The term bottleneck was not fully understood by some of the business leaders and the damage that it does to the profitability of companies.
When the bottom line of a company depends on productivity being at its height and is responsible for a company’s performance then the issue of bottleneck is a crucial aspect.
A bottleneck defined by investopedia.com implies a point of congestion in a system that occurs when workloads arrive at a given point more quickly than that point can handle them.
A bottleneck in leadership results in the stunted growth of the organization. In an organizational sense, bottleneck from a leader resulting in the stalling of the progress and growth of the company results in frustrated stakeholders.
The following seven bottlenecks must be avoided at all costs by a leader and these seven bottlenecks are discussed herein below-
A Leader Should Never Delegate His/Her Actual Authority
A leader should not take up unnecessary assignments that would burden him or her resulting in the underutilization of the team.
Therefore, effective delegation is not giving people tasks but it involves giving employees the oversight of real responsibility that empowers them to think like the leader.
Ignoring Other Employees Or People’s Ideas
Team members or employees of your organization would like to play a part in helping the vision or objective of the organization to become a reality. However, when their inputs are not taken into account, they feel stifled, disgusted and unresponsive.
The best leaders do encourage people or their subordinate employees to take a risk and take chances. Organizations face a huge opportunity cost where only a leader is allowed to take important decisions disregarding the opinions of his/her subordinates or employees.
Lack Of Vision Or Information On Part Of A Leader
People or employees stagger when they do not know about the things they need to do and what the leader actually wants. As such, there results apathy and laziness in some employees and therefore leaders should spur movement in an organization with their information.
Best leaders are those who are transparent and continuously share information about what they see in the future.
The Leader Receiving All Recognition
When a leader gets all the recognition of the teamwork, it results in stalled growth due to the fact that employees or team members feel that they are being used without getting any recognition for their work.
Under such an atmosphere, employees would not risk everything for someone else or their leader who receives all the praise.
Therefore, efforts must be made to appreciate the contribution of the team members and avoid glorifying the leader alone at the cost of team members.
The Leader Is Change Resistant
The term leadership is itself means a person who invites change and showing his/her subordinates a path towards new developments.
One cannot get new things without change. A leader who is more concerned with protecting his or her position than embracing change creates the bottleneck in the path of organizational development.
A leader who is open to change helps his or her team members in installing confidence in the team.
Every Decision Waits or Goes Through The Leader
When every decision (excluding major ones) is made with the final approval of leader, it creates a culture where the team members or subordinate employees feel devalued due to the fact that their individual abilities are not cared for.
In fact, it becomes less of a team, where everyone has to wait for the leader to make a decision resulting in lesser productivity, loss of time and increased frustration among the employees.
Potential Leaders Involve Stages Of Development
Potential leaders are developed over the years that involve recruitment, investment and release process in the course of the time.
We can take the example of the Lord Jesus, who recruited the disciples, invested in them and then sent them to different parts of the world as leaders of the apostle.
However, when people are controlled in totality they never develop and in the process learn to resent their leader. So, in today’s world – leaders are not born but are made.
As leaders – you should know about these seven above mentioned bottlenecks to become a successful leader to your team.
