A Two-Way Street – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

What the leader owns, and what the team owns

Photo by Wynand van Poortvliet on Unsplash

My last few posts covered a leader’s big responsibilities, especially the ones that need far more attention in a crisis. But every leader is surrounded by a team to guide with their vision and, above all, inspire to be at its best. There’s one core responsibility on the team’s side worth looking at now. Read on to see what it is.

Every team has roles and responsibilities, and one of them is to keep moving toward the goals it was formed for. Before setting out, a team should agree on at least three things: its Team Purpose (its reason for being), its Ground Rules and, above all, the values that will keep making it better as long as its members live them.

With those three foundations in place (purpose, rules and values), the door opens to the psychological safety every team should feel day to day (see the VELA at the end for a webinar on it). The quality of interaction depends on how much trust, freedom and safety each person feels to share their views and speak openly in an atmosphere of deep respect.

It still looks like making all of that happen is the leader’s job. Yet every team member should know the value of what they bring and own their growth as a person. Their potential comes to life as far as they feel free to take part openly, and that means they also have to build spaces of trust by setting the example.

What makes these two-way responsibilities visible is our own need for more wellbeing, peace and calm. Even in the extreme case of a boss who isn’t a leader and has opened no room for trust, team members can find ways to put their collective intelligence to work on results that, sooner or later, will speak for themselves.

What are your roles and responsibilities as a team leader? And as a team member?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: The power of coaching to drive team innovation. A wonderful SmartWebinar from the series I help organize with fellow alumni of my university. Our guest this time was Professor Patricia Cauqui, ICF Master Certified Coach, who trained me as a coach. It’s my top pick for understanding psychological safety, the concept I mention in the post, which also shows up in a Google study I’ve linked.
• What I’ve been Listening to: How to block thoughts. From the great Mario Alonso Puig. With so much uncertainty about when lockdowns will end and how we’ll handle the new normal, understanding the benefits of meditation in depth is still essential. I keep seeing this habit prove to be a key to leadership in every sense.
• What I’ve been Reading: The Elements of Investing. A powerful book for understanding how an investment portfolio is built and how different investment strategies work. Alongside it I’m rereading The Intelligent Investor, the famous book so widely recommended, Warren Buffett included.
• What I’ve been Learning: The 4 Disciplines of Execution. I bought this book in 2014 and reread it in 2018, and now I’m deep into a powerful project that’s teaching me much more about this wonderful methodology, which fits my business model. A fun fact I’d missed all along: Clayton Christensen wrote the foreword.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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