Everyone loves the back seat driver. You know the one, they claim they don’t want to drive, yet, as soon as you get in the car, they just can’t help themselves. It’s like you forgot how to drive and it can make the journey downright painful.

Driving an organization is comprised of defining goals, making timely course corrections, and managing results. We hand off projects to team members with the right skills to manage a particular project to completion. Sadly, we just can’t help ourselves and soon we’re defining specific paths, the speed of tasks, and whether that project manager should stop at stop signs.

We all have been guilty of playing the back seat driver at some point.

Whether it is because we know exactly how we want the end result to appear or whether there’s a lack the trust with the team completing the task, skipping steps, or maybe we just can’t help ourselves. It’s damaging to the team.

I was that boss once. We forget there are many paths one can take to achieve the same results. We, as business managers, need to provide the guidance and allow our teams to determine the most effective path for them.

By being a back seat driver, we take away the ability for the team to fully engage in critical lessons. They fill their heads with processes that are learned through mandate, without visualizing the result of their chosen process. In addition, we are telling our team that we don’t trust they will understand when their project is heading off-course.

Consider taking your hands off the wheel and start guiding, mentoring and helping your team grow their knowledge – see how it pays off for the entire organization.

#iwasthatbossonce