The world needs leaders like you

Come on. Let’s face it. Things are difficult. We don’t get to be a grand master of kung-fu on two years neither we will not have sufficient experience to build teams in no time.

Though it sounds great while we say we are building up teams, day-to-day it is exhausting and full of with decisions we need to take. On our daily interactions, one2one meetings, town halls… Then I assume our decision-making process is highly tied to our experience. More experience, more situations we have been to, more we had passed sleepless nights trying to figure out the best way to do things, the readier we are for the next time that decisions need to be taken.

No, being a manager/leader is not easy. Let me share you a little secret that during my first years of management there were moments I wished I was just an engineer doing what my task was for that day and leave home at 18.00h. But then I always thought about how was able to help my team work more comfortable, get them all together and see people working around without the fear of an authoritative boss from hell, then it was all gone. I loved it where I was and I did not care how much effort it needed to get that done.

We always face different situations, different mentalities, different characters in our teams. There are very easy going personalities, as well as more difficult ones. One of the practices Once we get to a level where the team has confidence that we are all one, what I always do is to call out a DISC analysis on all of us, yes including me. This exercise really works in the sense that it gives a great deal of clues on how the team members perceive reality. It is not so uncommon I heard “Oh Now I understand why you are always into so many details”.

Then there are separate people where the general thought is “I live better without a manager, what I do is right and only right to get lost!”. So again let me check the situations I have been to and meditate on what’s the best action to take.

Get your team member, tell him I am the boss and micro manage his work so that he is forced to either obey or leave the job?

No, no and no. This is the very wrong way of doing things. Against what we have learned, what our mentors thought us and what I personally have been fighting for and mentoring about for the new generations managers.

This is a great situation. It is a situation where you are faced with a great opportunity to save a great engineer, team lead from getting lost on their world. An opportunity to give them a chance to really use their skills in a better way. My experience tells me there are always great team players, great minds behind that barrier that is waiting to be discovered. And that’s our really work. Finding that difficult personality and making them a great addition to the rest of the team.

Being a responsible leader is never easy. You will have to show yourself that you are worth it, prepared the power point presentation for your boss, getting the clarity sheets delivered on time, checking up on the progress of the project, be in the meetings taking decisions (where most of them are expected to be right ones), talk to other managers for feedback, join the town hall, travel to other offices to meet more team members, manage your team tasks and give visibility to other teams depending on yours, give correct messages to your team and be responsible for the bad decisions you made, apologise, get up and earn your team’s trust again.

Being a leader is not easy, along with all the huge list of to-do you need to earn the team member and prepare him to be the next generation leader. Do it! It is worth it when you come back in a couple of years and see him being an exact copy of you treating his team as they deserve.

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.