The 2 Things a Leader Must Do!

The 2 Things a Leader Must Do!

Everybody is a leader!

It is my strong belief that you don’t need to have a manager title attached to you to prove yourself as a strong leader. I do know many people, including on my team, who demonstrate leadership every day without the title.

In fact, when you think of it, everyone has been a leader probably several times in their life already: When raising kids, when participating in a club or giving time to communities, etc.

It is the same on a team. For a team to be highly collaborative and productive, a key thing that must happen is shared leadership. Every single member of the team should feel and act as a leader, should assume the leadership when the leader of the team needs help or does not know something, should step up and assume leadership when a problem needs resolution quickly.

I will argue that there is hardly a commonly assumed to be leadership task in a team that can’t be done by anyone else on the team – even if on a temporary basis:

– Hiring a new member for the team
– Making a decision
– Leading a project to completion
– Making a presentation to senior leadership
– Organizing the work of the team
– Communicating about the team’s goals and values
– Evaluating performance
– Supporting other people growth and development through learning and training
– Etc. [Add your own thoughts in the comments below please!]

However, there are 2 things only the leader of the team can and must do to support the team and bring it to high performance:

1. Secure resources – i.e., people, money, time, etc. – needed by the team in order to achieve their goals and deliver high performance
2. Offering air cover to the team, by which I mean protecting the team from external distractions, time wastes, taking the heat for making mistakes, etc.

What are your thoughts on this? Where do you agree or disagree? What has been your experience?