I have worked with many different kinds of teams—some that I lead myself and others that I observed from a distance. In my experience working with different groups of people, I realized that what makes a team stand out isn’t the knowledge, expertise or skills of its people. Those things were important, but they didn’t decide which teams outperformed and which teams barely met my expectations.  

All these teams had a good mix of people, clarity on their goals and the resources they needed to succeed. Yet, only a few groups consistently delivered while others struggled to keep up their commitments. 

Teams that did well did not always succeed—what mattered more was not their success, but how they handled failures. Their ability to rise above the challenges came from their ability to take risks. Their sense of freedom enabled them to experiment and find unique solutions. They were quick to adapt new tools and processes—curious to learn new technologies and integrate them into their workflows. They did not rely on one individual to carry the team’s load, it was their collective effort that made them shine. 

Great teams consist of individuals who have learned to trust each other. Over time, they have discovered each other’s strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to play as a coordinated whole.
— Amy Edmondson

While there are many small qualities that make a high-performing team, these 5 fall into a common pattern that always repeats:  

Utilizing collective intelligence of the group as opposed to siloed thinking

Teams that do not come together to brainstorm on ideas miss out on diverse thinking and differences of opinion. When people in the group don’t seek feedback on their ideas or don’t invite critical review of their logic, they make decisions based on their own knowledge and beliefs. They fail to hear perspectives that can help them see the flaws in their thinking—assumptions that may not be true, challenges they did not anticipate, risks they might have ignored or a better way to achieve their goals.

Relying on individual knowledge as opposed to collective wisdom leads to poor choices and bad decisions—more work is required to fix mistakes that could have been avoided, more time is consumed in revisiting and rehashing old decisions and more energy is spent in trying to make a sub-optimal solution work. 

Each person thinks differently and it’s this difference that adds value to the conversation. Every disagreement, every conflict, every question raised is an opportunity to align, resolve and converge on a common solution towards an approach that’s vetted and well thought out. A group of people can provide insights and expertise that no one individual can bring. 

To become a team member who contributes towards collective intelligence, ask:

1. How often do I involve others in my decision?
2. What kind of feedback do I seek—validating my thoughts or contradicting them?
3. Do I trust my team to give me the inputs I need?
4. What value do I see in getting diverse opinions? 

Teams that harness the power of collective intelligence are more innovative, better aligned and feel more supported—having others they can count on gives them the confidence to take the hard path and avoid easy choices. 

In a complex world, isolated experts are a liability. What you need are networks of teams sharing real-time context and intelligence.
— Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams

Teams excel when they count on each other to guide, support and learn. Their collective value exponentially exceeds what an individual member can achieve on their own.

Prioritizing team goals over individual needs

When each individual in the team cares only about themselves—their aspirations, growth, promotion and success—they put their own goals above everyone else. They lean towards tasks that will make them look good and help them get promoted. They refuse to do the grunt work even if that’s what their team needs. They don’t collaborate and co-operate to help their team succeed. Their support is conditional—subject to what they’ll gain from the transaction instead of doing it to help others without expecting anything in return. 

Looking for opportunities to build new skills, taking on higher level roles and responsibilities or trying to stand out isn’t wrong. The problem occurs when individual aspirations start coloring their choices and impacting team goals. When everyone is thinking only for themselves, there is less alignment, more misunderstandings and confusion. Finger pointing and blame games start within team members as they try to protect themselves instead of taking responsibility. 

When team members work with each other instead of working against each other, they achieve more as a group. They share knowledge, openly express their concerns, work out solutions to the obstacles in their path and align on a common direction forward. The shared camaraderie in facing challenges together also builds a strong bond which makes work feel more fun and less like a slog. It energizes the team to push themselves and face the challenges with more conviction and resilience. 

To become a team member who puts team goals over individual needs, ask:

1. Do I understand my team goals?
2. How do my current goals fit into my team’s priorities?
3. How can I help my team in achieving success?
4. What can I learn from them?

When people in the team don’t separate their success from their team’s success, they achieve better results—being aligned on a common mission removes the friction that comes when everyone is rowing in a different direction. 

Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.
— Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Teams collapse when every member puts their own interests above team goals. Working together strengthens the team to push for bigger and better goals.  

Feeling empowered to act independently without approval every step of the way

Teams that aren’t allowed to make their own decisions wait for approvals and permissions every step of the way. They need a higher level authority to review every minor detail, every small decision, every action they plan to take. They don’t feel confident about their decision. They worry about making a mistake. Being always dependent on someone else to make the final decision prevents them from taking accountability—they don’t feel responsible for how things turn out. 

Forced dependency tremendously slows down the team. They are often blocked, waiting for someone up the hierarchy to validate. Things that could be achieved in a few hours take days and weeks. Not feeling empowered also demotivates the team—if they can’t be trusted with small decisions, they might never get the opportunity to take on bigger roles. Always having someone to correct them also prevents them from making mistakes and learning from the process—a key element to progress and grow at work. 

Teams that understand which decisions they can make on their own and which require additional input excel as they can move fast on a large part of their work while slowing down for only a small fraction of it. Being trusted to lead decisions also creates the confidence and motivation to exceed expectations—when someone owns a decision, they’re more likely to stretch out and do everything possible to succeed. It creates a sense of accountability that’s otherwise missing. 

To become a team member who can act independently, ask:

1. What prevents you from making your own decisions?
2. What’s the worst that can happen if your decision does not turn out the way you anticipated? What issues can you predict? What steps can you take to mitigate those risks? What action can you take if it still fails?
3. What have you done to earn the trust to think and act independently?
4. What are the gaps preventing you from being given this opportunity?

High-performing teams are built by individuals who realize that waiting for permission is a guaranteed way to fail. They demand trust, ownership and support to make their own decisions. 

If you want people to think, give them intent, not instructions. Instructions breed compliance and dependence; intent breeds initiative and ownership.
— L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!

Teams that can think and act on their feet will outperform those who are always waiting to make a perfect decision. Don’t surrender your agency. Stop being dependent.

Taking carefully evaluated risks without always playing it safe 

When people in the team worry too much about failures and mistakes, they stop taking risks and start playing it safe. They do the work as it has always been done instead of identifying better ways. They give up on opportunities that require taking risks and sign up for the ones that feel safe. They hide mistakes instead of turning them into learning lessons. They don’t easily bounce back from failures as they treat even minor setbacks as major disasters. 

Not taking risks keeps them locked in a cycle of mediocrity—working hard without being impactful. People in the team stop growing as they don’t push themselves beyond their comfort zone. They don’t build new skills. They don’t learn to navigate the uncharted territory. They don’t develop the thinking that’s required to tackle challenges. It eventually leads to frustration and a lack of motivation from being stuck in the same place for too long.

Instead of basing decisions on what feels safe, carefully evaluated risks enable team members to introduce better processes, practices and solutions. Embracing unknowns and uncertainty make work feel more exciting and enjoyable. Whether it’s choosing a risky strategy, taking bold steps or running small experiments, taking an unconventional path requires thinking above and beyond. It requires asking questions, challenging the status quo and refusing to take the easy path.

To become a team member who isn’t afraid of taking risks, ask:

1. Am I leaning towards a safe choice only because the other option feels risky?
2. Do I avoid going down the path with unknowns and uncertainties?
3. What can I learn by pushing myself beyond my comfort zone? 
4. How can I stack the odds in my favor?
5. What’s within my control? 
6. How can I take more risks? 

Teams that make failure and feedback as part of their strategy invest in taking risks—they use a proper decision criteria to evaluate which risks are worth their time and attention.

If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risks. And if you’re not taking enough risks, you’re not learning.
— John C. Maxwell, Failing Forward

Great teams aren’t risk averse. They treat obstacles in their path as a learning opportunity instead of a thing to avoid. They build the mental muscle to take risks with courage, experience and practice. 

Leveraging AI to increase productivity and performance instead of resisting it

When team members do not invest in identifying how to apply artificial intelligence to their daily work, they take longer to complete tasks—something that could be done in a few minutes can take hours and even days. They might also make mistakes that could be easily flagged by an AI tool. They may miss critical insights or fail to see the flaw in their own thinking—something that ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Claude can easily point out when leveraged as a thinking partner. Their time and energy that can be better put to use in dealing with demanding and challenging tasks gets wasted by doing repetitive work manually instead of building workflows and delegating it to the AI agents. 

Teams that don’t leverage AI can’t match the quality and pace of work of teams that make it a part of everything they do. Doing grunt work themselves prevents them from taking on higher level responsibilities. The number of people in the team itself becomes a limiting factor when AI is not treated as another teammate who can share your workload and help you become more productive and performant. 

AI is really good at writing code, identifying bugs, summarizing content, doing analysis, generating insights, reviewing your approach and automating repetitive work. It can do all this without ever getting tired or complaining. It can free up your time to focus on things that only you can do—clarifying requirements, seeking alignment, validating and reviewing AI output and strategizing how to do more in less time. 

To become a team member who uses AI to their advantage, ask:

1. How can I partner with AI?
2. What tools are available to me?
3. What do I repeatedly do that can be accomplished using an AI agent? 
4. Which parts of my work should I continue doing myself and which parts should I delegate to AI?

When team members treat AI as their partner, they stop wasting their time and energy on tasks that are beneath their potential. 

Within five years, the ability to work effectively with AI will be a standard expectation in most professional roles. Not because AI will replace human workers, but because AI-assisted workers will consistently outperform those who can’t harness these tools effectively.
― Enamul Haque, A Beginner’s Guide to Prompt Writing

AI will not replace human intelligence. It will enhance it. Teams that leverage AI will easily outpace those that resist it.   

Summary

1. Teams that skip the brainstorm and skip the feedback loop make decisions on incomplete knowledge. They miss the assumptions, risks and better paths that only come from other people’s eyes on the problem. Teams that invite disagreement instead of avoiding it end up more innovative, better aligned and more confident taking the harder path.
2. When everyone optimizes for how they look instead of what the team needs, you get finger-pointing and misalignment instead of progress. When people stop separating their own success from the team’s success, the friction disappears and the whole group moves in one direction.
3. Teams stuck waiting on permission for every small decision move slower, feel less accountable and never build the muscle to make bigger calls. Teams that know which decisions are theirs to own move fast on most of their work and only slow down where it actually matters.
4. Playing it safe out of fear of failure keeps a team stuck in mediocrity—no growth, no new skills, no capacity for the unknown. Teams that treat risk and failure as strategy, not accident, are the ones that find better processes and better outcomes.
5. Teams that don’t build AI into their daily work waste time on what could be done in minutes and miss the flaws AI could’ve flagged for free. Teams that treat AI like a teammate free themselves up for the work only a human can do and outpace everyone still doing it the old way.

Recommended Reading

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team By Patrick Lencioni

The Culture Code By Daniel Coyle

The post Why Some Teams Excel While Others Collapse appeared first on TechTello.

In the previous article, I wrote about the five leadership styles that can turn your strengths into blind spots. Here are the next five.

Firefighter Leader 

Your strong sense of urgency to respond to problems—whether it’s a missed deadline, unhappy customer, production issue or a major execution roadblock—makes you solve them quickly and prevent major disasters. You thrive on solving pressing problems and jumping into crises. Your ability to remain composed during difficult situations, identify solutions to problems that block progress and protect business from immediate risks makes you as the person everyone turns to when things go wrong. 

You’re admired for your ability to handle pressure and resolve critical issues faster than anyone else in the company. 

However, being a “Firefighter leader,” when crisis management becomes your default way of leading rather than the exception, you become so busy in solving today’s problems that you fail to prevent tomorrow’s issues. Problems keep repeating as the team moves to the next emergency before addressing the root cause. Priorities are constantly shifted to handle the latest urgency. Long-term initiatives are delayed as they are constantly interrupted by the latest fire. People learn to be reactive, rather than being proactive. They stop paying attention to the important priorities as immediate demands keep them occupied.

Being trapped in a cycle of urgency leaves little time for planning or improvement. When you don’t learn to escape the reactive mode, strategic work suffers.  

