“If you do this one thing, according to the research, you will instantly become a better leader.” There’s my click bait sample headline for the day. These stories are really beginning to annoy. For any leader to become “better” means they must dedicate time, energy, and attention (TEA) to the craft of leadership. Expect it to be a years long (or career long) process. Think about it this way: If all of you is the same as before but you change one thing, then there is the potential for fragmentation. Your particular brand of leadership may start to feel inauthentic because you are forcing one square peg through a round hole. It will feel to us like you are trying a new gimmick. And all of us love gimmicks, right? Instead, think of leadership more like an interconnected system. “Better” probably means making incremental changes to each of the interconnected parts over time to make the system work in a new way. We can start by changing one thing, but then we must allow for other potential changes to cascade through our leadership practices.
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...