master, but absolutely critical. This is figuring out the right balance between “inspecting” vs “expecting”. It’s\u00a0knowing when you need to ask the questions, and when you don’t. It’s giving people enough latitude without micromanaging, but not so much latitude that you’re an absentee manager.<\/p>\n
Most senior executives I know do what I call “the butter test”. In the old days, women sold their butter in tubs to buyers. They’d insert this long metal tube to examine that the butter was good throughout. What senior people often do is that they’ll drive down deep on a subject to see if you understand the details. If you pass the test, they won’t do it again. If you don’t, every meeting with that person will be a deep dive of excruciating detail….because they don’t trust.<\/p>\n
So a few lessons learned on this:<\/p>\n
1. The right set of eyes is invaluable<\/strong>. Reviews only help the outcome. Don’t pass your presentation, outputs, reports to a whole bunch of people for their feedback…they’ll assume someone else is checking. Get the one person who is known for being tough, picky, and detail oriented. If you pass muster with that individual, you’re probably fine for prime time.<\/p>\n 2. Letting your team present with materials, proceed with a strategy, or conduct major meetings where\u00a0you haven’t\u00a0put your critical eye<\/strong> on it\u00a0is a mistake. They’re not going to have the experiences you have, they won’t necessarily understand the right level of detail, or how certain phrases will change the tone of the meeting. Look at what they’re working on and give them the sanity check.\u00a0 You want to minimize the number of instances they will trip up.<\/p>\n 3. Ask tough questions when your gut tells you something’s wrong<\/strong>; ask for a meeting if you’re not satisfied. We do a lot of things mechanically nowadays. It’s a mistake to get complacent. If you see something that looks weak, ask for details….or a meeting to do a deep dive. You don’t want to look back and kick yourself because you let it go.<\/p>\n And as you get more experience, I guarantee you that if you think there’s a problem, you’re right.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a tough skill to master, but absolutely critical. This is figuring out the right balance between “inspecting” vs “expecting”. It’s\u00a0knowing when you need to ask the questions, and when you don’t. It’s giving people enough latitude without micromanaging, but not so much latitude that you’re an absentee manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,23,5],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-be-a-good-manager","category-leadership","category-perform-better","tag-work-behavior"],"yoast_head":"\n