In order to get the results you need to see your business grow, your people need to feel liberated to make the best decisions possible on a day-to-day basis
By David Lykken
Special to MPA
In order to get the results you need to see your business grow, your people need to feel liberated to make the best decisions possible on a day-to-day basis. They need to have the freedom to make the calls when they need to be made. Employee empowerment is the gateway to both creativity and productivity.
While most leaders understand this in principle, many leaders dismiss it in practice. All to often, we prefer control to empowerment. We spend so much time monitoring their performance that our people don't feel enough freedom to perform. All too often, we fall into micromanaging.
Micromanagement is the antithesis of great leadership. I don't recall who initially said it, but I've always liked the maxim, "Great leaders hire great people and then get out of their way." If you have taken the time to get the right people on your team, you should trust them enough to do their jobs.
If you micromanage them, you're going to get just enough out of them to get by. If you empower them, on the other hand, you're going to get out of them everything you hired them for. Which sounds better to you?
David Lykken is 40-year industry veteran who has been an owner operator of three mortgage banking companies and a software company. As co-founder and Managing Partner of Mortgage Banking Solutions, David consults on virtually all aspects of mortgage banking with special emphasis executive leadership development, corporate strategic direction and implementation as well as mergers & acquisitions. A regular contributor on CNBC and Fox Business News, David also hosts a successful weekly radio program called “Lykken On Lending” (www.LykkenOnLending.com) that is heard each Monday at noon (Central Standard Time) by thousands of mortgage professionals. Recently he started producing a 1-minute video called “Today’s Mortgage Minute” that appears on hundreds of television, radio and newspaper websites daily across America.