Here are the signs you may be leading as a firefighter leader:

1. You feel valuable when solving crises.
2. Most of your day is spent responding to urgent issues.
3. Important priorities are pushed aside constantly to address the latest problem. 
4. You measure success by how quickly issues are solved, not how rarely they occur.
5. You barely have time for strategic thinking.

Solving the root cause of problems is always more urgent than solving any problem which it produced. Addressing the root cause of problems never costs time; it always gives time.
― Luca Dellanna, 100 Truths You Will Learn Too Late

Pride yourself on preventing problems, not extinguishing fires. Address the root cause. Reward preparation, not the ability to handle crises. 

Stabilizer Leader

When your leadership strength is to create structure around chaos, you become really good at building dependable systems and processes, improving execution and reducing unnecessary risks. You’re able to reduce surprises, establish order and restore confidence and stability. Predictability, reliability and consistency makes business operate with a greater discipline. Execution speeds up as work becomes more organized with clear expectations, defined roles and responsibilities, better planning, less uncertainty and operational excellence.  

Employees feel less overwhelmed by constant change, customers experience greater reliability and trust increases as teams become more aligned around common processes and know what to expect.

However, when consistency and stability takes priority over growth and opportunities, you start resisting change. Bold ideas are shot down because they appear too risky. Every new initiative requires extensive documentation, multiple review cycles and a long chain of approvals. Maintaining the status quo takes priority over experiments and innovation. Instead of pursuing growth, people start playing safe. The desire to reduce risk can make the organization slow to adapt and reluctant to innovate.

Resisting change until every uncertainty has been addressed, becoming increasingly cautious in decision-making and not being able to separate healthy experimentation from unnecessary risk limits future growth. It prevents you from launching products and entering new markets much faster.

Here are the signs you may be leading as a stabilizer leader:

1. You look for risks before opportunities.
2. You stick to processes at the cost of agility.
3. New ideas are scrutinized more than existing practices. 
4. People rarely challenge the status quo.  
5. Competitors move faster than your organization.

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence—it is to act with yesterday’s logic.
— Peter F. Drucker

Stop treating change as a threat. Evolve and embrace tomorrow’s opportunities before the organization falls behind. Thoughtfully adapt instead of trying to preserve the status quo. 

Visionary Leader

You’re a strategist—someone who’s always thinking about the future, new ideas and big opportunities. You recognize emerging trends, question conventional thinking and lean towards ideas that may seem just beyond reach. You’re energized by change, innovation and creating a better tomorrow. You encourage people to think bigger and not be limited by today’s constraints. You convince them that a meaningful change is possible. You rally them around a compelling purpose. You inspire direction and transformation. You inspire growth and possibility. 

Your optimism is contagious. It makes the future feel exciting and within reach. 

But when you continue to play the role of a visionary leader and keep chasing the next big opportunity before giving life to the existing ones, projects compete for the same people and resources. Roadmaps change repeatedly. There’s a constant shift in direction. People who were enthusiastic before now feel exhausted because they can’t make out what truly matters and what are the organization’s top priorities. Constantly introducing new initiatives overwhelms teams and prevents existing priorities from gaining traction. When execution is not prioritized, even the best ideas lose value.

You need to translate strategic ambition into executional reality. You need to let important initiatives complete before launching new ones. You need to protect strategic focus by limiting active priorities.

Here are the signs you may be leading as a visionary leader:

1. You have laid down a solid strategy without execution plans.
2. New opportunities constantly interrupt ongoing work.
3. Success is measured by ideas rather than successful completions.
4. People feel overwhelmed by constant change.

No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility. Until then, there are only good intentions.
— Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

Don’t let new ideas outpace execution. Turn initiatives into reality. Measure success by outcomes, not an imaginative future. 

Expert Leader

You have the deepest knowledge, technical expertise and the experience to solve difficult problems. You’re consistently right and have the best answers. You have high standards. You establish best practices, solve problems others cannot and are trusted with high risk decisions because of your informed judgment. You raise the quality of thinking by asking tough questions that most people avoid. 

People listen when you speak because you have built competence over many years and are now highly respected. Your expertise is invaluable when an organization needs someone with deep knowledge and a reputation for excellence. 

However, continuing as an “Expert leader” limits others’ growth. You correct instead of coach. You give answers instead of asking questions. You review every important decision. You’re involved in every technical detail. Always having the best answers makes it difficult to step away because everything starts depending on your perspective. Team members struggle to make confident decisions without you because they believe they can’t succeed without your knowledge and expertise.  

Instead of being the person with all the answers, you need to develop independent thinking, build the confidence and judgment others need to succeed. 

Here are the signs you may be leading as an expert leader:

1. Discussions often end with your opinion carrying the most weight.
2. You feel indispensable because of your knowledge.
3. People constantly come to you for answers instead of making their own decisions.
4. Success depends heavily on your expertise. 

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
― Jack Welch, Winning

Stop measuring your success by being the smartest person in the room. Measure it by how capable your team becomes without your involvement. Delegate judgment, not just tasks. 

Protector Leader

You protect your people from brutal work environments where others lack respect for their time and productivity. You constantly filter information before it reaches the team. You shield them from executive pressure. You protect them from organizational politics. You act as a buffer for everything. 

Protecting your team from getting overwhelmed by requests, blocking information that doesn’t concern them and keeping them away from anything that might distract them gives them an opportunity to  focus for long durations without interruptions, which leads to increased productivity and high quality work. 

However, good intent and healthy protection can turn into toxic behavior when you don’t draw the line and go overboard with it. You block people from getting the necessary exposure. Your team acquires technical excellence, but fails to learn other valuable skills like effective communication, conflict resolution or delegation. You create strict team boundaries with a “my team” vs “your team” attitude by treating your own team’s goals as primary and everything else secondary. This breaks down collaboration necessary to achieve common goals. Instead of creating a resilient team, you build a dependent one. 

Instead of trying to over-protect your team from unnecessary distractions and interruptions, coach them to manage their own time well. Explain the benefits of healthy collaboration and show what it looks like. Empower them to say no to requests that do not align with their goals.  Encourage them to go beyond team boundaries to acquire knowledge about other teams and functions. Tell them to make decisions aligned with the larger interest of the organization and not just their teams.

Here are the signs you may be leading as a protector leader:

1. You absorb pressure instead of letting your team learn from it.
2. You negotiate deadlines and expectations without involving them.
3. You worry that exposing people to failure, criticism or conflict will damage morale.
4. Team members approach you whenever they face resistance instead of resolving it themselves.  

Employees don’t benefit from leaders who take away the suffering. They need leaders who come alongside them to understand the struggle and support dignity, capability, and purpose.
― Nate Regier, Compassionate Accountability

Your good intentions to act as a gatekeeper only hurts your team. Stop shielding and start empowering to help them move forward. 

Summary

1. You solve problems faster than anyone. But when firefighting becomes your default, root causes never get addressed. Problems keep repeating. Stop rewarding speed. Reward prevention.
2. You bring order to chaos. But when stability becomes the goal, change becomes the enemy. Bold ideas get buried in approvals. Stop protecting the status quo. Start protecting the future.
3. You see what’s next before anyone else. But when new ideas keep arriving before old ones finish, execution suffers and people burn out chasing your next pivot. Stop measuring success by ideas. Measure it by outcomes.
4. You have the answers. But when you’re always the answer, no one else learns to think. Your team depends on you instead of growing past you. Stop being indispensable. Start making yourself unnecessary.
5. You shield your team from noise and politics. But over-protection breeds dependence, not resilience. Your people get good at the work and bad at everything around it. Stop shielding. Start empowering.

Recommended Reading

Leadership and Self-Deception By The Arbinger Institute

The Leadership Challenge By James M. Kouzes

The post When Leadership Strengths Become Leadership Blind Spots appeared first on TechTello.

Your leadership style may no longer fit the organization and the hardest part is seeing it. The startup you built with your hands-on, move-fast style may start to suffocate as it grows—it needs structure and delegation, but you refuse to give up control. Your ability to solve crises and bring order to chaos can become a bottleneck once stability returns and the organization is ready to take risks. Your exceptional thinking skills that inspired and launched many new initiatives may fail as you love kicking-off projects, but lose interest during the execution stage. Your strength to build strong relationships can come at the cost of avoiding difficult conversations—when preserving harmony takes priority over speaking the truth.

You can be highly effective in one stage of the organization and become a liability at a different stage. What made you excellent and effective once can now become the very thing that limits you. 

You have not become incompetent. You simply refuse to adapt to the changing context. You fail to see that your strengths and assets have now turned into a weakness. You ignore the possibility that what you bring to the role may need a fundamental shift. 

Leadership at scale—and leadership as you scale—means you’re constantly adapting and evolving. You can’t follow a single style or approach. You’re always leading through transitions. Your company is always changing around you. And this means you’re naturally going to have a very resilient kind of leadership, producing a resilient team and company.
― Reid Hoffman, Masters of Scale

Leadership isn’t about finding the perfect style. It’s about recognizing the strengths that once made you successful are no longer the strengths your organization needs now. It’s about constantly adapting and evolving instead of being fixated on a certain style. 

Here are the leadership styles that stop fitting different stages of organizational growth:

Hero Leader

In a startup mode, build fast, break fast mentality prevails. Speed and agility matters more than process and perfection. After working in this mode for many years, you may learn to thrive in uncertainty—solving problems personally, making quick decisions and carrying the team through difficult times. You were always available, dependable, resourceful and someone who worked the longest hours and carried the biggest load. 

In the early stages of the organization, these qualities were invaluable. They inspired confidence, created momentum and helped the team navigate ambiguity. 

However as the organization grows, instead of establishing processes, building systems and developing people, you may continue to operate in the “Hero mode.”

Believing that you’re the only person capable of helping or that everything depends on you makes you a rescuer of problems rather than a builder of capability. This slows down growth as it becomes limited by one person’s capacity. Your willingness to do everything prevents others from stepping up and taking ownership. It holds them back. 

Here are the signs you may be leading as a hero:

1. You’re copied on every email.
2. Team members wait for your review and approval on everything.
3. You frequently step in to solve problems.
4. You prefer doing things yourself than delegating them.
5. You feel guilty taking time off with the worry that things may fall apart.

Ultimately, the most important person to have control over is yourself—for it is that self-control that will allow you to ‘give control, create leaders.’ I believe that rejecting the impulse to take control and attract followers will be your greatest challenge and, in time, your most powerful and enduring success.
— L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!

As the organization grows, evolve your leadership style from a hero to an enabler. Instead of trying to save the day, build a team that no longer needs saving.

Commander Leader

When working with new or inexperienced teams, high risk projects or during times of uncertainty and emergencies, providing clear instructions, telling people exactly what to do, reviewing every detail, checking every deliverable and monitoring the progress closely may get things moving and solve problems within the specific time constraints. 

It provides clarity, direction and quick decision-making. It prevents problems from turning worse due to lack of guidance and support. 

However, continuing in the “Commander mode” as teams mature or when there’s no rush, kills ownership and initiative. What once created alignment starts limiting creativity and independent thinking. Once team members become experienced, they don’t need hand-holding, continuous monitoring or constant direction. They need autonomy, trust and support. They need someone who can inspire confidence and believe in their ability to figure things out on their own. 

Here are the signs you may be leading as a commander:

1. You micromanage every small detail.
2. You dictate how things must be done. 
3. You’re overly cautious and hyper vigilant.
4. You don’t give space to your team to think and learn. 

Micromanagement fails because no one person can control multiple people executing a vast number of actions in a dynamic environment, where changes in the situation occur rapidly and with unpredictability. It also inhibits the growth of subordinates: when people become accustomed to being told what to do, they begin to await direction. Initiative fades and eventually dies. Creativity and bold thought and action soon die as well. The team becomes a bunch of simple and thoughtless automatons, following orders without understanding, moving forward only when told to do so. A team like that will never achieve greatness.
― Jocko Willink, The Dichotomy of Leadership

As your team matures, shift in your leadership style from exerting control to providing context. Promote ownership and empowerment, not dependency. 

