On Teams and Leaders – ElPropósito4 min de lectura

How can you tell you’re working in the best possible environment?

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

A workplace whose culture runs on purpose and values keeps creating value at a steady pace. Its people do well, and it brings real courage to every challenge, whether the challenge shows up uninvited, gets taken on by choice or gets turned down. What makes that kind of environment possible? Here I share some experiences and reflections from the places I work in now and have worked in before, from my relationships with bosses and leaders, and above all from the leaders I’ve had the privilege to coach.

The leaders I’ve worked with are fully transparent with the people around them. Surprising as it may sound, their credibility comes from vulnerability: they own what they know and, even more, what they don’t. Without hesitation they turn the answer into a question, something like: "I have no idea what you’re asking. I’d like to know too. What do you think could get us to the answer?"

An organization that brings out people’s best work is built more around networks and less around hierarchy. Inside those networks, leaders (or a rotating leadership) get in the habit of sharing everything they know. They give more than they take, trusting that sharing is what cracks the hardest problems.

When everyone in the network shares the same values, and their life purposes show up in how they work, generate ideas and take on challenges, egos go quiet. People collaborate in a state of flow where what matters is the team, each person on it and the results.

Flip the priorities, results first and people last, and the climate changes completely. Results tend to be good, never exceptional, and they don’t last, largely because of their emotional cost. In those places power and hoarded information outrank trust, genuine relationships are rare, and shared spaces fill with tension and a false sense of wellbeing that comes from hitting the numbers. Hanging over those numbers is a permanent dissatisfaction, because "it could always have been done better".

Resilient organizations are the ones where people will go the extra mile at any moment, precisely because the organization never made results its center. Its center has always been its people, trusting that results follow from having the right team in the right place, where everyone keeps an eye on how everyone else is doing and collaboration is simply how things work.

How well does your Life Purpose fit the team you’re on today, and the organization you belong to? How much do your direct leader’s humility and simplicity inspire you? Has your leader ever told you: "I don’t know the answer to your question. It’s an excellent question. Shall we look for it together? I’d like to know too"?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: Notability. An app I just found and want to pass along. It’s remarkably good for taking notes, marking up documents, mapping concepts and capturing every idea that comes with them.
• What I’ve been Listening to: Positive Discipline, raising children with kindness and firmness. A fascinating interview. A few ideas stayed with me: we learn by doing; positive discipline rests on two ingredients, trust and affection, which are the heart of raising children; and we support kids best through affection and trust. Where do we find the encouragement to learn? This video is worth your time.
• What I’ve been Reading: The Startup Community Way. An excellent book I recommend to anyone in the startup world. Entrepreneurs, key players, mentors, coaches and banks each play a specific role in society, and entrepreneurship asks for some extra qualities on top of that. Someone gave me a great tip with this book, so I’m passing it on.
• What I’ve been Learning: A Field Guide to a Happy Life. A handbook for the demands of the 21st century by a contemporary philosopher I deeply admire. It updates Stoicism into a practical guide, and it’s helping me go deeper into tools that carried me through the hardest moments of my life, including the death of my second son.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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