Great leaders grant teams certain things. People on any team will often wait until they feel they have permission from leadership before they move forward.
Whether stated or unspoken, a leader plays the key role in setting the culture of the organization. If you want your team to flourish, make sure you grant them permission to be a great team.
10 things great leaders grant their team:
The right to dream – Leaders give the team permission to dream the seemingly impossible. The lid of possibilities will often be when the leader’s sense of pragmatism trumps their sense of imagination.
The freedom to fail – People need to know they can mess up and still have another chance on the team.
Encouragement to have fun – Let’s get this party started! Work hard, but take time to laugh along the way.
An openness to experimenting – It might work. It might not. Let’s give it a try.
Permission to ask questions – People only know what they know. Great leaders allow people to ask questions about anything of which they are unsure?
A culture of collaboration – The team-mentality is the healthy view of leadership. Isolation leads to destruction. The more we can get people working together the stronger our teams will be.
Welcoming individual recognition – This sounds anti-team mentality, but it’s not. What I mean here is that when the leader owns all the acknowledgement a team receives it limits what people will attempt to achieve. People need to be able to receive recognition for their good work even on a healthy team.
An expectation to be challenged – People usually perform up to the expectation set for them and seldom beyond.
Shared ownership – Ownership leads to stewardship. The more we give people a seat at the table the more responsibility they will assume for overall results.
A path towards individual creation – Original thoughts should be welcome on a team. Leaders make sure the team knows it by how we respond when people have an idea.
There are likely lots of others. Feel free to share some of your thoughts with us in the comments.
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