Quite often, I encounter young coachees who are focused on achieving an objective. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with this! However, their approach to the task is usually based on a shortcut.

Human beings have a “natural urge to act in the obvious way to achieve a desired result,” as Percy Boomer describes it in the chapter “golf bogey N°1” of his book “On learning golf.” When people act like that, they can be described as “end gainers.” Their focus on the end they seek to achieve happens without consideration of the means needed to achieve the desired result.

In golf, this is to execute one’s swing as one learned it. In such a situation, the focus is on the execution of the swing. If one focuses instead on hitting the ball or reaching a spot on the fairway, the execution of the swing will be impacted by these two objectives.

Taking the ends for the means is also what happens when a leader focuses on the problems he perceives, on the behavior of his team members, or on what he assumes to be the wrong way to execute the task. Doing so, the leader will start to micromanage in an effort to change the team members’ behavior to something he deems to be the right behavior.

There are situations in which such leadership is useful. But most often, such leadership misses paying attention to the individual’s reasons for acting as they do. It is inviting them to let go of their thinking, knowledge, and authority. As a result, the leader establishes a relationship of dependency. In taking such action, the leader has taken responsibility for the outcome even though he has no control over the way the team chooses to act.

The leader also let go of his opportunity to discuss the outcome with the team and thus learn how aligned they were. Finally, he let go of other critical factors, enabling the team members to share his reasons for acting as he did.

A relationship that leads to a sense of dependency misses the point of building trust and an environment that is perceived as safe.