I’ve recently been thinking a lot about what makes a good team leader. What is the difference between a leader who people like to work with and one who they dread?
One answer is whether or not you care about your people - do you care what they think of you?
When recently I first took over a role managing a large group of people, a number of people cautioned me that I might find it difficult because I ‘like to be liked’. I see where they are coming from – if you are too concerned about people being your friend, you may have trouble making tough decisions because of the risk you will upset people.
But in fact, I think wanting people to like you is a good thing in a leader. It means that you are thinking about their feelings when you make decisions. In trying not to upset people, you are in fact considering them as individuals and therefore more likely to minimise the impact on them. At the very least, it encourages you to communicate difficult news with compassion and empathy.
If you don’t care about the people in your team, you are more likely to make decisions based on other factors such as cost or convenience. While this might not be a big deal a lot of the time, happy people are productive people so any gains you make could well be quickly lost.
Thinking through the impact of decisions on people and then taking the time to communicate personally is the best way to make them feel an important and valued member of the team.
So yes, I do care if you like me or not.
You might have caught Dahlia's and my conversation on Twitter, but I figure I'll comment here anyways.
ReplyDeleteManaging and leading are orthogonal. What I mean to say is that you can do either well without doing the other at all. You could do both, and thats fine too, but you don't have to.
On the other hand, 'managing people' is an oxymoron. You 'manage things' and you 'lead people' and we shouldn't confuse the two. You could end up doing both as part of your job, but thats merely a conincidence.