Author: Jasper

Nope. You don’t have to be in this meeting. The subjects that are being discussed are not your specialty. The project discussed is in a different business unit. And your team members can make decisions on this without having to consult you.

Regardless what your role is at work, you will undoubtedly be in at least a couple of meetings where you have nothing to contribute. You are in this meeting because somebody invited you. Maybe because you invited yourself.

Your role in this meeting is to:

“Look out for dependencies”
“Be informed about what is happening that might have impact on your team”
“This might impact your team later on”

And I love this one: because it involves somebody from your team and you should be informed.

As a manager you will reach a level where there is too much going on in your team to know everything. Your role changed when you were made responsible for the leadership of your team. It became about a different set of tasks and skills then what you where used to before. Your role as a manager and leader is to create an environment in which your team can successfully deliver value to your customer. That requires their own skill to be at the right level, clear vision and objectives and constraints on how to reach them.

This inadvertedly means you will have less time to understand what your team members do at a random moment in time. That might be scary at first because you know the work and with that the mistakes you and others made when you did it. But you have to let go.

As a manager and leader it is your taks to create an environment in which your team is aligned, engaged and effective. That also means moving the authority to make decisions to where the information is. Which is, most often, with them. Not you.

Teach them to understand what the best decision is to make and how to do that. And your job will change from chasing issues to solving problems.