The REAL Reason Why Your Team Relies on You and What to Do About It as a Humanitarian and Development Leader
Are you unknowingly the reason your team won’t take initiative?
If you’re a modern humanitarian or development leader frustrated with your team’s lack of proactivity, the problem might not be them—it could be how you've unknowingly trained them. This episode explores how your leadership style may be limiting your team’s growth and autonomy.
In this episode you'll discover:
- The subtle ways you may be creating a productivity bottleneck without realizing it
- Learn how to retrain your team to become more solution-oriented and confident
- Understand the difference between top-down and coaching leadership styles—and when to use each for better outcomes
Listen now to start shifting your leadership approach and empower your team to step up with more autonomy and innovation.
What Is Your Leadership Style? Free Quiz:
Want to know how to lead better? It starts by understanding your leadership style. To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader. Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Find out the real reason behind why your team wants you to tell them what to do and what it means about your leadership style, in today's episode.
Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.
Hello my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leaders. I hope you're having a wonderful week, and I think that this lesson today can really help you see how much influence we truly have as leaders.
But today we're gonna be focusing on why your [00:01:00] team may be dependent on you, and it may be for reasons that you are not even aware of. So in today's episode, you're going to learn signs that you are the productivity bottleneck for your team. The real reason that your team wants you to tell them what to do, and a mindset shift that will help you create a more empowered, proactive, and confident team. Sound good? Let's get started. Okay, so I always have a certain group in my group of students who, really question whether their teams want to be more proactive and come up with their own solutions rather than tell them what to do. And they cite various reasons behind this. They talk about their personalities, they talk about the culture of the organization, and we will get into all of that. But what happens is that the leader thinks that it is their team who wants them [00:02:00] to tell them what to do, but really it is only, and primarily because the leader has trained them in a certain way to engage with them, and that is the real reason behind a lot of times why our teams want us to tell them what to do. That is the foundational reason. So I'll get into that in a minute. But if your team is hesitant to give you ideas or solutions, it is most likely because you have trained them to not do that.
You've trained them to not think for themselves and basically you have trained them to allow you to think for them. So, when it comes to our interactions, especially with our superiors, our supervisors, the leaders, like the leaders out there listening to this right now.
Of [00:03:00] course, if someone above us gives us solutions and tells us what to do, we're just going to stop thinking for ourselves. We're just going to stop, expecting to come up with our own ideas. We go on autopilot. It's also feel safer because when someone else tells us what to do, the risk falls with that person, not with us.
So. a lot of times these leaders come to my course and they think that the problem is their team, when actually a lot of the problem starts with them. So when your team is used to you telling them what to do, and then suddenly you introduce something new, for example, you want to know their thoughts or their solutions or how they might solve a problem, of course they're going to be uncomfortable in the beginning because you have trained them to not think for themselves.
You have trained them that the interaction and the role of the leader [00:04:00] is to have all the solutions. So of course they're gonna resist in the beginning and be a little uncomfortable.
It's not that they will never be able to or never want to get there to a place that they can share with you. It's more that they're used to your engagement and the way that you train them to engage with them is very top down. So a few signs that you have trained your team to depend on you include, they don't wanna make decisions on their own.
They frequently ask for your help with solving their problems. They rarely bring ideas to you on how to solve problems, and you find yourself saying the same things over again. Or teaching the same things over again. So you have to create the right environment and show them that you are serious
In [00:05:00] the way you want them to engage and think for themselves before you can expect them to give you ideas or solutions. You can't just go from one way to the other way. You have to, essentially retrain them and how to engage with you if you want a more proactive team and you find yourself being the bottleneck to productivity.
Because if your team is constantly coming to you for solutions or to solve their problems. That means you are the bottleneck for productivity. It also means that you won't get as much innovation or their ideas, and that means you are gonna spend a lot of your time helping them and not able to focus on more higher level strategic work, which could also help your organization. and I'm not saying that you're going to ask them for solutions all the time, but what I find is that most leaders tend to give advice or tell their teams what to [00:06:00] do, and in part because they think that that is their role as a leader, but also because that is just how the team is used to working with you.
You have trained them to be that way. The way I would define a modern leader is you know how to balance between telling your team what to do and asking them for solutions. So you know when to use which type of leadership style, because these are essentially two different styles.
One is more of a coaching style of asking and helping them explore their own way, and the other one is more directive or managerial and telling them what to do. Even though some of these leaders tell me that their teams want to be told what to do, when you look at human dignity and human, needs and desires, one of the universal ones that has come up in a [00:07:00] study done by Daniel Pink on motivation is autonomy.
And autonomy means that we are able to make our own decisions over our own little piece of the pie of our project or our work. And if you think about it, yes, some people like being told what to do, but do you really? People who want to grow, who feel secure. Who feel trusted. They want to come up with their own solutions to not be told what to do like a parent child relationship, but be trusted as an adult, adult relationship.
It is far more mo motivating, more than money at times to have autonomy. Over our work, and that means not being told what to do, but being able to come up with our own way. So that means is, to me, just reinforces [00:08:00] the idea that if our team wants to be told what to do, and I say "wants". I would say it's not that they want, it's just more of a habit that in the way we've engaged with them so far, and one that we can definitely change
it just might take some time. So when we are interact with our team, we are essentially training them how to interact with us, what to expect from us. And because of a top down hierarchy or power dynamic, we as leaders set the stage, we set the rules of engagement. They are looking to us on how they're expected to behave.
And so this is why I'm saying that we essentially are training them how to behave with us. And so if we take responsibility of that as a leader, the good news is we can change that engagement in order to really help them grow and to gain more autonomy and [00:09:00] to come up with more solutions and to, free up the bottleneck so that we can be more productive.
And sometimes we ourselves are also being trained by our organizational culture, by our country culture, and those around us on how to act. Within our team and what is acceptable. So to be aware of that as well and how that influences our own behavior can be a very powerful thing because we can see that one of the reasons that we are like, let's say, telling our team what to do.
Is because that's what everyone else around us is doing. And so we think that's just the way it is. We don't question it and we don't even consider that we are actually training our team how to interact with us just like we are being trained ourselves. So of course, culture and personality have a role to play
when we talk about what is expected from us as leaders. [00:10:00] If we should be giving the answers, or not. Should we have all the answers or should our team have more answers? Those things play a role, but even in cultures which are top down, you can still lead from bottom up. You can still encourage your team to speak up and be included in decisions and solutions.
If you create the right environment, and that means, once again, retraining and reengaging with your team. Which is why I have a whole week dedicated to this in my course, because I realize how important it is. I've seen it over and over again, how the successful leaders using, a coach approach or a more empowering leadership style are the ones who actually take the time to introduce it and have the patience to help their team members overcome their own obstacles and retrain them and how to engage with you.
So. If you think that your [00:11:00] team needs the answers from you or to be told what to do and they cannot find it for themselves, it becomes a lose lose. It's a loss for you because you have to spend more time telling them what to do. Maybe the same things over and over again. It's a loss for them because they don't grow and they're not thinking for themselves, and it's a loss for the community because your team is closer to the problems.
Or you know, if they're working in the community, they're the ones closest to that problem and they probably know better how to solve that. Or even you could say, asking the community themselves. So how are you training your team to engage with you? Are you training them to be dependent on you or are you encouraging them to speak up and come with their own solutions?
I want you to really question how much of the [00:12:00] way that you engage with your team is because of the way that you as a leader have taught them to do so. Alright. Until next week, keep evolving. Bye for now.
Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do, or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.
Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to [00:13:00] www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for it.