Builder Leader

Building products and systems from scratch, spotting opportunities, leading complex decisions and establishing a strong culture and a sense of purpose can make you highly valued and respected as a leader. You understand the products, people and customers better than anyone else. You’re deeply connected to the organizational challenges and its realities. 

Your energy, enthusiasm, a strong sense of conviction and willingness to do whatever the situation demands enabled you to build the organization from the ground up and that’s no small feat. 

As the organization grows, complexity increases as more teams, more products and more customers now need your attention. However, continuing to work in the “Builder mode” and operate as if the organization is still in its early days prevents you from realizing that you can’t scale without process and structure. You can no longer rely only on your instinct, decisions will now need data. Knowledge can no longer stay inside people’s heads, it needs to be documented and made available to everyone. You can’t be the one with all the information who builds everything personally, you now need to delegate responsibilities, decision-making and execution.  

Here are the signs you may be leading as a builder:

1. You’re involved in operational details rather than strategic priorities.
2. You try to establish a deep understanding of the systems instead of operating with a 10,000 feet view.
3. You don’t invest in establishing processes, documenting knowledge or creating structure so others can operate without your presence. 
4. You believe that no one understands the organization as well as you do.

Letting go and trusting others to do things well is one of the more challenging aspects of being a leader of a growing organization.
― Verne Harnish, Scaling Up

As the organization expands, shift your leadership style from intuition to processes and systems. Continue to build momentum and strong culture without personal involvement.  

Consensus seeker Leader

Collaborating with people from different teams and functions is one of the hardest jobs and you may be really good at it. You invite different perspectives, encourage others to speak up and create a safe environment to ensure everyone feels heard before any major decisions are made. Your ability to bring people together, have them resolve differences of opinion and agree on a common approach builds trust and alignment. It creates a buy-in which is otherwise hard to get. 

Your leadership style prevents siloed execution, reduces unnecessary conflict and makes people feel valued and respected.  

But, getting everyone to agree before moving forward isn’t always practical and desirable. Too much collaboration can slow down execution and create decision paralysis. When every decision requires universal agreement, speed, accountability and execution suffer. Too many meetings are conducted before important decisions are made which causes meeting fatigue. Plans are discussed, but never put into action because someone or the other is dissatisfied. Revisiting decisions that were already made becomes a norm leading to loss of opportunities and momentum. 

Instead of always seeking consensus, shorten decision cycles for lower risk issues. Seek inputs, but make the final call and have others disagree and commit—stop waiting for everyone’s approval. 

Here are the signs you may be leading as a consensus seeker:

1. You postpone decisions because not everyone agrees.
2. You’re reluctant to make unpopular decisions.
3. More time is spent in meetings and less in execution.
4. Opportunities are missed because you refuse to take the final call. 
5. You feel increased emotional burden and decision fatigue from prolonged discussions. 

Use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this, but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander

When working for a growing organization, seek input, not permission. Stop prioritizing harmony when the organization needs speed. 

Coach Leader

When your leadership style involves growing people by asking questions, encouraging learning, developing skills, creating opportunities and building confidence, you invest in building strong relationships, creating engaged teams and a culture where people feel valued. Your goal is to develop future leaders by building long-term capability. Your coaching and support matters a lot when people face obstacles and challenges. 

People perform best when they’re supported, developed and encouraged. Protecting your team’s confidence and maintaining good relationships is a smart strategy to build a strong organization that can scale with the future demands. 

However, when developing people begin to overshadow delivering results, continuing in the “Coach mode” may unintentionally create a culture where accountability feels optional. You avoid difficult conversations with the worry it might discourage them. You don’t give direct feedback because it feels uncomfortable. You let high performers pick up slack as underperformance goes unaddressed. When accountability or decisive action is needed, endless coaching can delay progress. It can set up wrong expectations with the people that they’ll always be supported regardless of their performance.  

This doesn’t mean you should stop developing people. Growth requires balancing support with accountability. It requires providing encouragement with clear expectations, giving feedback early and holding people accountable instead of letting poor performance slip.  

Here are the signs you may be leading as a coach leader: 

1. You’re known for being highly approachable and supportive.
2. You celebrate effort more than results.
3. You explain away poor performance instead of confronting it.
4. You give repeated chances to underformers without meaningful improvement.
5. You try to address missed targets with additional coaching. 

Leaders must…become better communicators and enforcers of what they want done. If you are more interested in being liked and popular than holding people accountable for results, you have a serious leadership weakness. Your job is to get them better. Holding people accountable to high standards and results is nothing to apologize for. Failing to stretch them to their potential is. 
— Dave Anderson, No-Nonsense Leadership

Accountability is not the opposite of support. Lasting growth depends on both. Don’t leave expectations unclear and standards inconsistent. Recognize when coaching has reached its limits and decisive action is needed.

My next article will cover 5 more leadership styles that can turn your strengths into leadership blind spots.

Summary

1. As the hero leader, you were the one everyone counted on. That dependability built the organization. But your team now waits for you instead of figuring things out. You didn’t build a team, you built a dependency.
2. As the commander leader, you brought order when there was none. But your team has grown since then. They know what they’re doing. What once created clarity is now creating frustration and slowly turning capable people into ones who wait to be told.
3. As the builder leader, you built something from nothing and understood it better than anyone. But the organization has outgrown what one person can hold in their head. You’re still operating like it’s day one and that’s exactly what’s slowing everyone else down.
4. As the consensus seeker, you made people feel heard and built real alignment. But somewhere consensus became a requirement rather than a goal. You’ve confused harmony with progress and the organization is paying for it.
5. As the coach leader, you believed in your people before they believed in themselves. But support without accountability isn’t kindness, it’s avoidance.

Recommended Reading

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There By Marshall Goldsmith

Scaling Leadership By Robert J. Anderson

The post When Your Leadership Style No Longer Fits the Organization appeared first on TechTello.

Are you making too many decisions in a day? Are you the escalation point for everything? Do you constantly firefight, struggle to think strategically and instead of being influential and impactful, becoming a bottleneck in the team?

If everyday feels like a burden that keeps you stressed and awake, if it feels like you’re simply going through the motions or if you lack energy, enthusiasm or emotional connection to whatever you’re doing, you may have drifted from being challenged and stretched to becoming strained and unsustainable. 

Most leaders fail to notice this drift because it’s often subtle and invisible until you’re deep in it. You may mistake being stretched beyond what feels comfortable with dedication, resilience and commitment. You may shrug it off as a tough phase until it becomes permanent. You may keep pushing yourself thinking it will lead to growth until it starts costing you. 

Burned-out, stressed-out, and frazzled leaders foster organizations that experience high turnover, low employee engagement, steep healthcare costs, and dysfunctional teams that often work against one another. 
― Jim Dethmer, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

If you already know that something isn’t right but can’t give it a name, these signs might help you recognize when your leadership role has stopped being challenging and started becoming unsustainable:

You’re always on

There’s constant demand on your time as a leader—making decisions, shaping strategy, aligning stakeholders and ad hoc meetings that creep into an already overpacked calendar. What starts as a busy day soon turns into a busy week. No time to rest, take a break or go offline. As many things vie for your attention, working round the clock becomes a norm. 

You’re always available, always on. Downtime and rest feels like a luxury.  

If you’re finding it hard to disconnect from work, if the thought of letting go leads to stress and anxiety or if you feel like your role demands you to always be on, you have shifted from productive to an unproductive zone. You’re exhausted, unrested and there’s no time for recovery. There’s always some demand, some distraction, something that makes you anxious and prevents you from mentally disconnecting. Unstructured time creates restlessness and an impulse to check in, stay connected and keep working.

Continuing in this mode keeps you busy, overwhelmed and ineffective. You keep jumping from one thing to the next without pausing to understand how it fits into your overall goal and whether taking it on will create a meaningful outcome or impact. Always being “on” leaves no time to apply the brakes, slow down and question if you’re on the right path. 

Good decisions are not made by those who are running on empty. What kind of interior life can you have, what kind of thinking can you do, when you’re utterly and completely overworked? 
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

Your leadership has become unsustainable if you’re available 24/7 without any room for rest or recovery. 

Every choice feels heavy

Your role as a leader requires you to make many decisions in a day. But when every problem lands on your desk and every small decision runs through you, your mental capacity to make good decisions starts depleting. Even small decisions overwhelm and drain you under the effect of decision fatigue. You start applying shortcuts, ignore important aspects, refuse to validate assumptions and fail to see the risks in the direction you plan to take. 

Solving problems and making decisions your team should be making bottlenecks your team. They can’t move without you. They feel blocked for your consent and approval. 

If you lack trust in your team to make independent decisions, if you intervene in every small decision and if the thought of not being involved makes you restless and tense, you’ve signed up for a path that’s infeasible and unscalable. Trying to make too many decisions causes poor, erratic and delayed choices—you avoid complex decisions, default to the easiest option and say no to innovative ideas because sticking to the status quo is the path of least mental resistance.  

Building a dependency instead of building a team makes people feel suffocated, disempowered and untrusted. Always watching, always meddling and always demanding control slows down your team’s progress while hurting your own productivity. 

Cars and decision makers, both need a service break, for better performance and long life.
— Harjeet Khanduja

Your leadership has become unsustainable if you’re making too many micro-decisions and refusing to delegate. 

You’ve shifted into survival mode

If you don’t consciously plan how to make the most of your time and energy as a leader, you spend your day firefighting and reacting to the things around you. There’s no time to think strategically and chart out a future growth path. There’s no time to assess risks and put measures in place to avoid problems. There’s no time to reflect on your actions and learn from your mistakes. This makes you lead from fear, not vision. You make decisions to avoid failure, rather than pursuing long-term goals. The loudest voice in the room gets your attention, while important issues get pushed aside. 

Your day ends with a feeling of relief, not accomplishment. You’ve normalized chaos as a part of your work life.

If getting through the day has become your goal, if you have lost control over your time and strategy and if you feel a sense of powerlessness, you’ve shifted from thriving at work to barely surviving. Your day gets dictated by incoming pings, urgent emails and ad hoc meetings with no dedicated blocks for quiet, focused work. You constantly cut short important conversations to catch up on a previous crisis. You’re always busy, always exhausted without any sense of what you achieved this week. 

Quick patches, short-term thinking and analysis paralysis on important decisions leads to chaotic environments, repetitive issues and strategic blindness. Constantly staying in a firefighting mode also emotionally exhausts the team. Survival mode creates a perpetual cycle of fear, distress and agony—you dread the next morning while feeling like a massive weight has been lifted off your shoulders for making it today. 

Survival mode becomes our default when we inhabit it for months or years, and it begins to exact a significant toll. Physiologically, it manifests as chronic fatigue, disrupted sleep, weakened immunity, and increased susceptibility to illness.
— Alexander Betts, Refuge

Your leadership has become unsustainable if you react to daily demands instead of proactively leading with a long-term vision. 

Obligation has replaced passion

If nothing excites you at work, if you have lost your sense of “why” and if you do the work only to fulfil your responsibilities, you fail to put your knowledge, experience and skills to use. You don’t push yourself hard. You don’t show curiosity to explore diverse perspectives. You play safe and refuse to navigate the uncharted territory. Without passion, what keeps you going is only a moral sense of duty. But work without meaning and purpose feels like a drag—transactional, boring and mundane. Routine and repetition dulls your enthusiasm and creativity.   

You feel trapped by the high expectations of your role while feeling disconnected from the vision you’re expected to lead. Cognitive dissonance makes it worse with feelings of disconnection and resentment. 

If you’ve become risk averse and stick to the playbook to manage the status quo and avoid failure, if you ignore your team’s morale and don’t feel invested in their growth and if the energy around you feels tensed and guarded, you’ve slipped into a black hole which has killed your sense of creativity, enthusiasm and drive. You avoid difficult conversations because you lack the emotional energy required to navigate them. You show up to meetings and conversations while you’re mentally checked out. You become resistant to change and new ideas because they feel like disruption, not an opportunity. 

Your contagious energy trips the team into maintenance mode—they mirror your emotional state which kills their passion. They stop learning, experimenting and stretching. Opportunities that once excited them now feels like a burden. 

Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.
— Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last

Your leadership has become unsustainable if you’ve lost your sense of purpose and drive and challenges that once felt meaningful now feel exhausting.

You’ve normalized feeling unwell

If work takes priority above everything else, if health falls last on your list and never gets prioritized and if you ignore your own needs and well-being, you start normalizing exhaustion and stress as part of your life. You ignore your body signals that’s screaming for rest. You avoid dealing with headaches and pains that have become a constant part of your life. You start relying on caffeine or other boosters to manage your energy levels. Your sleep, health and emotional regulation breaks down because you refuse to prioritize yourself.

You can’t remember the last time you felt well. You’ve forgotten what it means to have a life.

If you treat working long hours, lack of sleep and declining health as part of your job, you may mistake toxic coping mechanisms with being tough. Treating personal life and family time as distractions makes you consider 80-hour work weeks, late night emails and no time for vacation as a mark of dedication and commitment. You talk about them as a badge of honour. 

This behavior sets a wrong expectation with the team—they think they’re required to sacrifice their own health and match your unsustainable hours. Taking a break, leaving on time or disconnecting during vacation triggers performance anxiety. Collaboration breaks down as team members turn on each other due to exhaustion and lack of empathy. 

Your body always speaks — not in words, but in signals. Tiredness, cravings, tension — it’s not weakness. It’s wisdom. Listen before it starts to scream.
— Barbara O’Neill

Your leadership has become unsustainable if work has more importance than your own health, personal goals and family life. 

You’ve forgotten who you’re without the title

If your identity is tied to your role, if it consumes your narrative of the self and if you’re uncertain of who you’re without it, then any threat to the role feels existential. You make decisions based on what protects your role instead of what helps the organization—resisting change, avoiding delegation and controlling work in a way that no one gets an opportunity to shine and diminish your presence. You spend more time people-pleasing and maintaining perception. You show up everywhere and speak often to remain visible and build credibility. You reframe reality by hiding bad news and surfacing only the information that makes you look good.  

Your job defines you and losing it feels like losing yourself. You protect your position, not the purpose—spending energy on optics and position than doing actual leadership work. 

If you’re always insecure of your position, if you feel a sense of fragility and if you experience an identity crisis in the form of restlessness and irritability, you start acting out of fear, not conviction. You try hard to stay close to others in a position of power and secure their loyalty—even if it means staying silent when you disagree. You double down on control to establish a sense of authority. You push back on changes that involve scope of your work because any reduction to it feels like a challenge to your status and worth.  

Tying self-worth to your position and title makes you dictate minor details to establish your sense of importance. People start to notice that you value a sense of authority and control which makes them absorb the message that a direct challenge is unsafe and quiet non-compliance is the only way to survive. 

Our jobs were never meant to become the center of us. They were never meant to be the source of our worthiness. They were never meant to become the start and end of our identity.
― Robin Kirby, The Sparkle

Your leadership has become unsustainable if striving to protect your identity is your main focus than doing your actual job. 

Summary

1. If you can’t disconnect, if rest feels like a luxury and unstructured time creates restlessness, you shift from productive to an unproductive zone with no room for recovery.
2. If every problem lands on your desk and every small decision runs through you, you’re building a dependency instead of building a team—bottlenecking progress while depleting your own capacity to make good decisions.
3. If getting through the day has become your goal, you’ve stopped leading with vision and started reacting to daily demands—firefighting instead of thinking strategically.
4. If you’ve lost your sense of why and show up only to fulfil your responsibilities, you don’t just lose your own drive, your contagious energy trips the team into maintenance mode too.
5. If you treat long hours, lack of sleep and declining health as a mark of dedication, you’ve mistaken toxic coping mechanisms for being tough and set the same unsustainable expectation for your team.
6. If your identity is tied to your role and any threat to it feels existential, you stop protecting the purpose and start protecting your position—spending energy on optics instead of doing actual leadership work.

Recommended Reading

Burnt Out to Lit Up By Daisy Auger-Dominguez

Nine Secrets of Resilient Leaders for Coaching Teams By Dr. Sandra L. Abbey

The post Signs Your Leadership Role Has Become Unsustainable appeared first on TechTello.

Employees who are highly motivated, energized and most likely to produce high quality work with minimal support or intervention are also most likely to be overburdened with ad hoc tasks and requests that keep showing up every now and then. They’re almost always the first one to get called when there’s a crisis. They get pulled into unplanned meetings and discussions because they’re the default fallback to lean on in case something urgent comes up. 

Having a few of these people in your team makes your life easy as a manager because you can always count on them to step up and get things done. But over relying on your best people is your worst mistake—by expecting them to do too much you push them away. 

All the extra work they’re expected to do takes their focus away from their main priorities—when unannounced tasks keep showing up, there’s less time left to do work that inspires and motivates them. They have to put in more hours to meet their original goals as unplanned work takes away a lot of their time and energy. The high expectations along with the exhaustion from addressing last minute requests, urgent problems and other work priorities takes a toll on their well-being and may even lead to burnout.

Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.
― Jim Collins, Good to Great

Motivated employees may be your first choice when unexpected and unintentional work shows up, but the question you need to ask yourself before you act on your impulse is this: “At what cost are you willing to assign them this work?”

Overreliance on your high performers can lead to overwhelm making them quit, become frustrated or resent you for not managing the workload evenly. Instead of placing excessive demands on your most engaged employees, follow these practices to utilize their potential without weighing them down with too many responsibilities.

Consider existing workload

Whether it’s a small task or a large unit of work, every new task assigned to your most engaged employees must take their current workload into account. 

What if you assign them something new today and it makes them fall behind on the deliverable that’s due tomorrow?

What if they end up spending more time on the ad hoc request than what was originally anticipated?

What if they don’t like this work which makes them unhappy, discouraged and annoyed?

Instead of the default tendency to lean on them for everything new that shows up, evaluate the cost of involving them vs the benefit of leaving them out. Think about:

1. What will get impacted if you assign them this work? Is it acceptable?
2. What makes them your only choice to get this done? 
3. Who else in the team might be able to take this on or share their workload so that one person isn’t expected to pull the weight?
4. What’s the worst that can happen if you don’t involve them? 
5. Who else might feel thankful to be given this opportunity?

Burnout happens when there’s an ongoing mismatch between the conditions an employee needs to support their well-being and their best work, and what their organization actually provides. Not being given the resources or time you need to manage your workload, for example, or working in an environment where you have insufficient control and autonomy, are known burnout triggers.
― Kandi Wiens

Stop taking your high performers time and energy for granted. Consider their workload to be more fair and unbiased. 

Align opportunities with interests 

Engaged employees don’t mind the extra work when it’s an opportunity that aligns with their interest. What keeps them inspired is to solve tough problems, identify unique solutions and do the work that helps them expand their knowledge and build new skills. 

However, when you assign them every ad hoc unit of work assuming they will be the most efficient in getting things done, you ignore what keeps them inspired and motivated. You don’t take into account what matters to them. You ignore what kind of work will help them improve and what will simply keep them busy without improving their skills.  

Aligning opportunities with interests may not be possible all the time, but consciously trying to do this can help you achieve a much better allocation of work—you can avoid giving them work they’ve mastered and done multiple times before. You can consider their aspirations and the gap in their skills to keep the work growth-oriented. You can even frame it that way to keep the conversation productive. 

To avoid overburdening your most engaged employees, ask this:

1. What will this task/project help them improve? 
2. Does this work align with their goals, aspirations and interests?
3. If it’s something only they can do, how can you frame it in a manner that establishes the importance of the task while clarifying why you’ve chosen them to take it on?
4. Have you connected with them to know how they actually feel about the work and whether they find it interesting or mundane?

Remember that performance follows a power law distribution in most jobs, no matter what your HR department tells you. Ninety percent or more of the value on your teams comes from the top 10 percent. As a result, your best people are worth far more than your average people. They might be worth 50 percent more than your average people or fifty times more, but they are absolutely worth more. Make sure they feel it. Even if you don’t have the financial resources to provide huge differences in pay, providing greater differences will mean something.
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules

Stop ignoring your high performers goals and aspirations. Taking it into account can keep them energized and inspired. 

Plan and reprioritize 

Engaged employees are most likely to have more things on their plate than they can handle. Being good at what they do does not automatically make them good at planning and prioritization. They may underestimate the time it will take to solve a problem. They may commit to doing more work than they can handle. 

Without planning and prioritizing their work well, they may feel overloaded, overworked and overwhelmed. But instead of relooking at their priorities, they may try to meet their commitments by working extra hours. More work only adds to their burden, leaving them exhausted and burnt out. 

To help your most engaged employees achieve more without feeling overloaded, do this:

1. Schedule planning meetings with the goal to identify what deserves their attention and what must be reorganized, replanned or decluttered. 
2. Identify tasks which must be reallocated—someone else can do the work to help them focus on their most important goals.
3. Add in buffers to account for unknowns to keep commitments real and productive.
4. Eliminate tasks that are no longer useful or can be postponed to a later date. 

We’re lousy at figuring out how much time something will take us to complete. It’s a combination of overestimating our abilities and, to add insult to injury, underestimating the degree to which we are overestimating. We think we can do more than we can. 
— Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit

Stop assuming that your high performers can manage their own priorities well. Help them stay realistic by planning and reprioritizing their work. 

Provide active support 

Just because your engaged employees are self-motivated does not mean that you can assign them responsibility and leave them to figure everything out on their own. They may be dedicated and committed and may even navigate challenges on their own, but knowing that you’re around and will support them when they need help is crucial to act independently. 

Your presence matters. Your time and attention boosts their confidence in their decisions, enables them to take risks and makes them feel valued and trusted. Your advice during difficult moments helps them consider different possibilities. Your ability to ask questions without providing solutions expands their thinking skills. Knowing that you won’t abdicate them when they need you the most empowers them to push boundaries and reach for their potential. 

Your support is required at every step—connecting with them on a regular basis to understand how they’re doing and what they need to do better. Without actively engaging, you may not notice signs of overwork and exhaustion. You may miss the opportunity to keep their workload sane. 

Provide support without micromanaging their work:

1. What challenges are they facing and how do they plan to solve them?
2. What prevents them from making progress?
3. What’s creating unnecessary friction, making it difficult to achieve goals?
4. What kind of help do they need?

Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time.
― Marcus Buckingham, First, Break All the Rules

Stop ignoring your most engaged employees. Just because they’re doing well does not mean they don’t need your support. 

Take their feedback

Your most engaged employees may be the most dissatisfied even though it may not be visible to you. Their ability to produce good work may overshadow the deep frustration they feel from being taken for granted. But, sooner or later, these feelings of discontentment will start impacting their work—they may not show the same enthusiasm or drive they brought to work. They may become reluctant to take on additional responsibilities. They may stop putting in the effort which made them shine and succeed. 

The change may be minor and hard to notice at first, which can leave their feelings unaddressed and unacknowledged. The only way to know how they’re actually feeling and what’s bothering them the most is to engage in a candid feedback discussion. By showing that you’re genuinely interested in their feedback, you can encourage them to open up and share their true feelings. By asking questions, you can dig deeper and try to understand their real concerns. 

Getting this feedback is not always easy though. You need to approach the discussion with curiosity without defensiveness or justification. You need to make them feel comfortable without fear of reprisal. You need to show an intent to actually fix things. All talk and no action will eventually make them shut down. 

To get honest feedback that’s actionable:

1. Make them feel safe by listening to their concerns without justifying or turning defensive.
2. Help them understand why their feedback matters and how you plan to act on it.
3. Make it a habit to have such conversations regularly so that you can fix things before it’s too late.  

The essence of good listening is empathy, which can be achieved only by suspending our preoccupation with ourselves and entering into the experience of the other person.
― Michael P. Nichols, The Lost Art of Listening

Stop assuming that your high performers don’t have concerns. Listen to them before the workload becomes unsustainable. 

