What Your Team Is Waiting For

A weekly breather for busy leaders in demanding times: bringing clarity & capability from my week as an exec coach, founder and C-suite advisor.

This week's theme: Space isn't the same as clarity

Picture it. You're a few months into a big job. The business isn’t growing fast enough, the work is landing in the wrong places, and something has to change.

You know what it is and could decide it yourself. Instead, you tell your leadership team that you want them to own it because you've always believed good leaders collaborate.

It goes well at first. Everyone agrees something needs to change.

Then it begins to shift a little. People argue why their part of the business is the exception.

Before long, they've split into sides, and the conversations keep going around in circles.

Meanwhile the work keeps landing in the wrong places, and the people who were already stretched pick up more of it.

Eventually someone asks you what you actually want.

You realise they've been waiting for your guidance since the beginning. Not because they can't think for themselves, but because you didn't make what you were looking for clear.

Space only works when people know what's expected of them. Collaboration is earned, and a team that hasn't yet shown it can make that kind of call together needs you to set direction and give clarity first.

Two quotes from wiser people than me, picked for you this week.

For the person who's been getting half of your focus.

For when the version of you at work has started to feel a bit tiring.

Something each week from my leadership and coaching bag of tricks

For when your head is so full of open loops that even the simple things feel impossible.

1. Empty it. Grab a pen and paper and set a timer for ten minutes. Write down everything in your head, work and personal. No filtering, no organising, no judging. Don't stop until the timer goes.

2. Sort it. Go down the list and put every line in one of four piles: do, defer, delegate or delete. If you're not sure which, ask three questions. Does it matter? Does it need me? Does it need me this week? A no to the first means delete, to the second delegate, and to the third defer. Whatever's left is yours to do.

Once it's out of your head and in black and white, the big things shrink down, and you can see a much clearer path through it all.

One link that's seriously worth your time

Maria Popova, who's spent twenty years writing The Marginalian, on what poetry, astronomy, love and wonder can teach us about being alive.

Podcast, about an hour

This week, before you give someone space, check you've given them clarity first.

Hit reply and let me know. I read every single email and would love to hear from you.

Sending good vibes,
Has

Beyond the newsletter, two ways I work with leaders: Mavericks Unlimited, executive coaching and strategy for CEOs, founders and their leadership teams, and tyllr, our development platform that helps managers thrive.