Do Nothing: How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader

Controversially, the author says the most effective leaders don't work. Instead, they facilitate and orchestrate their people, make key decisions, strategize, and organize. The problem is that instead of focusing on these high-value tasks, many leaders today spend most of their time doing the work their team should be doing. And, teams suffer from this lack of trust and over-management.

"Do Nothing!" is written mainly for people already in a leadership role. If you think you're micromanaging your team, or you'd like to learn how to give them more power so you can focus your time and energy on the long-term tasks you were hired to do, this is the book for you.

We feel the book could also be useful if you're working towards a leadership role in your career. There's a lot of valuable advice here to help you be a better leader when you attain that goal.

What's unique about "Do Nothing!" is that the author includes plenty of well-sourced research and case studies to prove his points. Many of these are a fascinating read.

J. Keith Murnighan is a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He's an active consultant with many global companies, and his research has been cited in "The Wall Street Journal," "The New York Times," and "The Economist."

So, keep listening to discover when you need to take your ego out of the picture, one easy way to show a new team you trust them, and why performance goals might actually be making the performance of your people worse.

"Do Nothing!" is divided into nine chapters. Each one focuses on one broad strategy you can use to do less of your team's work, and support them more.

The first chapter explains the author's mindset and approach. Here, you learn why you're probably doing more work, when you should be trying to do less.

The author profiles a typical leader, who will probably strike a chord with many readers. This leader loves his family, and enjoys his time off to pursue hobbies and relax. The problem is that he works a lot. He comes in early, he stays late, and he brings work home on the weekends – all because he feels he will never catch up if he doesn't. He feels responsible for every single thing his team does.

The result is that he – and others like him – are overworked and stressed out, and their performance is not nearly as strong as it could be. This can also mean that their teams are unsatisfied, underutilized, and underchallenged.

According to the author, the answer doesn't lie in doing more. It lies in stepping back.

He includes an old story that illustrates what can happen when teams aren't micromanaged.

The Eastman Kodak Company went through a dramatic reorganization, and as a result of all the shuffling around, one small division was left without a leader. In fact, the top executives at Kodak forgot the division even existed.

What's interesting is that this division didn't mind not having a leader at all. They did their jobs perfectly well on their own, for months. Kodak only found out that this group was leaderless because a customer called to thank the division for their excellent work.

We liked this story because it shows how well a team can do on its own, if there's no other choice. And, this is the point the author is trying to make here. Even though you might think that being heavily involved in your team's work is essential to their success, most of the time, you'd be better off stepping back.

The author says when many people move up in their careers, they cling to the work they did in their old role because that's what they know, and that's what they're good at. But this is counterproductive, and it's why so many leaders micromanage their teams.

What you should be doing is figuring out who on your team is best at a particular task or role. Then you need to let each person use their strengths.

The author makes a great point in this first chapter. As you move up the corporate ladder, your performance becomes less important than your team's performance. You have to rely less on the technical skills that got you promoted, and instead, focus on helping your team succeed.

Sounds easy enough, but the author stresses that it's not easy at all. But he spends the rest of the book explaining how to start stepping back to support and facilitate your people, instead of doing their work for them.

We should point out that there are situations when, as a leader, you cannot and should not sit back and let your team work alone.

One of these is when you're the only person with the necessary skills to perform an urgent or highly important task. Another situation is when there's a task that no one else wants to do. As a leader, it's really important that you're willing to roll up your sleeves and do some of the thankless tasks your team doesn't want to do.

Chapter two illustrates some major challenges people face when leading a team, and why it's so important that you take the focus off yourself and put it on the people you're leading.

The author begins with some fascinating studies that show how frighteningly easy it is to let power influence your behavior and disconnect you from the people you're leading. Many people, when given power over someone else, quickly underestimate or even forget what it's like to be on the rung below.

Scientists call this an empathy gap. And even if you don't think you have an empathy gap with the people you're leading, studies show there's a good chance you do.

Another big problem many leaders have is they're egocentric. They spend a lot of time thinking about what they're going to do as individual leaders. With this mindset, you naturally pay less attention to your team and more attention to yourself.

The problem is that leadership is a social activity – which is why it's so important to focus on your team.

In this chapter, the author describes what he calls the Leadership Law. Instead of spending your time thinking about what you'll do as a leader, you should instead focus your attention on the reaction you want, and what actions will most likely achieve those reactions.

