Somebody asked me today, “Whats your leadership style?”. The context of the question was that I seem to have high approval ratings for a manager (har! har!) and this peer was curious what I do differently. My response was I am not doing anything differently. I just let my team be. I trust my team to do their jobs and if they don’t do their jobs consistently then I step in to help navigate challenges. I do not solve every problem for my team, nor do I give them lots and lots of feedback. I let them fail in front of other leaders but I back them up. I let them peruse a bad idea for a while before they come to the same conclusion that I had right at beginning. My job is not to manage my people, but help them get better at managing themselves and owning their work. Almost every report of mine struggles the first few weeks with me, but when they finally start seeing that I trust them and I back them, they start taking ownership on their own and start delivering! Leadership is not some kind of a magic formula ya’all, so stop reading those books. Start with a position of trust and go from there and figure out how it goes. There is no secret formula that works for all, and no two people are alike. And just make peace that some people will hate you no matter what.

#leadership #management