The contagion of insecurity

How can I get the best out of my people?

This is a much familiar question every leader has to deal with. It’s very critical for the leader to make his team succeed. That’s exactly what is expected out of a leader. A leader has to empower the team, encourage them to perform well and if required, push them out of their comfort zone.

What happens when the leader feels insecure? There are two possible causes for this feeling of insecurity:

• Fear of failure

The leader fears that a failure (no matter how small it is) will destroy the team and this in turn will affect him/her directly. He/she fears that any failure can put his/her position at risk.

• Lack of trust

The leader has a feeling that he/she is the only one who is committed and firmly believes that everyone else needs to be pushed/forced to get the best results. It's like driving, you think anyone who is faster than you is a weirdo whereas anyone who drives slower than you, is a dimwit who doesn't know driving.

Regardless of the reason, this insecurity can cause havoc in the entire team dynamics. Insecurity is contagious.

A team led by an insecure leader can never be a confident team.

No matter what, you do your best when you know that you are being trusted. A resource who is afraid of the supervisor can never be at his/her best. He/she will only do what is asked and then wait for more instructions. A self-sufficient team will slowly become a team of robots who will only deliver what is asked. Team members will try to take the nearest exit given a chance.

The keyword here is trust.

• Do you trust your team?
• How much trust do you have on your team?

If you feel your team is too brittle to fail at least once, if you feel your team is too weak to come back despite making mistakes, then you have a very serious problem in hand.

No matter how hard you try, you will not win with this team.

The big question though is- Is it a problem with the team or is it a problem with your perception?

At this stage, if you go ahead terrorizing everyone in the team, you are on the wrong path. It’s like trying to douse fire with petrol, you will only make things worse.

The best way to deal with this is to cultivate more trust. Start being transparent with your team members. Talk to them about your own expectations, listen to them, take their suggestions and feedback, and note everything down. This simple action is enough to generate more connect with your team. Once you have inputs from all the team members, it’s time for a self-introspection. Write down every single thing that comes to your mind, no matter good or bad. All we need is an open platform to jot down our own feelings.

This way you have the data and as they say data is your ammunition to plan the next course of action. This will give you a clear picture on where the problem lies.

Now as to the feeling of insecurity, I guess it’s up to us to take things lightly. We tend to be so hard on us that most of the times it affects the way we interact with our team. No one is going to die even if we make a mistake. We need to realize that everyone in our team wants the team to succeed just like us. After all, we aren’t leading a secret service organization where there is the possibility of an infiltrator.

There are no spies in your team, unless you work with that English gentleman who loves martini shaken but not stirred.

Everyone in your team is with you to set things right.

All we need is to invest a bit of trust on them. Sometimes, your investment might not yield the required results. But that’s okay, it isn’t sunshine all the way.

Let us treat our team equally, let us trust them, let us understand them and thereby empower them.