Why ‘Too Busy’ Teams Rely on Leaders, According to Leanne Bridges

In a recent LinkedIn post, Leanne Bridges discusses a common leadership pitfall: mistaking team delegation for effective support. Bridges argues that when teams claim they are “too busy” to meet deadlines, it often signals a deeper issue of underdeveloped planning and ownership skills, rather than a genuine lack of capacity.

According to Bridges, leaders often step in to solve problems when deadlines loom, believing they are being supportive. However, this intervention can inadvertently prevent the team from developing crucial problem-solving and planning abilities. “You think you’re being supportive. You’re not. You’re doing the thinking for them,” Bridges states, highlighting the unintended consequence of this leadership approach.

The Illusion of Support

Bridges elaborates on how leaders, often possessing strong expertise, tend to jump in and fix issues themselves when a project faces difficulties. While this resolves the immediate crisis, it fails to address the root cause. “But the root cause stays untouched: no planning, no real ownership,” she points out. This pattern, according to Bridges, trains the team to rely on the leader’s problem-solving capabilities rather than developing their own.

A Real-World Example

To illustrate her point, Bridges shares an anecdote from the engineering and manufacturing sector. She describes a situation where a product launch, significant for revenue, was jeopardized by the team’s last-minute declaration that it couldn’t be completed on time. The Managing Director (MD) subsequently took over the task himself to ensure its completion.

“A product launch worth real revenue, talked about for months. Right before it, the team said it couldn’t all be done. So he dragged it over the line himself.”

While the MD successfully salvaged the launch, Bridges argues that this event exposed a critical underlying problem: the team had not learned to plan backward from a deadline or take ownership of their individual contributions. “That one was always going to be tight. But it showed him the real problem,” Bridges notes.

Fostering Ownership and Planning

The turning point, as described by Bridges, came when the leadership approach shifted. Instead of stepping in, the MD facilitated a change that encouraged the team to develop planning and ownership skills. This led to a significant improvement in subsequent projects.

Empowering the Team

Bridges explains the outcome of this shift: “Once that changed, the next launch ran without him in the middle of it. The team managed the competing priorities themselves and stopped bringing it back to him.” This demonstrates, in Bridges’s view, the power of empowering teams to own their work and develop the necessary planning skills, rather than becoming dependent on leadership intervention.

In conclusion, Leanne Bridges’s insights on LinkedIn serve as a critical reminder for leaders to examine their own interventions. By fostering an environment where planning and ownership are paramount, leaders can empower their teams to overcome challenges independently, ultimately leading to more sustainable success and growth.