Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Being a leader is tough. Really tough. And it's easy to think you're doing it right, but even easier to screw it up and not know until it's too late - or even worse, convince yourself if an employee doesn't work out that it was just a bad hire.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, mostly because I'm leading a small multi-disciplined team and want to make sure they feel supported. I've become more in-tune with the way my actions can either enable or prohibit my team from really achieving their career goals. I'll admit, I'm really hard on myself and do a lot of reflecting at the end of each day, but still second guess myself and wonder if I need to be more self aware. In many ways this has helped me become more aware of my mistakes and pushes me to solicit feedback from my team more often. It's not uncommon for me to reflect and ask about a particular comment I made, or ask how I can improve next time, and apologize if I think something I said or did may have come across the wrong way. My team seems very receptive and appreciative of this, but ultimately I can't really know how well or poorly I'm doing unless they feel safe sharing feedback. After all, I'm there to help them be the best they can be - my success is simply an offshoot of theirs.

Something I've noticed through much of these periods of reflection is that it's really challenging to build trust - real trust - with a team that's reporting to you. Ultimately, as a leader, your team is at your mercy. Retaliation is a real fear for most people. As a manager, you have the upper hand regardless of whether you're horrible at your job or phenomenal at it, and your team will likely treat you the same way regardless of your performance. I've realized how important it is to really pay attention to my own actions, words, and behaviors, particularly when it's all too often that checks and balances are not upheld in corporate environments. When it comes down to it, leaders are most often assumed to be right and employees assumed to be wrong. It's not right or fair, but because leaders are expected to give feedback to their employees and not the other way around, it's easier for leaders to feel offended and retaliate if they hear something they don't like, or simply avoid asking for feedback from their teams altogether. Another flaw in the feedback stream is that a leader's manager is the one to typically provide feedback, even though they have no visibility into how well they're managing their team.

Skip step feedback can help with this, but ultimately, managers have to be incredibly self aware, willing to receive constructive feedback, and allow themselves to be vulnerable. It's common for managers to assume they're supposed to have all the answers, which can create added pressure and a false sense of authority. I think a common misconception is that being in a leadership position means you know more than your team. From what I've seen, it's the complete opposite. If you're a great leader, you'll hire people that know more than you in different areas and empower and trust them to do their jobs. It's also really helpful to have the right values circulating through a company where employees are praised for sharing candid feedback with their peers and leaders. 

It's also too often that selfish, insecure, under qualified, or power-hungry people with control issues end up in leadership positions for the exact reasons that should keep them out of management. This obviously creates a negative work environment for the teams and prohibits productivity and innovation. If a leader is experiencing consistent turnover on their team, they're firing people frequently, or their team consistently underperforms, it's really important to look at the leader rather than their team. After all, people most often quit managers, not companies, and perform significantly better with a great leader versus a bad one.

Ultimately, being humble enough to realize that as a manager, we don't have all the answers and we need a great team in order to achieve big things. We can demonstrate this through our own willingness to admit failures, ask for help, and lead by example. Consistency builds trust and our actions need to align with our words in order to make our team feel safe sharing feedback so we can all improve and do our best work.