Summary

1. Over-relying on your best people is your worst mistake. High performers are the first to get called in a crisis, pulled into unplanned work and expected to always deliver, but this pattern leads to burnout, frustration and eventual departure.
2. Every new task must account for what the person is already carrying. Before assigning work, ask: what gets impacted, who else could do this and what’s the real cost of involving them vs leaving them out?
3. Engaged employees stay motivated when work helps them grow. Avoid assigning tasks they’ve already mastered. Consider their aspirations, skill gaps, goals and frame assignments in a way that makes the purpose and the choice of them clear.
4. High performers often over-commit and underestimate time. Hold regular planning sessions to declutter priorities, reallocate tasks, build in buffers and eliminate work that’s no longer useful. Act before the pile becomes unsustainable.
5. Self-motivation doesn’t mean people don’t need you. Regular check-ins asking about challenges, blockers and friction signal that you won’t abandon them. Your presence builds confidence and enables bigger risks.
6. Your best performers may be quietly the most frustrated. Declining enthusiasm and effort are early warning signs. Create space for candid feedback with curiosity, no defensiveness and a genuine intent to act on what you hear.

Recommended Reading

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work By Jason Fried

Slack By Tom DeMarco

The post Are You Overburdening Your Most Engaged Employees? appeared first on TechTello.

Leadership is an act of courage. It requires making tough decisions, choosing unconventional paths, and staying resilient when faced with challenges and setbacks. It requires killing projects with sunk costs and investing that time and energy into potential prospects. It requires standing apart and pushing through for the right cause even when everyone around is choosing a safe path. 

Leaders make hundreds of decisions throughout the day and every small decision they make and every action they take has a substantial impact on the growth of the organization and its people. Their underlying feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness, hidden motives to be liked and respected and unfounded concerns around appearing vulnerable can sometimes manifest as fear—fear of not being liked, fear of failure, fear of not knowing, fear of being judged, fear of being found out or fear of losing their position. 

This can make them play safe by sticking with the status quo, avoid decisions with unknowns and uncertainty to limit mistakes, people please to avoid being disliked or pretend to know things when they don’t have a clue.  

Fear that starts from the top seeps into organization culture—people learn to say things that will earn them a nod even when it does not lead to growth. They stop raising concerns, stop taking risks and stop trying to excel because mediocrity is not only accepted, but expected from them.  

Fear is a natural thing though and leaders are humans too who are not devoid of this feeling. The high stakes of their role can make fear even more prominent and real. 

But there’s a difference between productive and unproductive fear—productive fear can make you challenge your assumptions, ask better questions, listen to others and be better prepared while unproductive fear can make you lean towards popular opinions, shut down differences of opinion and care more about protecting your image than solving problems.  

We often think of courage as an inherent trait, however, it is less about who people are, and more about how they behave, and show up in difficult situations. So feeling fear is not a barrier. The true underlying obstacle to brave leadership is how we respond to our fear. The real barrier to daring leadership is our armor, the thoughts, emotions and behaviors that we use to protect ourselves when we aren’t willing and able to rumble with vulnerability.
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

Instead of thinking of fear as a thing to avoid, you need to accept it while not letting it get in the way of how you act or make decisions. To do this, you need to watch out for signs of fear that can make people feel unsafe, unheard and unseen.

Fear of losing control

Do you lack trust in your team to make independent decisions? Do you worry about things going wrong if you’re not involved? Do you jump in at the first chance of trouble and try to fix things without letting your team take control?

If you feel the need to be part of every meeting, every decision and every small discussion, you have a fear of losing control. You can’t let go, can’t delegate, can’t rest without overseeing everything that happens in your team. 

Your desire to stay in control impacts your team’s performance—seeking your approval every step of the way prevents your team from thinking independently, making mistakes and learning from them. They become too dependent on you for every small decision. They don’t get the opportunity to step up and take charge. They don’t develop the confidence to solve problems without hand-holding. 

This is the crux of management: It is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going it alone. It is the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself. Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.
― Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager

Instead of seeking control, share context. Empower your team to think and act on their own. 

Fear of failure

Do you refuse to take on new challenges with the worry you might fail? Do you stick to easy choices and safe bets? Do you choose a path of certainty because it’s less risky even though the path with ambiguity looks more promising?

If you’re risk-averse, focussed on avoiding mistakes and succeeding at all costs, you have a fear of failure. You don’t invest in experimentation, don’t create space for exploration and don’t encourage risk-taking. You stick to tried-and-tested approaches because you don’t like dealing with unknowns and uncertainty. 

Playing safe may get the job done, but it does not lead to growth. Not having the opportunity to face obstacles, handle conflicting situations or navigate the uncharted territory prevents your team from building the skills required to learn and grow, which leads to unhappiness and dissatisfaction in the long-run.

The fear of failure kills creativity and intelligence. The only thing it produces is conformity.
― Anup Kochhar, The Failure Project

Instead of avoiding failure, embrace risks. Choose the hard path because it’s more rewarding in the end. 

Fear of criticism 

Do you consider disagreement as an attack on your intelligence? Do you consider differences of opinion as a challenge to your status and authority? Do you encourage opinions that match your viewpoint and reject ideas that are not inline with your assumptions and beliefs?

If you engage with others to prove your smartness, raise your self-esteem and consider any opposition or pushback as an attack to your status, you have a fear of criticism. You worry that others will not find you credible or your reputation will be damaged if you let them see your flaws and imperfections. This makes you abuse your power and position to silence your team and make them adopt faulty logic, outdated beliefs and less optimal solutions. You push for what you believe is right instead of showing curiosity to find the right solutions. 

When dissent is discouraged, people in the team stop sharing their thoughts because they don’t see the value in voicing their concerns. Issues that could have been avoided are not discussed. Better ideas never surface. People in the team feel unheard, dismissed and overlooked. Lack of safety to express openly creates an environment where people feel uninspired to excel. 

Psychological safety is the key to creating a workplace where people can be confident enough to act without undue fear of being ridiculed, punished, or fired – and be humble enough to openly doubt what is believed and done. As Amy Edmondson’s research shows, psychological safety emerges when those in power persistently praise, reward, and promote people who have the courage to act, talk about their doubts, successes, and failures, and work doggedly to do things better the next time.
― Robert I. Sutton, Good Boss, Bad Boss

Instead of looking down upon criticism, reward healthy disagreements. Value finding the right solution over being right.  

Fear of conflict 

Do you put off difficult conversations because they make you uncomfortable? Do you procrastinate and ignore the conflict instead of trying to face it head-on? Do you hope that the issue will resolve itself instead of actively trying to seek alignment and reduce misunderstandings?

If you keep avoiding difficult conversations because you don’t think you can handle them well, you have a fear of conflict. You worry about what to say, what to avoid and how to say it in a manner that does not hurt the other person or damage the relationship. You keep postponing the conversation with useless reasons and excuses because you fear saying the wrong thing or making things worse.

But putting off conflict can actually make things worse. Issues left unaddressed escalate over time. What was once a manageable problem can grow into a much larger issue if not addressed on time. Constant worry about unresolved issues can also take a toll on your mental health and lead to increased stress, anxiety and even feelings of helplessness. When important issues are being ignored or swept under the rug, it can erode trust, build resentment and damage relationships with your team. 

Beginning a conversation is an act of bravery. When you initiate a conversation, you fearlessly step into the unknown. Will the other person respond to favorably or unfavorably? Will it be a friendly or hostile exchange? There is a feeling of being on the edge. That nanosecond of space and unknowing can be intimidating. It shows your vulnerability. 
— Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation

Instead of putting off a hard conversation or delaying it forever, address issues directly. Providing clarity and closure will help you gain trust, respect and also alleviate stress. 

Fear of being disliked

Is likability important to you? Do you seek approval to please others? Do you go with the popular opinion as opposed to a more promising unpopular choice because you worry that not going with the majority will make them dislike you? Do you keep saying yes to requests even when they do not align with your goals because saying no can make others unhappy?

If being liked is at the core of how you behave, make decisions or how you act, you have a fear of being disliked. You try to people please your way through tough situations, challenges and setbacks instead of showing the courage to make the hard choices and stand apart. You try to play nice and refuse to give critical feedback because it creates a risk of becoming unpopular and unadmired. 

Likability and popularity leads to bad choices and poor decisions. It makes you unsee problematic behavior, ignore real problems and play favorites to those who charm you with their sweet talk and flattery. Seeking consensus and approval does not make others like you. It does not earn you trust and respect. Rather, it prevents you from emerging as a strong leader that others want to emulate. 

Being nice does not come out of goodness or high morals. It comes out of a fear of displeasing others and receiving their disapproval. It’s driven by fear, not virtue.
― Aziz Gazipura, Not Nice

Instead of being liked, focus on building trust. Stand up. Speak up. Say no. Don’t be afraid of upsetting a few people in the short-term. 

Fear of appearing weak

Do you refuse to take responsibility for your decisions? Do you blame others for not getting the desired outcomes? Do you try to cover up your mistakes as accepting them makes you look incompetent? Do you project an image of strength because you consider vulnerability as a weakness?

If you don’t take responsibility and blame others or external circumstances for your situation, you have a fear of appearing weak. Instead of accepting when your decisions lead to bad outcomes, you look for justifications and excuses. Instead of trying to understand what went wrong when things don’t work out the way you anticipated, you look for a target to blame. Instead of owning up your mistakes, you try to hide them and pretend they don’t exist. 

Never showing vulnerability makes it hard for you to connect with people—putting on a facade of strength and imperfection makes you come across as fake and unreal. You also fail to hold people accountable in the team because you yourself don’t set a good example. 

Humility is a reflection of vulnerability; it is the self giving itself permission to say, “I don’t know everything.
― John Baldoni, Grace Under Pressure

Instead of pretending to be strong, take responsibility for your actions. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s a strength. 

Fear of losing credibility

Do you worry that if a project fails, it will reflect badly on you as a leader? Do you constantly look out for mistakes and try to correct them even before they’ve occurred? Do you point out flaws and shortcomings with the concern that if you miss catching them, others may question your expertise?

If you watch your team like a hawk and try to ensure nothing ever goes wrong, you have a fear of losing credibility. You closely monitor tasks, keep reminding your team not to miss anything and create a lot of fuss when there’s even a minor slip or small deviation from the expectations. 

When the team feels constantly judged and monitored, it lowers their morale. Always reminding them of the gaps without appreciating them for things they did well also makes them feel disregarded, undervalued and unappreciated. Your tendency to avoid mistakes at all costs creates a sense of fear and resentment in the team. 

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
― Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear

Instead of hunting for mistakes, build a resilient team that can face challenges and solve problems on their own. You’ll be more trusted and respected. 

Fear of change 

Do you delay decisions that require stepping out of your comfort zone? Are you reluctant to make changes to keep up with the future demands? Do you continue with old ways of doing things because the idea to change and adapt leads to stress and anxiety?

If you consider “change” as a thing to avoid instead of as a means to build a future-ready organization, you have a fear of change. You continue with projects that are no longer serving you well instead of investing in new opportunities. You don’t spin off new initiatives and restructure your organization to align with them. You keep doing the work that seems safe, familiar and easy. 

Continuing with old methods, practices and systems with the worry that any change might break what’s already working well leaves you behind—you fail to build an organization that can scale to future needs. Top performers in the team eventually leave as they get frustrated without learning and growth.  

Executives are often reluctant to accept the need for change; they may have a vested interest in the status quo, or they may feel that time will eventually vindicate their previous choices. Indeed, when we ask executives what prompts them to seek out blue oceans and introduce change, they usually say that it takes a highly determined leader or a serious crisis.
― W. Chan Kim, Blue Ocean Strategy

Instead of resisting change, embrace discomfort. Change may be challenging, but it’s an opportunity to grow and evolve.  

