: what drives you ? and/or who do you blame :

... maybe you've seen this ad pop up on your FaceBook page? I had kind of ignored ancestry.ca until yesterday, when the teaser line 'why are you such a control freak?' got my attention, not that it occurred to me that I was a c-freak of course!

... however, I have known a few, worked for a couple ( you never actually work with c-freaks, only for them, especially in their minds :) and I am sure have acted like one on occasion. As usual, I often wonder/ponder what exactly drives a real control freak? what makes them think they know the answers? or that they have the global corner on implementation? or that there is really only one right way to do something ... theirs.

... I was on a staff once with a person who others ( not on staff ) declared was a control freak. I begged to differ ... they might have been a quality control freak, but that's a bit different. Another time I was beyond surprised when someone I had seen lead in a macro manner, big picture and mature, tended to micro-manage a project or event nearly to death ( or was it us that were near death? ). I kept asking myself ... 'what did I miss? why had I never seen those tendencies before?' only to come up lame ... no answers, no insights, no valid reasons.

... my mentor David was probably the one who modelled anti-control-freakness for me back in the early 1990's. He had an amazing ability to accept big projects from 'the boss' and break them down into manageable chunks for his own staff. He delegated appropriately, ran interference when things got off track, was available for consultation almost whenever staff deemed it necessary, and ... I realized many years later, never actually yanked the rope that he gave us to run with things, even when they went sideways. He took responsibility and 'credit' for the messes, as well as the successes. That's a great staff environment.

... Jim Collins has researched and written extensively about the kind of leadership that sets the stage, builds great teams, communicates the reason for whatever your organization is about, then gets out of the way ... he calls it Level 5 leadership ... pretty rare, pretty unique, pretty great to work with.

dlc