Lead vs Manage II

What brings out the best in a team?

How do you, as a leader, inspire and ignite the talents of your team?

How do you lead the team such that you are continually astonished that so much can be done by so few?

Conversely, what is your response when your team returns with the results of a task you assigned and they are so far off the mark you are left dumbfounded?  Have you found yourself thinking “They failed!” and taken action to “set them straight”?

What happened then?

My observations: Formerly high-performing team members stop being high-performers. Or they leave.

I have been incredibly fortunate to work with some very dedicated top performers. People who “knock it out of the park” every single time.

I have witnessed “leaders” create teams, cherry picking these high-performers precisely because they reliably excel. And, when a task set resulted in something less than expected, I’ve watched the team respond when the “lead” pronounced “failure” and leaned heavily on “manage” with condescension, patronizing and belittling remarks. One would think, from the lead’s reaction, that the team had failed deliberately.

Is that plausible? A team of reliably high performers, having put in incredible effort to accomplish what they had understood to be the task at hand to their usual level of excellence - failed? And how does anyone respond to hearing the result was not quite what was needed after doing their honest best?

So, what really happened? In one observation the task had very specific constraints that were in truth arbitrary while actual expectations were omitted.

The team hadn’t failed. As usual, they had done a remarkable job.

And, when the lead failed to own their communication gap, sadly, the damage was done.

Reflection is a powerful ally!

Humbleness equally so.