Summary

1. Fear of control can prevent you from empowering your team and become a bottleneck for everything that happens in the team. Build a team that can function independently.
2. Fear of failure can make you give up on opportunities that appear risky and stick to a safe path, impacting your team’s learning and growth. Make conscious bets, invest in taking risks. 
3. Fear of criticism can make you shut down differences of opinion and push others to accept your thinking, even when it’s suboptimal and biased. Make better choices by encouraging dissent.   
4. Fear of conflict can make you put off or avoid difficult conversations thereby turning a small problem into a major issue. Handle challenging conversations at the right time even if they’re uncomfortable at first.
5. Fear of being disliked can make you lean towards consensus instead of pushing for what’s right. Instead of seeking approval, learn to say no.
6. Fear of appearing weak can make you use blames and excuses to justify your outcomes instead of identifying what went wrong and taking steps to fix it. Take responsibility, own your mistakes.
7. Fear of losing credibility can make you constantly point out your team’s flaws and shortcomings making them feel judged and turn resentful. Stop pointing out mistakes and share your support. 
8. Fear of change can make you continue with the status quo instead of investing in opportunities that are necessary for future growth. Embrace change to grow and evolve.

Recommended Reading

The Anxious Achiever By Morra Aarons-Mele

Leading Beyond Fear By Neil Pretty

The post What Fear Costs Your Team Over Time appeared first on TechTello.

When I was a manager, automation meant looking for routine tasks that prevent people from doing their best work. We were limited to automating data pipelines, deployments, reporting, alerting and other tasks that can leverage tech.  

We never imagined a world where machines can make decisions on our behalf and act autonomously. We never considered the possibility of an agent who can scan inboxes, schedule meetings, respond to emails, connect to internal task management systems or slack messages to separate signal from noise. 

Whether it’s summarizing information, writing code, fixing bugs, interacting with external APIs and data sources, retaining information over long multi-step workflows, evaluating outcomes and adjusting strategies dynamically in response to new information or achieving complex multi step goals without human intervention, autonomous systems that use AI agents can do this round the clock without complaining or ever getting exhausted. What you can achieve with Agentic AI is only limited by your own imagination.  

For a manager, leveraging Agentic AI is no longer optional, it’s a necessity. Continuing to operate without it means choosing a less efficient, more time consuming, resource intensive and error prone path. Teams that leverage AI to their advantage can achieve their goals in less time—they’re more performant, productive and more present to tackle everyday challenges at work. 

Over the next decade, AI won’t replace managers, but managers who use AI will replace those who don’t.
― Harvard Business Review, Artificial Intelligence

Here are a few use cases in which managers can leverage AI to run their teams more effectively:

Executive assistant  

Every day managers waste a tremendous amount of time in managing inbox, calendars and stakeholders. They still miss important emails, struggle to prevent their calendars from overflowing and disappoint stakeholders for not sending out critical updates on time. 

Even after spending so much time trying to be organized, they don’t have a simple way to separate signal from noise. 

They have to keep checking emails every few minutes because what if something shows up that deserves their immediate attention—system alerts, emails from leaders, stakeholders or others who are a critical part of their day-to-day work. They have to manually schedule and reschedule meetings to handle conflicts, plan and prioritize time for critical work and decline meetings that are not worth their time and attention. They have to follow-up on each deadline manually, create a summary (highlighting risks, achievements and plan ahead) and send that update to their stakeholders.    

All this consumes their focus and energy, which ideally should be spent in building better products, solving complex problems, designing efficient processes and growing their teams. 

Instead of having to do this manually, wouldn’t it be nice to have a personal assistant who would do all this and much more for you?

An intelligent PA can:

1. Scan your inbox and summarize urgent items, approval delays, follow-ups, categorize emails and suggest actions and can notify you instantly (on your WhatsApp, slack) of an email from a certain group or set of people so that you don’t have to constantly check your email.
2. Highlight your most important meetings in the day, remind you of important deadlines, upcoming travel plans and flight status. 
3. Send out an automatic status update message to your team every day at a certain time asking for progress, blockers, plan for the next 24 hrs, dependencies and any other callout. It can then summarize it for you and flag risks or anything that needs your attention. 
4. Convert a meeting transcript into key decisions, action items, owners, deadlines and follow-ups and send them to the entire team. It can also automatically follow-up on the actions items and keep track of progress. 
5. Gather information from meetings, documents, emails, notes, slack and other channels to create a status update summary for stakeholders highlighting progress, blockers, risks and other important information. 
6. List the most important decisions you need to make today with contexts, risks and even recommended action.
7. Put a meeting on your calendar from simple call outs like: “Schedule a recurring meeting every Friday from 3-4pm with my team.” or “Schedule a bi-weekly 1-1 meeting with every member of my team for 30 mins. Keep it in the second half of the day.”  or “Block this Tuesday afternoon from 12-3pm for my daughter’s PTM.” or “Mark a dentist’s appointment next Thursday at 6pm.”
8. Work with you on meeting conflicts, advise you on available slots and do the actual work of scheduling the meeting without you having to open your calendar. 

A PA built using Agentic AI has the capacity to plan, reason and act autonomously. It can do all this and much more without your intervention. 

To build your own PA, think about the questions you need answered:

Any critical meetings today? Do you need to prep for it?

What are the emails that need an urgent response?

What deadlines do you have this week?

What are the top 2 focus areas for today?

What risks do you need to mitigate?

AI Automation doesn’t replace human judgment—it spotlights where it’s needed most.
― Ian Michiels, The Validation Economy

You can start building simple use cases and then add more complex use cases depending on the amount of control you want to give to your assistant. I built my own PA within 8 hours which sends me a daily brief on WhatsApp using Twilio. It wasn’t the most sophisticated version, but with all the systems connected and basic intelligence already plugged in, it will only take me a few more days to automate it for all my use cases. 

Here’s a simple prompt I used:

You are a high-quality executive assistant.

Emails:
{emails}

Events:
{events}

Generate a WhatsApp-style daily brief.

Format:

Daily Brief

Priorities:
...

Inbox:
...

Meetings:
...

Risks:
...

Focus:
...

Onboarding copilot

When new members join your team, getting them up to speed is a time consuming process. How well they understand the existing systems and processes also gets limited by their mentor—a dedicated and focused mentor can quickly ramp them up and make them productive from day 1 while a mentor who doesn’t take this responsibility seriously can leave the new joinee confused and demotivated. 

Onboarding shouldn’t be taken lightly because it shapes the early experience and determines whether the new joinee excels or struggles at work. 

What if this entire process is automated and handled by an agent who’s intelligent enough to curate a custom experience based on each individual’s role, expectations and gaps? This agent can provide a mentorship experience without being biased or busy.

An intelligent onboarding agent can:

1. Create an email id for the new employee and send a welcome mail to them.
2. Add them to all relevant tools, groups and corresponding message channels with proper access and usage readiness. 
3. Create a procurement request to get them assigned a laptop, badge, desk, food coupons and other necessary resources. 
4. Send them content to understand org hierarchy and get themselves acquainted with leaders, managers and stakeholders.
5. Identify key people to meet (team members, stakeholders, cross-functional partners) and help them build the right relationships early by scheduling meeting invites. 
6. Create a tailored onboarding plan based on role, level and location. 
7. Curate role specific learning (docs, videos, other material) that adapts based on progress and gaps.
8. Allow them to ask questions to understand past decisions, project context and why certain things are done the way they are. This reduces dependency on people to answer basic questions. 
9. Break down goals into daily/weekly actions. Keep track of their progress and nudge them to complete their assigned tasks. Adapt in real-time based on whether they’re ahead or behind. 
10. Take their inputs and notify you of their concerns or challenges faced. Also, detect signs of disengagement based on missed tasks, low interaction or delayed responses to catch early onboarding failure. 
11. Track onboarding milestones and flag any delays or lack of engagement. Nudge you on when to check in, what to communicate and what to clarify.  

An onboarding agent built using Agentic AI can be your partner to provide a seamless experience to new employees which keeps them focused, engaged and learning. 

The best way to think about what to build in an onboarding agent is to think about the questions that need to be answered:  

Who should they reach out to if they get stuck?

What are the best practices and processes for communication, collaboration, meetings, deployment and debugging?

Who are the key stakeholders?

Who are the different leaders, managers and architects in the org and what areas do they own?

What are the expectations at their level based on their role and competencies?

What are their goals for the first 30-60-90 days?

How can they get the feedback?

Who can answer their queries?

How can you know their progress and what kind of help can you provide?

You must design a system for training and onboarding that gives people a real, fighting chance at success.
― Mitch Gray, How to Hire and Keep Great People

Here’s a sample prompt to start:

ROLE:
You are an AI Onboarding Agent designed to help new employees become productive quickly and confidently.

OBJECTIVES:
- Accelerate time-to-productivity
- Provide clear, actionable guidance (not generic advice)
- Personalize onboarding based on role, goals and progress
- Drive accountability through commitments and follow-ups
- Reduce confusion by explaining context and priorities

INPUTS AVAILABLE:
- user_profile: {role, team, level, start_date}
- onboarding_plan: {30_60_90_goals, tasks, milestones}
- progress_data: {completed_tasks, pending_tasks, delays}
- knowledge_base: {company_docs, processes, FAQs}
- interaction_history: {past questions, responses, issues}

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Identify the user’s current onboarding stage and immediate priorities
2. Provide a concise “Focus for Now” (top 1-3 priorities)
3. Break work into specific, time-bound next steps
4. Highlight blockers, risks or dependencies (if any)
5. Ask 1-2 focused questions to drive clarity or ownership
6. Adapt responses based on progress and past interactions
7. If delays or confusion are detected:
   - simplify tasks
   - reduce scope
   - re-prioritize essentials

OUTPUT FORMAT:
- Focus for Now:
- Next Steps (numbered, specific, time-bound):
- Risks/Watch-outs (if any):
- Question(s):

CONSTRAINTS:
- Be concise, practical and specific
- Avoid generic advice or long explanations
- Do not overload with information
- Prefer action over explanation
- Prefer clarity over completeness

SUCCESS CRITERIA:
- The user knows exactly what to do next
- The user can act immediately without further clarification
- Progress is measurable by next interaction

Performance tracking and signal detection agent

Giving constructive feedback to your team on a regular basis is not an easy process. Most managers suck at it because it requires continuous effort to gather, organize and summarize feedback in a way that motivates them to do better at their job instead of damaging their confidence. Your cognitive biases like confirmation, recency, fundamental attribution error and several others also prevent you from being impartial and neutral when delivering this feedback. 

The biggest challenge is having all your observations in one place—capturing those impromptu feedback moments or conversations, logging when they did well and where they lagged, documenting appreciation or complaints from other teams/functions, their behaviors/attitudes towards other team members and in general how communicative, collaborative and attentive are they. 

Before AI, I used to maintain feedback of each of my team members in an excel file. But it was a painful process to sift through all the notes and try to make sense out of them. Lack of time and my own biases would often make me miss critical inputs that could have been tremendously beneficial to my team. Not having a structured process also made me miss entering details into the excel—there was no system to remind me or nudge me to stay consistent.  

What if you could use AI to manage your team’s performance without relying on your memory or rough feedback notes? 

An intelligent performance system can:

1. Convert your inputs into more concrete feedback points based on each member’s role, goals and competencies.
2. Point out when your feedback seems biased and challenge you to rethink. 
3. Call out incomplete or opinionated feedback and ask you to provide examples to keep it real.
4. Identify if a certain feedback is a one-off event or a behavior pattern based on their past performance and history. 
5. Nudge you to enter feedback when it detects you haven’t been consistent or focusing on only a few team members while ignoring others.
6. Pull each team member’s achievements and misses from the task management system to identify how they’re progressing on their goals—missed deadlines, low output or inconsistent performance. 
7. Cover the gap between someone not performing and why they’re not performing by spotting patterns like “struggles with prioritization” or “poor stakeholder management.”
8. Read messages from emails, slacks and other channels to gather their contributions or concerns raised by others. 
9. Help you frame feedback clearly by avoiding emotional or vague language and connecting behavior to impact.
10. Convert data into performance summaries, promotion cases and review notes. 
11. Create a single snapshot of each team member with clear direction for you on the next steps to take.

A performance management system built using agentic AI can make giving and receiving feedback less intimidating, more structured and highly valuable.

To think about what to include in your performance management system, think about your pain points:

How do you keep feedback organized and easy to summarize?

How do you separate patterns of behavior from one-off events?

How do you ensure you’re not being unfair or biased?

