Learning Yourself to Lead Others

As any good leader does; I spend just as much time making decisions as I do reflecting on the decisions I have made within any given day. Intentionally taking time at the end of the day to self review aspects what was accomplished, and which deliverables were met. I have the pleasure of having two great colleagues who both encourage and solicit transparent feedback, which in turn has become an internalized habit of my own. That being said, some leaders who have positional authority do not contain the humility to accept and act on feedback provided from subordinates. Given this framework, I felt it pertinent to share commonalities witnessed throughout my career, to aid and assist any growing leader on their individual path to excellence.

Commentary is Gas Lighting

As a leader, do you find yourself needing to chime in at the end of every paragraph within a meeting? Do you have to reframe, add, or edit presentation data from people within the meeting? Do you have to have the last word? Reflect on your behavior and ask yourselves these questions. You may feel this is creating value or engaging with the team, but what you are really doing is shunning leadership confidence. If somebody covered 90% of what was critical, let the rest go and thank them for the presentation. Every time you comment within a meeting, that is time another person didn't. You have to internalize that your end goal is to create a self sustaining mechanism of human behavior. Inserting yourself is by default hindering this endeavor. Perhaps there is an even worse behavior and this is simply a symptom.

Qualifying Your Position

If you want to qualify your role within an organization, buy a nametag. Put it on a lanyard, and hold it in everybody's face when you walk by. This is what your behavior looks like to your subordinates, when you spend time and energy qualifying your authority. There is nobody in your organization questioning your qualifications, except yourself. The next time you have the urge to control a conversation with technical expertise, instead show some humility. Identify what the person you are engaging with is lacking, and steer the conversation socratically until you create the opportunity to teach. Nobody likes a know-it-all, but everybody loves winning. Expanding a person's toolbelt helps them win, as well as makes your expectations exceedingly clear. Spend your energy creating value with this philosophy, and pretty soon you won't to worry about being qualified. And speaking of expectations.

Stop Banging a Calculator

Do regular conversations create new math? Do you sit in a meeting and clack a way to prove your point? Instead of this behavior, take the urge to do this and assess the system you are responding to. Odds are, the team is missing a skillset you have on that calculator, or are unaware of the the direction you are taking. Stop calculating, make a template, or teach the skill that is missing. In both scenarios, you expand the team's ability to win, have clear expectations, and engage. If you create a new metric everytime you meet, you need to spend time on your own erratic behavior. Do you understand your business? If you did, you wouldn't be creating new things all the time. Before adding anything else new, master the current processes and manual inputs of your business, then allow yourself to eliminate what isn't necessary.

Less is More

As a leader, your aim is to focus a large group to an outcome. Just like actual vision in this world, you cannot focus without clarity. You have to be crisp in the outcomes you want, minimize them to a tee, and clearly communicate them. If you have more than 5-6 metrics for a business, you are diversifying your attention too much to succeed. You have to ask yourself "are my expectations reasonable? Can I do them"? If the answer is yes, do them for a calendar month, and train the team on best practices. Teach the skills they lack to be a successful self sustaining organism. Do you see a pattern here?

Deliverables Within Your Value Proposition

Results>Effort. If you reflect on your actions for the day, are they all new initiatives? Are they political mine-sweeping, or do they contain a measurable deliverable? Once you have ascribed to a political system long enough, you can find yourself swimming full time, and never delivering anything to a business, or creating a meaningful impact. You have to pick any given action you conducted and ask yourself, "does this create value? Does it have a measurable impact on outcomes"? If that answer is no, stop that behavior!

Does it Really Have to Be Me

Odds are, your day is filled with minutia. Tiny, individual contributorship tasks that have little to no impact on the bottom line. You may think your "unique" take on the budget or contract is necessary, but I promise you it isn't. If you have tasks you cannot delegate, instead of conducting the task, ask yourself why. Does your team lack the skill to conduct the task? Does it make you feel important? Does nobody else have time? If your team is lacking the skill, (yep you guessed it), TRAIN them! If it makes you feel important, who cares? If the team doesn't have the time, then you need to assess your ask of the team, and offer additional resources.

Summary and Action Plan

To begin, you need to build the discipline of behavior reflection. This will streamline your course to success in your role as a leader within an organization. Once you have this skillset, you only need to ask yourself "Did my behavior increase the problem solving capacity of the group? Did it lead to learning skills that create a self sustaining organism"? All of your successes from here on out are through others, if you want a job that is solely individual contributorship, pick a different career.

Pick 10 things you did last week, walk through the article, ask the questions, be critical. Are you helping or hindering outcomes?