The Four Gifts of Leadership: #2 - Oversight

 If you’ve shared the purpose and the strategic path with your team, there are two more critical elements you need to share with your people, individually, one by one. The plan and their place in it. 

You are the architect of your team’s plan. It may be a back-of-the-napkin musing or an intricately designed symphony that chronicles what needs to happen for you to accomplish your goals. You might develop this on your own or you might include your team in its preparation, but either way you are accountable to turn strategy into action. 

This is oversight, a high-level responsibility for the work that needs to be done. This can be a duty or a gift. It’s a duty if it’s your plan, if you dole it out piece by piece, keeping your team in the dark and dispensing your wisdom in micro-managed, bite-sized pieces. It’s a gift if you reveal it as if unfolding a map across the table, with the team metaphorically huddled around as you describe the path you’ll follow together. Are you a trustworthy guide or an angry army captain? 

Oversight is a gift when it is inclusive. When your team understands the plan and more so, their place in it, they feel like they belong. They will subsequently respond as if the team and the work is theirs. They will curate and care for it. This is a gift that will benefit the giver as much as the receiver. 

Your role, however, is not to lead by committee, allowing each person to do as they please. Imagine the chaos that would ensue building a lighthouse on the edge of a wreck-strewn beach and everyone, with a different idea of the final product, all jostling for material to begin building what they can. This would pandemonium. No, your job is to roll out the plan, give each person a specific and coordinated job and lastly to share your expectations. 

Too often leaders miss that final point. We have a list of goals for the team, but we fail to share our expectations on an individual level of what each person needs to accomplish to be successful. And more than this, how that work is to be done. 

Clarity is the real gift here. When you can boldly share the plan and your expectations it’s as if you are flicking on the lights for a team that’s muddling around in the dark. It might feel uncomfortable to you to explicitly tell your people your expectations but it will give them a sense of surety, confidence and safety. I have heard from teams over and over again that the one thing they appreciate about their leader is that they know “exactly where they stand and what is expected of them”. 

Make it your intention to bring the illumination that comes with clarity to your team. Huddle around the plan to be sure everyone knows what’s being built, give each person a clear role and discuss your expectations of what and how the work needs to be done, all the while, being open to input and shared wisdom. 

Your team will thank you. 

Think about it. 

To learn more about the four gifts of leadership be sure to get your copy of Superpower: Release the Potential in your Team available on Amazon and all online book retailers