What challenges do you face when trying to compare performance to their goals and expectations?

How do you know how others feel about working with them? 

Corporate performance management systems and processes are gradually moving away from a static, unidirectional, and time-bound avatar to a more dynamic, continuous, and interactive state.
― Pearl Zhu

Here’s a sample prompt to start:

ROLE:
You are a performance management assistant helping managers give clear, fair and actionable feedback.

INPUTS:
- user_profile
- goals
- task_data (achievements, misses, deadlines)
- communication_data (messages, feedback, concerns)
- past_feedback

YOUR JOB:
1. Identify key signals (progress, gaps, patterns)
2. Distinguish one-off issues vs repeated behavior
3. Suggest likely root causes (e.g. prioritization, ownership, communication)
4. Convert insights into clear, specific feedback
5. Challenge vague or biased feedback and ask for examples
6. Suggest next actions for the manager

OUTPUT FORMAT:

Performance Snapshot

Key Signals:
...

Patterns:
...

Possible Causes:
...

Feedback Suggestion:
...

Gaps in Feedback:
...

Next Actions:
...

RULES:
- Focus on facts and observable behavior
- Avoid vague or emotional language
- Highlight bias or missing evidence
- Keep output concise and actionable

These are just a few examples. Managers can build so many other systems using agentic AI like goal tracking and completion, an agent that manages collaboration initiatives or a system that minimizes downtime by proactively monitoring, raising alerts and maybe even applying a patch before it becomes an issue. 

Summary

1. Managers who adopt Agentic AI to delegate and manage their workload can run their teams more efficiently. By having agents summarize, plan and take automatic actions, managers can focus on work only they can do. 
2. Building a personal assistant is critical. Without it, you have to manually manage your emails, calendar, messages and other information that’s scattered across different sources and channels. PA built using agentic AI can collect information from different sources, summarize it for you and help you act on it in just a few minutes without spending hours trying to make sense.
3. Onboarding is a time consuming and an error prone process. Employees feel lost and demotivated when it’s not done well. Building a personalized onboarding agent using Agentic AI can ramp up new joinees with a structured, customized and engaging process that works for their role, goals and expectations. It can notify you and help you address their concerns proactively without waiting for them to become disengaged. 
4. Managers who take the feedback process seriously build high performance teams. But giving the right feedback is still a challenge most managers face. This can be solved by automating the process using agentic AI, which can manage the entire performance history of each of your team members and help you keep feedback clear, constructive, fair and unbiased.

Recommended Reading

Agentic Artificial Intelligence By Pascal Bornet, Jochen Wirtz

AI Engineering By Chip Huyen

The post Essential AI Automations to Run Your Team Smarter appeared first on TechTello.

Many people get into leadership positions without the ability to think critically. They spend each day firefighting instead of solving problems that won’t repeat these issues. They continue with how things have always been done without challenging the status quo. They make decisions based on present issues without considering the future opportunities. Without the ability to look into the future and its needs, without being proactive and without moving away from addressing only current needs, they cannot be effective. 

They can support business as usual, but they can’t predict and meet future needs. They can solve today’s crisis, but they can’t prevent another setback from happening. They can deliver products, but they can’t make something with an edge that will stand out in the market. Reactive thinking and reactive action keeps them busy without being effective. 

Strategic thinking is a big part of a leader’s job and cultivating it requires conscious prioritization, careful planning and not using lack of time as an excuse. It requires taking responsibility for managing your own time well and not blaming others for keeping you busy. It requires shifting from execution to analyzing situations, anticipating outcomes and developing plans that are bold and visionary. It requires stepping out of your comfort zone. It requires making hard choices. 

Strategy determines what matters most and what doesn’t. It requires making informed trade-offs. It requires solving deep-rooted problems, not just the surface level symptoms. It includes preparing for multiple possibilities, not just a predictable future. It’s knowing when to push forward and when to pivot. It’s a map that gives you a sense of direction without laying out every step of the way.  

Every organization has momentum, however, the core strategy determines whether it moves forward, backwards or in circles.
― Wayne Chirisa

Leaders who provide strategic clarity makes it easy for their teams to act on complex decisions, turn ideas into positive outcomes and accelerate progress. They build strategic excellence by following these practices:

Create focused blocks of time

If you don’t plan your time well, you allow unplanned tasks, ad hoc requests and other time-wasting activities eat up into your day. You may run from one meeting to the next, problem solve issues as they occur and get pulled into discussions with little or no use only to find yourself exhausted at the end of each day without creating any value. 

Strategic thinking requires strategic time management. You can’t expect to find time for it if you never intentionally plan your day. To improve strategic thinking, create focused blocks of time into your calendar. Schedule them in advance so that they don’t get filled with other inconsequential activities. 

Regularly schedule thinking, reflecting and planning blocks that are focused on identifying core areas that need attention, efforts that are leading to wasted time or sunk costs and drawing learnings from projects that are doing well to apply them to other initiatives. Identify the needs of your organization from a hiring, training and growth standpoint—what skills do people need to build to manage future expectations. What are the gaps? 

When you consciously plan thinking time, you give yourself time to slow down and think with a clear head. You’re able to draw connections and identity initiatives that aren’t possible when you’re always rushing and in a firefighting mode. It also gives you the opportunity to re-evaluate your decisions, identify the changes you need to make to adapt to new information and proactively put measures in place to course correct instead of being reactive. 

Much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.
― Richard Paul, Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

You can’t lead effectively without the ability to create space for thinking time. Plan and put it on your calendar upfront before it gets filled with other activities.  

Push back and say no

Time is finite and so are the things you can do in a day. Amongst many paths you can take to achieve your strategic goal, you need to lock down on one or two. You need to cut down on hundreds of possibilities and choose only the ones that are most promising. You need to plan and prioritize goals that will deliver the biggest impact. You’re not being strategic if you try to fit everything into your plan because determining what shouldn’t be done is tough while including everything is easy.   

Strategic thinking involves elimination, subtraction and decluttering. Elimination requires careful analysis to separate useful ideas from distractions. Subtraction involves reducing the number of things you sign up for when multiple options are viable. Decluttering is an on-going exercise to clean up and remove the mess that’s no longer serving you well. 

Strategic planning requires the courage to upset a few people by saying no. It requires understanding that achieving excellence in a few things is more important than doing too many things with a mediocre outcome. It requires the hard work of separating important from urgent and committing to fulfilling important priorities so that there’s less urgency and chaos everyday. 

You don’t have to play nice and agree to doing something that must not be done at all. Remember this: Doing something always comes at the cost of not doing something else. You need to evaluate the opportunity cost by viewing every request through a strategic lens:

Does it fit into your long-term vision?

What will it help you achieve? 

How does it stack rank compared to your other priorities?

What will you have to give up to make time for it? Is it worth it?

What will you lose if you don’t do it now?

What will you gain? 

Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.
― Richard P. Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

Strategic planning requires saying no to good opportunities so that you can focus on great ones. Eliminate, subtract and declutter. Say no more. Add less.  

Challenge long-standing rules

Sticking to old methods of solving problems, building products or even how decisions are made feels like a safe approach—it has worked in the past and there’s less effort involved to make it work again. But, doing things the way they’ve always been done or taking on opportunities based on what feels safe prevents you from taking risks that are necessary for growth. 

Without questioning assumptions, challenging the status quo and pushing for unconventional strategies, you cannot give the push your org needs to keep up with the future demands and not get sucked into business as usual. Avoiding new opportunities with fear of failure, dismissing ideas because they seem too risky or defaulting to tried-and-tested methods over bold initiatives caps your team’s potential. 

Standing up and suggesting an unpopular choice is often risky—it may not work, others may not like it or you may face a lot of resistance. But it’s a risk you’ve got to take as a leader. Staying within your comfort zone feels safe, but it also limits growth. Strategic thinking involves pushing the boundary of known and stepping into uncertainty. It involves taking bold risks and navigating the uncharted territory. 

To build risk-taking appetite, you’ve got to take risks. You can’t go about taking the easy path and hope to achieve great things. A few questions worth asking:

Is the risk worth it?

Is the decision reversible or irreversible?

How can you stack the odds in your favor?

What’s within your control?

Truly transformational learning requires that we experience situations that put us totally outside of our known zone, well beyond the realm of familiarity and control—so much so that our world feels mangled or turned upside down.
― Julia Sloan, Learning to Think Strategically

Build the appetite to take risks. Don’t take the easy road—fight for choices that are hard at first, but rewarding in the end.

Align product and talent

Many leaders make the mistake of setting up a great product strategy without a people strategy. They define a strong vision for the kind of products to build, marketing plan to promote them and a rigorous feedback loop to learn from the process and make corrections. But, when it comes to people, they take things for granted. 

There’s no strategy for hiring, retaining and training employees. There’s no plan to build a talent pool that can keep up with the growing demands. People are expected to scale magically without any strategy. This creates a huge gap between expectations and reality. Product strategy fails miserably because people who are required to give life to that strategy aren’t aligned.  

Scaling people shouldn’t be an after thought. It needs its own strategic plan—is org structured in a way that’s best aligned with the growth areas? Do employees have the skills and experience needed to excel in their roles? What are the gaps in hiring? What challenges do you foresee at the people level, which if not solved, can lead to delays and poor quality? What’s your strategy to solve communication and collaboration challenges that people face—can introducing better processes reduce these problems?

You have to align product with talent. Strategic thinking that overindexes on product while ignoring people almost always fails to produce the desired impact. Thinking about both together helps you face the reality of your situation—constraints, gaps and challenges—which then enables you to devise a more realistic plan.

In a future ready organization, ‘talent’ is increasingly a metaphor for capability—at the right place, at the right time and equally, at the right price.
― Gyan Nagpal, The Future Ready Organization

Don’t make the mistake of creating a solid product strategy without considering the people aspect. You need both working together. One cannot succeed without the other. 

Use AI as a thinking partner

With multiple AI assistants (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude etc.) at your disposal, it may be tempting to let AI do all the work—tell me what to do, how should I solve it, what are my options, what would you suggest? 

But asking AI to think for you will not sharpen your thinking skills. It will make you dependent on it for every small decision. If you stop using your mental muscles to think hard, you’ll lose your ability to question and reason. You will not learn to challenge ideas, separate signal from noise or reason through a difficult situation. 

AI is a wonderful decision partner. But, you have to use it for the right reasons—challenge your thoughts, validate your assumptions, analyze data and draw patterns, run risk simulations and even review your strategy. It can do all of these well and help you further expand your thinking. AI can be your devil’s advocate—helping you see your biases, confront your fears and identify flaws in your strategy. It can help you apply great frameworks like second order thinking, pre-mortem analysis, regret simulation, bias audit and reversibility test to create an excellent strategy. 

But, you have to do the hard work of sitting with your discomfort and continuing to prod your mind till you’ve an “aha moment.” Pushing through the hard task of drawing connections, having a breakthrough when you’re stuck at an impasse and not taking the easy path of asking AI to do the work is what strengthens your thinking skills and enables you to be an effective leader. 

Take a look at our strategic plan for our upcoming fiscal year. Acting as an executive coach, I need you to challenge our assumptions. Start by questioning our goals: are we really pushing the envelope, or are we playing it safe? Then assess the structure of our plan: is it robust enough to achieve our goals even when things don’t go as planned, or are we too reliant on ideal conditions? After our discussion, I’d appreciate your feedback on the strengths of our plan, areas for improvement, and actionable advice to ensure we’re set up for success.
― Geoff Woods, The AI-Driven Leader

Effective leadership requires strategic thinking which involves changing gears by disconnecting from the present moment into visualizing a better future. If you keep delegating this job to AI, you’ll never be that leader. 

