Authored By: Luke Waite

I’m certainly not the first to say this but I’m going to say it anyway because so many folks in leadership seem to forget the simple principle that all leadership starts at the top. If you are not leading the charge for your team, it communicates to your team that you do not care about your them, their success, their growth, or their own individual growth as members of the team. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how humans operate and what they need to feel safe. This is crucial that you, the leader, offer this to your team even if you are not being offered the same sort of treatment.

Remember that top down does not mean that you, the leader, have to make every decision or that you are even involved in every decision. Rather, you should establish, by the example that you have set for and with your team, how decisions are to be made in your team. This allows team members to feel freedom and empowerment to make the necessary decisions without you. This requires that you are willing to affirm a team members decision not because they are the decisions you would have made but because you are affirming that each member of the team is of value. This builds trust within teams faster than anything else that I have seen.

With this freedom, comes affirmation and continual growth. Every person has to understand that they have been given the freedom to make decisions without you, the leader, coming down on them when they mess up. Unbelievably, mess ups are perfect opportunities to teach rather than discipline, unless it is absolutely necessary of course. Further, mess ups are additionally great moments to help team members to grow in their decision making when they make decisions that are unsatisfactory. These are opportunities not obstructions to growth.

You Are The Boss

The truth is, you are the boss, for better or worse. This means that you get the accolades when things go well and you also get the joy of taking on all of the blame when things don’t. This is part of the deal when you have a position of being a boss. Because of this, you, the boss, get to demonstrate to your team that you are going to protect them when things do not go well. At the end of the day, when things don’t go well it ultimately rests on the boss not the individual team members. Sure, perhaps this team member did not deliver on time or another one forgot to finish their task but this is your responsibility as the boss to say, “that is behind us. Now, what are we about to do to keep that from happening again?”

This sort of approach to leadership will teach your team that they should own what is theirs to own,because you yourself do the same. The only reason this happens is if an employee feels the safety of knowing that you, the boss, is not going to ridicule them for the making a mistake. Again, this is an opportunity for the team to be further meshed together by team members owning what is theirs to own and moving forward from there.

As a boss, it is important to remember that you are not the most important person but rather that each member of the team growing and succeeding is your purpose. This sort of communication is crucial to the success of the team. Anyone who does not want to be part of the team and support the team in this way will simply not last in that sort of environment.

A final word of encouragement. Be a boss. No, not like that. Be the boss that you would want to have. A leader who is communicative, collaborative, helpful, responsive, and empathetic. Your “job” is not be be hated but rather to be a curator. Yes, a curator of a space where the team’s “tasks” get completed in a timely manner, a curator who seeks to offer opportunities for team members to grow professionally, and finally a curator of a space where people are not managed or bossed but rather freed to unleash their full potential. So go ahead, be a boss!