Although we really liked this idea, we were disappointed there wasn't any more concrete information showing how to actually do this. The author says point blank that this concept is highly important. But, he misses a chance to provide some good instruction here.

Another tip we really liked was to ask questions. Lots of questions.

The benefit of this is that it puts your focus on your team members. Questions also convey respect, build trust, and they get information.

There's also an inspiring story about a United States Navy captain who took over a failing ship. In seven months he transformed it from the worst-performing ship in the fleet to the best.

The story shows how powerful and motivating praise and recognition can be to the morale and performance of a team.

Chapter four was another chapter we really liked because it focuses entirely on trust. Here, you learn why it's so important that you trust your team more than you do right now.

When you give someone on your team more trust than they expect, the vast majority of the time they'll step up to show they're worthy of your trust.

The author weaves in some personal stories showing how beneficial it can be to trust people more. And there are some good ideas you can use with a new team.

For instance, if you've just been promoted, you might be tempted to give everyone on your team a small assignment. For you, this is a practical way to test their skills and knowledge. But to your team, these tiny assignments show a lack of respect.

What you should do instead is read over their personnel files. Look at the competencies they've already been rated on, and what they're currently working on. Instead of giving them a minor test assignment, give them one that's a bit more involved and challenging than they've worked on in the past.

Let them know you've heard great things about their abilities, and you trust them to do the job well.

They'll take this as an immediate, positive signal that you trust their skills. And, they'll respond by stepping up to meet your expectations. This starts a cycle of trust and reciprocation that can quickly improve the performance of your team.

You can also take this approach with an existing team. Push them, and yourself, by assigning tasks that are just a bit more challenging than what they're doing now. Again, this shows you fully trust their ability to do the work. And, you just might be surprised at what happens.

If you're still on the fence about this, think about how you feel when someone only partially trusts you.

It feels pretty lousy, right? All of us want to be trusted 100 percent. Take the risk, and start trusting your team all the way.

Another chapter we found intriguing was chapter seven, "Ignore Performance Goals." Like the title of the book, this chapter will probably catch your attention just like it did ours. After all, it seems pretty outrageous to ignore performance goals.

Well, the author isn't suggesting you ignore these goals entirely. Instead, he says most leaders pay too much attention to performance goals. Because of this one-sided focus, they lose sight of far more important goals.

According to the author, paying too much attention to performance goals can also actually worsen your performance.

Here's a good example the author gives to illustrate this. Imagine you're going golfing for the day with friends. As you drive to the course, you hope to get a good score. But you're also excited about spending the day outside, hanging out with your friends, and being off work to relax. So, you have a number of different goals for the day.

But as you start to play, you increasingly focus on your score. Your other goals, like relaxing and spending the day outside, fade into the background. And the more you focus on achieving a great score, the more your performance crumbles.

Now, the author says the lessons in this example don't apply to all situations. When you're doing routine tasks, you can benefit from the increased effort and focus that performance goals often require. They do have value under certain circumstances.

But for tasks that require a lot of mental effort and concentration, your performance can worsen dramatically when you're trying to hit a particular goal. Put simply, performance goals take the focus off why you're doing something. Instead, you're focused on something more mundane, and far less satisfying.

Want more proof? Stop and think about the performance goals you had to hit last year. Can you even remember them? What about two years ago?

Chances are, these goals have faded from your memory. And, this is likely true for your team as well.

Another challenge with performance goals is that they often get harder as time passes. So in order to achieve them, people need to keep boosting their abilities. But because of the energy and focus performance goals require, people often don't prioritize learning new skills.

One of the best ways to encourage your team to invest in learning is to praise their efforts, not the outcomes they achieve. The author cites several studies here that show how effective this strategy is. When you focus on effort, rather than innate talent, motivation and confidence increases.

Encourage your team to learn new skills and expand their abilities. And, provide plenty of praise for their hard work. Don't worry about how soon they'll use those skills on the job.

So, what's our last word on "Do Nothing!"?

We think there's some valuable information in here. No matter what level you're at as a leader you're bound to learn something new you can start using tomorrow to give more power to your team.

Our complaint has to do with the book's format. The lessons and tips are often buried in the text, which makes them hard to find if you're skimming. We feel it would be easier to read if it was broken up more, with important tips and concepts highlighted in some way. This is definitely a book you'll want to read with a highlighter in hand.

Other than that minor complaint, we think the book is highly useful, and well worth reading.

"Do Nothing!," by J. Keith Murnighan, is published by Penguin Books.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.

Click here to buy the book from Amazon.