Get Bad at What You Do (Did)

Finally, this supervisor is not developing people to move up. By continuing to jump in this person is insuring that the staff doesn’t develop. If there is no one to replace the supervisor, they can’t advance. There are some people who still wrongly think that by not developing their subordinates they are maintaining job security but the fact is they are hurting the company.

How do you overcome this situation? How does a company make sure this situation does not persist? Three basic steps are: a good job description, good leadership from those who oversee the superintendent, and third, training on time management, delegation and profitability.

So, if you are the best in your company at the work you do, let yourself get bad at it. Your supervisors are not getting paid for doing the work; others should become more proficient at it. This is not to say that the leadership of the firm should forget all they learned about the work but it is saying others should learn the task and the leadership should be learning new things. The pace of change is rapid today and employees need to be doing what they are paid to do. Line employees need to be producing; supervisors need to be overseeing the production of line employees and senior leadership should be doing whatever it can to make sure those two people have the right training and resources to do their jobs correctly. If you are in charge of people, your goal is to help them get better at what they do, not to do it better than them.

Wally Adamchik is President of FireStarter Speaking and Consulting and the author of No Yelling: The Nine Secrets of Marine Corps Leadership You MUST Know To WIN In Business. He works with contractors to improve productivity. Visit his Web site at www.beafirestarter.com.