“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
This may be a cliche, but it describes one of the core skills of leadership:
Matching people to work that is aligned with their skills and instincts
If you have somebody that loves following process and working through checklists, give them a process and checklist rather than expect them to “use common sense” and “just figure it out”.
If you have somebody that is great at improvisation and winging it, put them in innovation focused roles where no process exists yet.
The mistake many leaders make is they manage others the way they want to be managed, and assume other people have the skills and instincts they do.
I certainly did this – I craved autonomy and didn’t like being micromanaged as a worker, so when I first became a manager, I gave my team tasks and expected them to figure it out. But the people on my team were fresh college grads who had no idea what they were doing – they needed more structure and concrete examples to get started. Once I started “micromanaging” them, things worked much better.
So when you’re working with somebody, whether it’s a peer, a direct report or even your manager, figure out how they work best, and then set things up so they can work in that way. Don’t make a fish climb a tree, and then be surprised or disappointed that they don’t do it well.