The Leadership
Experiment
"A true leader eliminates the
necessity for leadership”
Back in college, one of my professors
said, “A true leader eliminates the
necessity for leadership”. It sounded
like a paradox to me then; someone
working to make their role redundant.
Now I know he was talking about
empowering one’s team and giving
them the power to make decisions and
letting them take accountability.
How do you command an army?
Controlling every man, like you do in
Age of Empires, will result in you losing
every battle. Much like that, you cannot
poke your nose into everything that
your team members do. You must give
them autonomy. They might end up
making a few mistakes, but that’s okay.
Your ultimate goal is to get them to a
point where they do not need you to
give them instructions every day. You
must trust them, and their ability to
learn from mistakes. This will help you
focus on the bigger picture - review and
change processes to improve the
efficiency of your team.
team of 16, managing around 50
projects. But to probe into all these
projects is time consuming and a sad
use of my team’s intelligence. Instead, I
give them targets - put it up on a white
board for the whole team to see - and
let them drive. I remain in the backseat,
there to help them when required.
People
follow
people,
not
organizations. My team works for the
company, but they follow my
commands. As long I have their trust
and respect, they will march through
hell for me. So, it is imperative that
they trust me and respect me.
I put up everything from the number of
projects to the number of leaves (and
work from homes) that we've taken on
a Google Sheet. This way, my team
knows that everyone is equal and there
is no favoritism. I also discuss random
things with my team; we talk about the
Ghost Army, the method of Loci, and
Game of Thrones.
Now I don’t have an army. I have a
The Leadership Experience