Leadership as a Supporting Role

Leadership as a Supporting Role Do you find yourself huffing and puffing as a tech leader? Not sure how to keep all of those plates spinning? You, my friend, need to let go of your main character syndrome. The answer to the overwhelming load many tech executives report is rarely to work harder. Rather than piling ever more things on your plate, it’s time to embrace the existence of your team. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Do you ever find yourself huffing and puffing as a tech leader? Not sure how to keep all those plates spinning? You, my friend? Need to let go of your main character syndrome. The answer to the overwhelming load many executives report is rarely to work harder. Rather than piling in even more things on your plate, it's time to embrace the existence of your team. Leaders often lose the healthy balance between short-term and long-term goals. And that's why they take on a lot of work. That's often the fastest route to move a particular task at the head of the board forward. At times, many times, that's their safest bet. They feel like letting their team handle it is just too risky.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  However, your team is precisely your deliverable in the long term. Not the individual tasks. You're supposed to create a team that's so dramatically impactful, it can deliver those tasks and more, and not be limited by your own personal bandwidth. It's not even you trust the team enough to do things without your constant hand-holding and helicopter management. You've failed completely as a leader. You've let them grow at the cost of short-term delays and mistakes. Precisely so that you can create a strong team over the long term.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  The first step is to start by putting them forward. You don't have to be the face of your organization everywhere. Let them have direct contact with peers across your organization and also outside of it. Remember that your job isn't to hide the real world from them. Many read one-step management is about creating abstraction layers and took it the wrong way. You ought to allow enough exposure so that what happens in the company, so that they have context to make smart decisions allows them and sets them up to succeed and support them. Don't try to do everything for them. Also, you don't need to worry about being a martyr, which is another main character syndrome.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Suffering isn't leadership. It also means that you don't need to protect the team that you're getting frustrated from time, ton of time or being challenged. That's, that's kind of the job of being a leader, you know, you need to grab those reins sometimes and that's how people grow.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  A supporting role doesn't mean you're not important, though. In The Princess Bride, it would have fared far different without Miracle Max's miracle. And yet Miracle Max is only a supporting role at best and he understands it. After doing what he needs to do and setting the game correctly to do what needs to be done, he doesn't suggest doing the hard work for them. He waves at them, letting them go and do it themselves, wishing them good luck. Sometimes that's exactly what we ought to do. Keep your main character energy for when it's really needed and allow others to build off of softer energy that we can provide. And now, here's why I'm wishing you good luck and saying,

• 3:23Speaker 00

  if you have a topic you want us to discuss, learn more at agiledad.com is the place. And as always, we encourage you to stay healthy, stay well and stay agile, my friends. Until next time, do take care. Bye now. Be like Wesley.