Category: Leadership

Into the Darkness We Walk, Together, Side by Side

A leader can be defined by what he or she does for the company in terms of results and development but another perspective is what they do for the people in their charge. As a leader you have a responsibility to take care of the people serving under you. If you do this you will have a loyal team that do their best to not let you or the company down.

Part of this is to challenge them to grow and develop. To challenge someone you need to make them move out of their comfort zone. You can push them but in my experience it is far more effective to go with them. If they feel you got their back they will surely have yours when the time comes.

A quotation that captures this elegantly is the jewel from Joel Barker. It is simple and yet powerful!

“A leader is someone you’d follow to go somewhere that you wouldn’t go by yourself.”

Joel Barker




Holding Out For A Hero, really?

I hate to disagree with the lovely Bonnie Tyler but this might not be the best way to go about it. It is all to common to see people with great initiative and drive work hard to move the needle but often they burn out from lack of support from the people surrounding them.

We should not build our organisations on the need for these heroes or supermen (and women). The system must be robust and easy to manage so that no one person will make or break it.

Through engagement we build teams that work together to succeed. I think this quote from Peter Drucker sums is up quite nicely.

“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”

Peter Drucker




People Do If They Can

In my work I often come across frustration from coworkers that people are not doing what they are told or what they are expected to do. This can affect the whole team and often lead to others having to pick up the slack. When this happens it is often costly for the team as a whole when relations break down and motivation suffers. From a managerial standpoint the productivity will suffer along with the team breaking down. The cost is not always apparent at the time but slowly but surely it will come. A classic outcome is when you reach the stalemate argument “I’m not going to do that since no one else is doing it.”

A new perspective

Recently I came across the book “Lost at School” by Ross W. Green on a recommendation. It focuses on how children do what is expected of them if they are able to and the book contains a framework called Collaborative Proactive Solutions (CPS) with the purpose of identifying and working to overcome challenges when the child is not living up to expectations. Immediately I saw the parallel to my own situation and work and found it very enlightening. Now, it is not to say we are all children but similarities in behaviors are quite apparent and we are all human after all.

Are we so different?

I started to look differently into every situation where people were not doing the tasks they were expected to do. Now in the workplace the signs for detecting this is a bit different from the school environment but the general idea is the same. In most cases I realized that what was asked was outside their skill set and outside their comfort zone.

Where children may lack the means to express their inability the adults seem to connect their inability to shame and thus not wanting to showcase this. Rather than ask for help and coaching they try to avoid the task and give various reasons why it has not been done. This is not true for everyone but from my observations not uncommon either.

What can we do to help?

If you notice that a task is not being done when there, in your perspective, has been a good opportunity to do so. Rather than scold or get frustrated. Try to find out what the problem is through empathy and unbiased questions. If the conclusion is that there is a lack of a skill or the right conditions look to how you can achieve this together through training, coaching or other methods. Thus removing the problem as soon as possible. This will not solve all similar situations but may be a good starting point.

Good luck!