No, I don’t want to “work for you.” I want to work for myself. Don’t misunderstand. I am not talking about entrepreneurship. I am talking about anyone who exchanges their effort for money. We should remove “works for me” from our lexicon. Each of us is working for ourselves – in some way. We want to be regarded as experts. We want our work to matter. We want to make a difference in the world. Some of us trade our time indiscriminately for money, but leaders should steer clear of these people. The team members you want to attract are those that achieve their goals through their work and it just so happens that the mission of your organization and their goals align. Craft the mission well, define the roles, pay more than you should, then be extremely picky in who you add to the team. Alignment is key.
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...