The Art of Leading Others

One of the most challenging lessons of leadership is that you must rely on others to succeed. It is impossible to be everything to everyone. You can't do everything yourself; delegate tasks and trust your team to complete them correctly. Many people discover this lesson when they work on their first project. It is no longer about doing the work yourself but rather inspiring others. Today, I would like to take a moment to discuss the challenges of trusting others.

For most of our childhood, we spent time in competition with our peers. We are given grades, segregated by intelligence, and worry about our permanent record. It is beneficial to develop individual contributors, but it creates numerous problems when, later in life, we must collaborate with others to accomplish tasks. Those habits of personal achievement are hard to suppress, and we often jostle each other to ensure we receive the recognition we deserve for doing good work. The reason for this is that in the competitive world of global business, attention is often equated with success. People need to see your accomplishments; otherwise, you will face career stagnation. The harsh reality undermines teamwork.

In the world of office work, assigning responsibility is critical to the success of an activity. Continuing operations or new projects succeed or fail based on the collective actions of a desperate group. Stakeholders often look for one person to hold accountable for those actions, so they depend on leaders, managers, or project team members to ensure things move forward. The people who do this work are often the sole wringable neck and carry a terrible burden. The paradox is that while they are ultimately accountable, they cannot do the work themselves; they must count on others who may not be as invested in success as they are.

It is here that the science of project management gives way to the art of leading others. I call it an art because it requires creativity, practice, and technique. Something which works in one situation may not work in another, and a leader must continue to push themselves and others to improve. The effort challenges your intelligence and empathy.

Activities at work also depend on ensuring you have sufficient personnel, resources, and expertise to achieve a goal. I have witnessed numerous projects fail because a business lacked the personnel necessary to complete the job. I have also seen multiple projects, awash in money, collapse into apathy and failure because they lacked the right people with the proper skills to ensure success.

Simon Sinek talks about starting with a why. He says this because, without a good reason, people will not do something. Furthermore, the reason why we do something must come from within each of us rather than being imposed from outside. Clearly, Sinek has read some Camus in his career to advocate this perspective. When you are working with others, you need to understand each person's individual 'why' and how that helps accomplish the project's goals. It requires listening and close observation because a person will behave in ways that might contradict what they say.

Once you understand each person's 'why,' you need to determine how much you can trust them. Again, it requires observation, not just what people say. Trust also behaves like a bank account because, over time, it can accrue value, and in other situations, you must make an emergency withdrawal. In my experience, it is much easier to waste trust than to earn it. In high-trust environments, work flows smoothly through systems, whereas in low-trust environments, it often requires micromanagement.

When your work requires my constant oversight, I view that as a systemic breakdown. Clearly, someone on my team is not trustworthy, and I must invest significant time and energy in helping that person become more dependable. Untrustworthy individuals undermine the team's efforts and hinder the delivery of solutions. In a school setting, the leader can often do the work themselves; however, in a business setting, it is next to impossible, so they must navigate a situation where they are responsible for success but have no control over the work to make that success a reality. It is why the military calls this situation the burden of command.

I am familiar with this burden and the need to help others collaborate to achieve a common goal. It is challenging and exhausting, but rewarding when it happens. So we need to do a better job teaching both the art and science of leadership, particularly in high schools. We must understand others' 'why' and learn to build trust. I would much rather have learned that lesson in high school than in the high-stakes world of global capitalism. It is why I spend so much time writing and discussing the subject so that others can learn from my experiences.

Until next time.