Anyone can learn to be a better leader

When you are a single employee, your ability to use your technical expertise to achieve results is of paramount importance. However, once you've risen to a leadership role, the toolkit you have relied on for individual results can rarely be successful by others. Beware of falling into the logical trap, "if I can do this job well, I should be able to lead a team of people who do this job". It would be if leading others was like running a more powerful version of the same machinery that you were running before. But it is not; Machines don't work better or worse depending on what they think of you and how you feel, while humans do.

Filling a management position is not synonymous with leadership. To lead, you need to be able to connect, motivate, and instill a sense of ownership towards shared goals. To improve your ability to lead others you need to be able to see how you think and act, and how your behavior affects others. Good leadership requires continuous personal development. But people in management positions often avoid the long and challenging work of deepening self-insight in order to hunt for "tools" of management - preferably the "quick and easy" way, such as behavioral tendencies or, for example, workshops on implicit prejudices that serve as a plaster be used against systemic discrimination, or stack ranking systems that purport to identify the best talent by requiring managers to compare employees with one another. Rather than being a shortcut to effective leadership, this mechanistic approach is more often a dead end that distracts managers' attention from the connection between their own behavior and the results of employees.

As an example, I worked with an organization that had distracted employees and frustrated managers who wanted to instill more engagement and accountability in their teams. A few years earlier, the company had revised its performance management system. At the heart of the new solution was a system that asked managers to enter performance targets and ratings for their direct reports, schedule performance appraisal meetings, and complete the annual performance appraisal process within a specified timeframe. When managers completed the performance reviews on time and the ratings they submitted matched the target distribution, sponsors claimed that the system had increased the precision and accountability of performance management. What the system's dashboard failed to show - and failed to appreciate its sponsors - was that the implementation had been on a downward spiral in employee morale and engagement. Employees reported that their superiors did not appreciate their worth and were disinterested in their development. Many looked elsewhere for new opportunities. For their part, managers felt that the organization made performance management cumbersome. They were also blind to their own contribution to a workplace climate that undermined engagement and accountability.

Tools can be useful tools for good leadership. But none of them can replace fearless introspection, feedback seeking, and dedicated behavior change efforts for greater effectiveness and greater positive impact on others. In my work with the above-mentioned organization, I have helped executives to learn that their greatest lever to improve the commitment and accountability of their employees is not to pursue their goal achievement, but to create and maintain a motivating interpersonal environment. Although we used tools like frameworks and checklists, their function was to help executives see the quality of their own work experience and that of their employees and steer them in a more collaborative direction. they should not be used as a substitute for this important work. Managers learned to recognize how their assumptions shaped their behavior and learned to consciously adopt the mindsets and behaviors that led to better leadership results.

Rather than hoping in vain for some magical tool to help you manage your team, think about developing practices to improve your leadership skills.