Three Hard Lessons for New Team Leaders
Introduction
I have spent time leading teams in various contexts for most of my life and I have learned that there are some principles that cross all contextual lines. Regardless if you are leading in sports, business, government, church, or wherever, YOU ARE LEADING PEOPLE and leading people is HARD. All leaders, especially those stepping up for the first time, need a reminder of the basics from time to time. Below are three lessons that I had to learn the hard way:
You can’t afford to be the smartest person in the room.
There is a great temptation to act like you, as the leader, have all the answers. The truth is, you don’t know everything. The members of your team all come with different experiences and perspectives. Sometimes they will see a potential solution that you can’t see. Learn to hear them out and be intentional about giving them room to provide input. This also helps to build team identity and creates ownership of the work within the team. As I heard a leader say once, “If I am the smartest person in the room, I am in the wrong room.”
Invest resources into people, not things.
Where a person spends their resources (time, money, etc.) says a lot about what is important to them. All too often, new leaders think that they need to invest the organizations money into the newest equipment, best facilities, or snazziest marketing. The reality is that all of those things are only valuable if you have the people to make it work. You can have the best and most expensive machines but without good people to use it, nothing happens. You can purchase the newest cutting-edge catching curriculum but without skilled instructors to teach it, no one learns anything. Invest your resources into hiring, developing, and retaining good (great) people and you will be able to do more with less.
Don’t limit your team to your own capacity and scope.
This one goes hand in hand with the first lesson. It is very difficult to learn how to release and empower the team members you lead to accomplish the teams goals. Many new leaders make the mistake of trying to control every aspect of the goal and end up doing most of the thinking and decision making themselves. The experienced leader recognizes that they don’t have the time or energy to make every decision and empowers their team members to lead out and work through challenges for themselves by providing “big picture” guidance and coaching. If the leader has to do everything, what do they need the team for?
