Leadership Begins When You Let Go of Control
When you’re in control of the carrot and the stick, and that’s the only way you know how to motivate your team, you’re not leading. Leadership starts when you let go of this control. This means, people follow you because they want to, not because they have to.
One of the best ways to develop the skill of leading without control is to lead a group of volunteers. When you are leading a group of volunteers the carrot and stick is useless. You have to find another way to motivate your team or you will fail. Some of the things I’ve found that tend to help are:
- Build personal relationships with each of your team members
- Use your personal relationship to help each team member find their unique connection to the mission
- Establish and communicate clear roles and responsibilities (ASAP)
- Listen to feedback instead of resisting feedback
- Be flexible to adapt the mission to the reality of the situation
- Collaborate with the team on decisions, while remaining decisive when resolving disagreements
- Collaborate with the team to get buy-in and document acceptable communication practices (when to use email, texting, phone calls, acceptable response times, when to escalate, carbon copy emails, etc.)
- Respect time (i.e. start on time and end on time)
- Celebrate the small and large victories
- Say please and thank you (establish a culture of appreciation)