In life and business, we often run into people that have a unique talent for starting the day with a small problem [aka a molehill], and manage to build it into an insurmountable problem [aka a mountain] by the end of the day. These molehill people turn every challenge into a big deal. We have all experienced this behavior. When asked to perform some task, a molehill person will tell you how hard it will be, and how much work it will take. They will identify all of the pitfalls and issues as they build the molehill into a mountain. They will ask questions with obvious answers, as if they are just trying to avoid any possible ambiguity and therefore risk. They will speak in hyperbole as they describe every flaw or issue with the request.
Not to play amateur psychologist, but there is a lot to unpack in this behavior. Part of it is risk avoidance. A molehill person is putting you on notice that ‘there be dragons’ if they go down this path, so it will not be their fault if they fail. Part of it is self-aggrandizement. If they can make the task seem huge, and they accomplish it, won’t they be grand. The problem is that molehill people tend to stand in the way of progress and innovation. They slow things down. Like Eeyore in the Winnie The Pooh stories, they bring negativity into an organization. They deflate the enthusiasm of positive thinkers. Like a vampire, they suck the life out of good ideas.
By contrast, we have also all met the ‘bulldozer.’ The opposite of a molehill person, the bulldozer does not see any impediments and just pushes forward regardless of the destruction they leave in their wake. Once a bulldozer gets an idea or decides to achieve an objective, do not get in their way because they will run right over you. Sometimes, you have to applaud their ingenuity finding solutions, but often the achievement is diminished by the toll the process takes.
Molehill people and bulldozers are two extremes. We want to find the thoughtful people that are somewhere in the middle. We need people that can understand a request and successfully execute to achieve the goal, or recognize a bad idea and save us from a costly mistake. The challenge is how to identify who is who.
This is really the dilemma we have with delegation. A leader or manager has to decide what they can delegate and to whom. Delegate to a molehill person, and you will soon conclude it was easier to do it yourself and save the frustration of the molehill being turned into a mountain. Delegate to a bulldozer and they may charge off in the wrong direction and you will not get the result you intended. Delegation is an act of trust, and trust needs to be nurtured and earned.
The fundamental starting point is clear communication. The leader has to clearly define the task, and the parameters for success. Scope, time, and resources need to be articulated. Measures of success need to be understood. When delegating a task, a manager should practice a form of reverse active-listening. Ask the recipient to say back what they heard the task to be, in their own words — ‘tell me what you heard me say.’ In the early stages of building trust, the manager should also ask how the recipient intends to approach the problem - what is their plan. These simple steps will quickly highlight if the recipient is a molehill person or a bulldozer, or a thoughtful contributor in the middle.
David Marquet has articulated a progression of trust and delegation that lays out the path for managers to build a positive relationship with their team. The progression to build trust is:
Tell me what you see
Tell me what you recommend
Tell me what you intend to do
Tell me what you did
Mastering delegation is a force multiplier, but it is critical to avoid the molehill / bulldozer ends of the spectrum. Carefully cultivate trust and build a framework for increasing levels of delegation to recipients that can effectively execute. Creating a trusted team that can execute efficiently is a management super power we all need to develop.