As we work through the challenges of working remotely, some organizational challenges that were not optimum, but were tolerable in the office, have become red alerts just six months into remote work. There are many versions of this, including critical team member burnout, lack of empathy for the complexity of context shifting while working at home, and an over-reliance on directive versus collaborative leadership.
All these issues are creating a very large tension in firms. With time moving along, people feel the pressure to not only perform in their current role effectively, but show that they are ready for more responsibility and promotional opportunity. Contrast this with a substantial reduction in “developmental” coaching for team members due to the crushing workloads during the COVID journey.
One specific and painful version of these tensions that I get called in on with some frequency is the “irreplaceable” subject matter expert leader in rapidly-scaling businesses.
As we’re about to explore, it’s a situation that drives powerful emotions.
Where the Frustrations Lay
Not uncommonly, it presents as a senior leader that has concluded that they can’t live without this individual, yet they are so frustrated (for the reasons outlined below), they frequently consider the nuclear option of firing them.
From the individual’s point of view, they can’t understand why their peers and subordinates just don’t “get it,” and have the initiative to take responsibility and solve problems with the speed and efficiency that they do. They don’t understand why their boss doesn’t appreciate their skills in developing fast and novel solutions. In extreme cases, the SME’s subordinates feel undervalued and become quite prickly – choosing to “step back” and let this “player-coach” do their thing.
This individual is typically technical by degree and has grown in place with the business. They are hard-driving, have seen it all, and can be intimidating for new people to work with. When presented with an issue, they can finish the sentence before you’ve concluded and still point you to just the right place, or are able to provide a perfect solution. They just know.
They also have a reputation for not providing a lot of empathy, and very much prefer to do things themselves – rather than coach up a new team member.
When business was done in person, this was the individual that was never in their office – they craved the front lines and were either in front of the client or deep in the factory working out complex and challenging issues. Now, their world looks like an endless diary of Zoom calls – from all corners of the firm including procurement, operations, and sales. It also seems like they are the only ones on the cross-functional team that can point to the “real issue,” so their time is in great demand.
They get promoted to positions of leadership – and that’s when the tension sets in.
The Problem
Tension occurs in a number of ways when the business is called to rapid expansion. First, the senior leader is usually frustrated that the SME (subject matter expert), always seems to be overloaded and in the critical path. Secondly, the SME’s peers are frustrated that their teammate is always “barnstorming” and not using the agreed-upon process for resolving problems. Finally, the subordinates are usually intimidated by the SME leader and feel that they can’t get the training they need to become independent and successful.
All these are true, and the classic solution you read about in management textbooks is to council the individual to become a better teacher and delegator. Early in my coaching career, I used to buy into this as well – however, experience has taught me that this simply does not stick. To get at the deeper and more effective solution, you need to understand that these leaders are completers and deep learners.
The Real Solution
To get to a real solution, you need to go a layer deeper. The hard-driving SME is powerfully motivated to learn, act, and complete. They have developed a pattern and an identity in their constantly increasing expertise and non-nonsense implementation, which has become more than the way they work – it’s who they are.
To get to this level takes some serious diagnostic work, and then a clear and open exploration of exactly what the SME would like to do. This conversation includes a frank discussion of valuing the expertise of building out the leadership of their peers and subordinates as part of their expertise base. While not usually stated, the cost of having a larger professional scope includes people and process development acumen. This needs to be a crossroads discussion. If the SME is truly committed to developing scalable leadership skills, that’s great, but it has to be their choice.
If they wish to advance in the SME lane and stay a pure individual contributor, you need to build a scaffolding around them to support the growth of the business, while allowing them to move to a staff position.
The Work
The solution to this organizational tension first involves getting to know the individual and assessing their awareness level and coachability. Many times this individual is well aware that there is tension and looks forward to working through it. If the openness exists, we move on to follow through on a “live” project or cross-functional effort that we can use to build skills in real-time.
In my org development work, we select a small group of leaders in training through careful team development, usually with the SME in a key advisory position. We then set up a platform for bidirectional learning for the group.
We take time every week to review key actions and decisions, setting an open and focused conversation to accelerate learning. At each significant branch in the road we use these checkpoint questions:
- Context: What do they each see?
- Decision Making: What factors are important? What can be discarded?
- Risk/Impact: What else do they “just know” will be impacted?
The “secret sauce” is having the right common vocabulary and training to avoid an us vs them discussion. We take time to equip the team with background knowledge on team dynamics and provide them with a simple model to understand one another’s strengths and weaknesses.
The Right Players
Finally, this emerging group of leaders needs to be carefully curated. If you build it with other leaders who don’t have the right leadership styles (more about that here, here and here), you will simply substitute one org challenge for its equivalent by a different name.
Outside Support
I frequently work with technical leaders and their teams that have growing operational responsibilities. If you’d like to have a conversation with me about a complex challenge, please email me at scott@scottpropp.com, or use this link to put a call directly on my calendar.
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