Leadership, Team Management, and Knowing When to Follow

Great leaders don’t know everything…but they can find those who do.

People ask me for advice – regularly – about a ridiculous number of things. I wonder if they realize they’re asking me because I readily admit that I couldn’t possibly know about so many subjects. That doesn’t stop me from answering, however. I just don’t answer with solutions. Coming up with the solution is their job.

The same is true in management. Anyone who’s ever led a group of dissimilar colleagues (and I’ve never come across a totally heterogeneous one) has to accept that they all have specific strengths and capabilities. What one person does really well may be something that the person at the next desk hates doing – even when they’re in, basically, the same job. So giving a solution to either of those people could rip their confidence out from under them, make them feel dependent (or resentful), and lower their motivation from high to low or from low to sub-atomic.

Accepted Practice
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There is, at this point, an Alexandrian library’s worth of literature about how to lead, how to manage, how to motivate, handle conflict, leap obstacles and every other topic you can think of involving the workplace. Any workplace. If there’s a common thread, it’s that employees who feel valued and respected will consider their boss, manager, senior manager or CEO to be a good leader. People who are made to feel like interchangeable parts will describe their superiors using words that often refer to anatomical parts.

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