Lifting others, empowering them, making them feel listened and appreciated, ensuring they can do their best with their skills and motivating them enough to go find learnings in their failures.
All of this is possible only if we allow it to happen to ourselves first.
“I am shit and you are great” is a narrative that does not serve any of the above purposes.
More often than not, acting to appease the demand of someone else will end with the person we are trying to appease demanding more.
What are you going to do with the new request? And with the following one? And with the one that will, inevitably, come after that?
You need to be able to stand by your decisions because they make sense to you, because you have evaluated different options and assesed that’s the best course of action, because that’s what you would have done if nobody would have asked.
Intentionality is the only thing that matters.
When you treat people as if they are going to cheat or take advantage of you, one of two things is going to happen.
Either they will cheat and take advantage of you – if only because that’s what you will read in their behaviour, no matter what they actually do -, or they will stay clear of you and look for somebody who sees in them more positive potential.
Build a system based on unconditional trust, instead, and take specific and appropriately directed actions the few times trust will be put on the line. You’ll be surprised with how much time you and people around you will save, and how much more inspired and inspiring the whole environment will be.
If you want your people to develop, participate in trainings, attend events related to their field, network with peers and exchange ideas, just give them a clear budget (time and money) and some broad rules. Then let them choose how to go about it, approve by default and sponsor sessions to share their learnings with the rest of the team.
If you don’t want that instead, give them a process to follow, some paperwork to do and managerial discretion.
Or even better, tell them their development is not at the top of your agenda.
Are you building thought leadership or are you looking for leads?
It might seem like it’s just a marketing question, but it is actually much more than that.
Are you establishing deep connections or are you greeting everybody and move on?
Are you here to make a change or to share your numbers?
Are you interested in telling a story or in surfacing shortcuts?
Are you creating or copy-pasting?
And the one that I personally prefer.
Are you for quality or quantity?
Certainly, the two can be simultaneously present. And yet, you can’t go all in on both. Eventually one will prevail, projecting your work in very different directions.
Also, the more you stick with one the more difficult it will be to move onto the other. But this is more true when the movement is from leads to thought leadership. So, the idea that “we are going to do quality work when X and Y will happen” is a mirage.
I bet you already knew that.
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