Darya Chadha
HR Director, East DSK Contracting LLC"Darya Chadha, HR Director at East DSK Contracting LLC, 20 years of experience in globally located multinational companies in petrochemical, pharmaceutical, medical, maritime shipping, import- export, construction & development and trading industries."
When Leaders Always Have the Answer, Teams Stop Thinking
An authoritarian style remains common, particularly among young, inexperienced leaders who believe they always have the answers. Employees stop thinking for themselves, fear making mistakes, and wait for instructions from above, habits that kill new ideas and render the team passive.
The reason often lies in a lack of trust. Novice managers commonly resent their subordinates’ success, wanting to be the sole figure in the spotlight, and shortsighted leaders avoid hiring people smarter than themselves, one of the most common mistakes a leader can make.
The result of this leadership style is a rather dismal picture for the organisation. Because the leader shoulders all the responsibility, employees quickly get into the habit of waiting for precise instructions instead of thinking for themselves. People become afraid of saying something foolish in front of an all-knowing boss, which causes individual effort to drop significantly since a ready-made answer is always readily available. Consequently, employees lose the motivation to look for solutions when they believe the boss will simply do things their own way regardless. Initiative completely withers across the team as people come to realise that their input is not truly needed and that all decisions have already been made for them.
The leader eventually suffers too: burnout increases from shouldering the entire burden alone.
Being a leader is harder than it looks, and it is a skill that must be learned. Not every outstanding employee becomes a successful manager, because the responsibility extends beyond one’s own actions to the results of the entire company.
Success is always a team effort. We hire professionals to empower them, not override them, and a good leader knows their team inside out, understanding what drives each individual. This calls for emotional leadership: knowing each person’s strengths, weaknesses, values, and aspirations well enough to cultivate their talents for the company’s benefit.
As Vince Lombardi put it: “Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilisation work .”
