Fundamentals

Listen to your team. Have a genuine interest in what they think. Validate their ideas.

Prioritize their success over completion of a single task. While the task at hand might be important, dragging someone across the finish line will damage their self-confidence.

Show your belief in others, especially when they disappoint. Understand their future is wide open to endless possibilities. Do not construct limits. Trust their ability to grow.

Flexible Leadership Styles (SLII)

The situation determines the appropriate leadership style. Use the SLII model to match leadership style to your teammate’s development level.

Autonomy

Give your team autonomy. Allow them to govern themselves, explore options, and make choices, even when direction is necessary. When micro-management is warranted, think about how you can still give them some control.

Giving your team control and empowering them to make decisions not only boosts their confidence, it exercises the decision-making part of their brain, keeping them mentally fit. In contrast, the lack of freedom or control leads to learned helplessness and apathy.

Making thoughtful decisions is a critical part of brain health. It exercises the pre-frontal cortex. It's the part of the brain meant to keep us from mindlessly walking through life, from one shiny lure to another.

Commitments

Commitments should be taken seriously, including casual commitments like “I’ll have that report to you by the end of the day” or “the meeting will be 30-minutes long.” See my blog post: Run Them Right.

When we do not follow through on our commitments, we build in permission to fail (and not in a good way). We say we will do something within specified constraints, but the understanding is that our commitment is flexible. When we believe that nobody really expects us to follow through in the first place, we more often fail to follow through.

My rules are:

  1. Don’t make commitments you can’t keep.

  2. Treat all commitments the same.

  3. Acknowledge when a commitment is not met.

  4. Make it right.

For more, read: The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp.

Play

I see tremendous value in stepping away from the desk and letting the mind unwind. I encourage my teammates to take breaks, exercise, or go for a walk. Unwinding allows for clear thinking and creativity, which is often more valuable than another hour in the grind.