Leader Learns - Lessons From the Floor

A leader needs to be with the people. More often than not, without realising the leader gets onto the Ivory tower and rarely comes down.  During my initial months as a lead, I used to be with the team most of the time. To me, I was one among the team, and not someone who as a lead needed to maintain that posture. This was the only way for me, to lead the team. Over the next few months, as my responsibilities increased, my team size increased. But I still felt the need to be one among the team. I did this, even when it became a stretch on my time. I did this not because I had to, but because I loved it. I felt comfortable being with the team, rather than acting as a Manager, who came in only when required. I did not realise that it had its own pros and cons. On the positive side, my teams never felt the need to distance themselves from me, which meant I could really get the team behind me to support me in my endeavors. It also meant that I was too familiar to them, and some

Every leader worth his salt would have gone through a number of critical situations, each one seemingly bigger than the previous. To me, crisis presented a new opportunity to learn. It gave me an important lesson. I had talked about trusting people in one of my earlier posts. But as a leader, when crisis hits, the first thing they tend to forget is the trust in their teams. The lead tends to jump in to take control of things, starting from trying to understand the issue to communicating the updates to stakeholders. It does not stop there - the lead gets into the way of everything - the problem resolution, suggesting solutions, getting back to original state of affairs. In the whole process forgetting that there are / might be competent people in the team to do all this and more.  To top it all, the worst thing the leader can do is to add to the pressure that the team is already facing and showing in his / her behaviour the tendencies to put people in extreme pressure.