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Summary

1. Leaders who don’t practice strategic thinking skills can only cater to the present without the ability to shape the future.
2. Strategic thinking requires dedicated thinking and planning time away from distractions so that you can identify the future needs of your organization without getting pulled into daily chaos. Leaders who don’t put this on their calendar consciously never make time to do it right. 
3. Strategic thinking is as much about deciding what shouldn’t be done at all as it’s about determining what deserves attention. Doing something always comes at the cost of not doing something else. Eliminate, subtract and declutter. Learn to say no.
4. Strategic thinking involves taking bold risks and initiatives. You can’t stick with the safe path and wish to achieve great things. Challenge the status quo, question assumptions and be willing to navigate the uncharted territory. 
5. Strategic thinking requires aligning product with people—having a great product strategy without any thinking into how to scale people to make it work always ends up in disappointing results. You need a realistic plan that involves people who can adapt to the future and its needs.
6. AI can create a strategy for you, but it can’t sharpen your thinking skills. Only you can do it by doing the hard work yourself and using AI to challenge, question and validate your assumptions. 

Recommended Reading

The Art of Strategy By Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff

Leading with Strategic Thinking By Aaron K. Olson, B. Keith Simerson

The post How to Improve Strategic Thinking for Effective Leadership appeared first on TechTello.

Most people face friction at work, not once, but multiple times during the day which not only makes it hard for them to get their job done, but is also a constant source of frustration, resentment and disappointment. 

Your team would have faced friction whenever they collaborate with people from different teams and functions where misaligned priorities, gaps in expectations, unclear roles and unspoken assumptions lead to blame games, heated debates and meetings with no conclusion—converations linger on, projects get delayed and more time is wasted in protecting ego than solving problems.

Friction also shows up when some people who consider themselves superior to others refuse to co-operate. They dictate how things must be done. They try to control every aspect of the project. They may also become aggressive or demean others by attacking their intelligence when they disagree with them or challenge their point of view. 

Whether its personal clash, cultural discord or resistance towards certain processes and practices, friction makes even simple things hard to achieve. It impacts your team’s morale, productivity and performance by wasting their time and energy in trying to convince others to see things their way—while not realizing that others are thinking the same thing too. 

When tasks take longer to complete, deadlines are missed and a team fails to meet expectations, as a manager you may attribute it to lack of effort, capability or performance issues, without considering the friction that contributed to it. You may push your team harder and ask them to put more effort, but simply spending more hours in the day won’t reduce the resistance they face at work. Rather, subjecting them to high expectations without making their job easier will only put them through unnecessary pressure, stress and anxiety. 

While constructive friction can give people an opportunity to be better, destructive friction can demotivate them and make them avoid collaborative work. It can also make them become uncooperative, difficult to work with and inflexible—the same qualities they found resentful in others at first. Work environments where people constantly waste time in navigating broken processes, unclear systems, interpersonal conflict or dealing with frustrating tasks like waiting for approvals, doing redundant work or not having the right tools at their disposal can lead to faster burnout, increased fatigue and high emotional tax.     

The challenge is not to eliminate conflict but to transform it. It is to change the way we deal with our differences.
― Roger Fisher, Getting to Yes

To make the work environment healthy, productive and conducive to growth, you’ve to actively take measures and reduce workplace friction by following these practices:

Turn assumptions into agreements

Every project, decision or a task has multiple assumptions baked in. Illusion of transparency cognitive bias can make people believe that these assumptions are as evident to others as they are to them. But others can’t read their minds. They can’t possibly guess what they are thinking. 

These assumptions if not stated explicitly and validated can lead to a huge misalignment of expectations. Team members may end up spending a lot of time on something only to be rejected or disapproved later. Clarifying assumptions and seeking early agreement can reduce this gap by aligning on expectations and reaching a common consensus. 

To avoid rework and frustration that comes from not seeking alignment upfront, do this:

1. Document key assumptions and observations and get a sign-off from the stakeholders before starting development to reduce gaps in understanding thereby making less avoidable errors. 
2. Ask others to do the same. 
3. Review all the assumptions together and ensure everyone is operating from the same set of presumptions.

Whenever we make assumptions, we’re asking for problems. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

To reduce workplace friction, ask your team to seek clarification on their assumptions and not work with a false notion of certainty. 

Clarify behaviors that won’t be tolerated

Healthy boundaries are essential for the mental and personal well-being of all employees at work. When these boundaries are exploited—either because expectations aren’t being set on what constitutes toxic behavior or because some people have a general attitude problem and simply do not care—the more time someone spends around them, the more damage they suffer. 

Letting people who create unnecessary friction stay in the system for too long undermines the effort of many others. Emotional depletion from being around them impacts how they work, what they do and finally what they collectively achieve together.

Letting bad behavior go by gives permission to such people to make other’s life more difficult by exploiting boundaries, disregarding commitments and using manipulative techniques to exploit others into doing things that serve their interest, without regard for the overall goal. 

To be upfront about what behaviors are acceptable and what behaviors won’t be tolerated, do this:

1. Work with the leadership team to define behavior that is looked down upon and the behavior that’s rewarded.
2. Have managers and leaders hold group discussions on the topic. Cite examples, encourage people to share their stories on friction they’ve faced at work (without naming and shaming others) and ensure everyone understands how not to behave going forward.
3. Provide a forum for employees to report cases of bad behavior and ensure to get to the bottom of each case.

Some teams burn up work time discussing the uncivil behaviors. Others spend work time strategizing about how to help the target or protect themselves should further incidents occur. These efforts sap time, energy, and creative zest from the team.
― Christine Pearson, The Cost of Bad Behavior

To reduce workplace friction, stop tolerating behaviors that normalize resistance and start encouraging behaviors where openness, support and curiosity is rewarded. 

Hold people accountable

People clash when ownership is unclear or authority is assumed—who needs to make a decision, who needs to approve, who owns the outcome or who’ll be responsible for making the final call. When boundaries of responsibility aren’t clearly defined or roles aren’t explicitly made clear, it’s easy to interpret friction as attitude and behavioral problems, while the issue is actually structural. 

When people don’t understand the scope of their role, they’re bound to misinterpret it. When someone seems to delay a decision, challenge a direction or demand that their input be considered, it may not be because they like to create trouble—it’s quite likely they have a wrong understanding of their role. 

To shift people from defending territory to collaborating towards outcomes, do this:

1. Remove the ambiguity around their roles. Clearly define the scope of their role and work.
2. Establish clear boundaries around who owns the decision, who provides input and who executes.
3. Make it clear who is accountable for results. This clarity reduces confusion and prevents finger-pointing when challenges arise. 

Successful organizations front-load accountability into their strategy. When front-loaded, accountability breeds better relationships, eliminates surprises, and vastly improves job satisfaction and performance.
― Henry J. Evans, Winning With Accountability

To reduce workplace friction, establish “who does what” upfront by ensuring roles are well defined and accountability is clear. 

Reduce communication gaps

Communication in an organization breaks down when its importance isn’t taken seriously—vague discussions, indirect feedback and unclear instructions makes it hard to separate the signal from the noise. Confusion, misunderstandings, expectation mismatch and faulty assumptions have one thing in common—communication gap. It’s this gap that adds to friction as people are forced to decode messages or fill in missing details.

When communication is unclear, incomplete or scattered, ambiguity increases which makes multiple interpretations possible—everyone assumes what seems right to them while disregarding what may actually be true. This leads to more time spent in clarifying, correcting and reworking on tasks than making progress and achieving goals. What starts as a gap in understanding can soon spiral into frustration, anger and resentment. 

Leave little room for interpretation by making communication more clearer and structured. Do this:

1. State expectations directly, explain the context behind decisions and be explicit about what action is needed. 
2. Document key decisions and keep important information organized and accessible.
3. Ensure meeting notes are circulated at the end of each meeting with clear action items and next steps.
4. Establish communication guidelines—what needs to be communicated, by when and which channels are suitable for what type of information. 
5. Encourage everyone to communicate more, not less.

Without effective communication, organizations shut down. You know that effective communication is missing when the environment is highly political, people talk about one another instead of to one another, and work just isn’t fun. Unhealthy communication environments can only attract top talent with money; employees aren’t engaged, and you risk the future success of the organization. 
― Ethan F. Becker, Mastering Communication at Work 

To reduce workplace friction, pay attention to how information is exchanged, decisions are communicated and whether the right channels are used to ensure everyone is in sync. 

Normalize disagreements

Challenging ideas directly, questioning an approach or sharing alternative opinions is not friction. When people mistake healthy disagreements to be friction, they turn argumentative and defensive. Instead of leaning into the disagreement, they try to run away from it. This prevents them from examining ideas, exploring a better path and collaborating on opportunities.

Treating disagreements as friction makes it personal–egos get involved, discussion feels unsafe and the conversation shifts from solving problems to proving who is right. People are either forced to push their ideas aggressively or those who can’t do it choose to keep quiet. Friction isn’t caused by disagreement, but by suppressed opinions or competing egos. 

Make conversations more open and productive by normalizing disagreements. Do this:

1. Talk about disagreements as a necessary part of decision-making and seeking alignment.
2. Encourage team members to challenge ideas without questioning intent and remaining respectful.
3. Teach the importance of “disagree and commit” once a decision has been made—supporting others even when they do not agree with their point of view and working with them instead of working against them.
4. Establish regular checkpoints, cross functional meetings and decision reviews to allow everyone to raise concerns early without letting minor issues turn into major conflicts.

In organizational settings, we tend to live on one of two ends of a continuum. We either have mismanaged agreement (conflict avoidance), or we tear the relational fabric between people to shreds. Conflict is the door to creativity, consensus, and commitment. If the team doesn’t learn how to talk straight and be tough on issues without blowing one another out of the water, they will probably never experience the creative synergy needed to achieve exceptional results.
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor

To reduce workplace friction, make disagreements as a necessary and temporary discomfort in pursuit of truth. Normalize conflicts to find the best possible answer.

Summary

1. Friction between team members makes it hard to achieve goals and get work done. 
2. Assumptions, when not explicitly clarified, leads to misalignment of expectations, misunderstandings and conflict. Turning them into an agreement upfront can prevent friction from popping up later.
3. Some disruptive people have the tendency to create unnecessary friction. Setting ground rules around behaviors that won’t be tolerated can prevent such people from being unnecessarily difficult.
4. When the line around roles and responsibilities is blurred, people assume conflicting roles and misinterpret the scope of their work. This leads to friction as it’s easy to point fingers when challenges arise as there’s no clear accountability for work.  
5. When clear, explicit and structured communication is an afterthought and not part of strategy, friction ensues as people are forced to decode messages or fill in missing details.
6. Not normalizing disagreements can make conversations feel unsafe as differences of opinion can feel personal, leading to friction from suppressed opinions or competing egos. 

Recommended Reading

The Friction Project by Robert Sutton

Managing With Power By Jeffrey Pfeffer

The post Want to Eliminate Workplace Friction? appeared first on TechTello.

When you work with someone who doesn’t get you, there’s friction, misunderstanding, confusion and a feeling of lack of support. Conversations go around in circles, unnecessary disagreements pop up and the lack of camaraderie makes work feel like a slog instead of a pleasant experience. This happens when you don’t take the time to understand the other person, don’t make an attempt to find out what matters to them and don’t invest in building relationships at work. 

Without connecting with people, jumping to solve problems, devise solutions or collaborate on a project feels annoying, difficult and burdensome. You hate the experience. You don’t want it to repeat. All the drama and negative emotions widen the gap instead of bringing you closer to people.  

The stronger are your work relationships, the easier it is to connect, collaborate and achieve goals. Relationships, built up over time, is the essential ingredient to be influential at work. People are more likely to engage with you when they feel a positive connection built using shared values, trust and mutual respect. They are more likely to value your opinions and follow your lead. They are more likely to advocate for your work and amplify your influence in meetings and decision-making processes. 

In today’s fast-paced world, it is tempting to look for shortcuts. But there are no quick paths to achieving lasting fame or fortune. The only sure way to success is to develop and nurture solid relationships that are grounded in trust.
― Patrick Galvin, The Trusted Way

Here are some of the practices I have used over the years to build real relationships at work:

Be authentic, don’t fake it

If you try to fake interest or manipulate people into believing you’re genuinely interested in their work, you may get their attention for a while, but it won’t lead to a lasting connection. Putting on an act of care, warmth and empathy makes others feel tricked, exploited and deceived. Acting brave when you’re scared inside, portraying an image of an expert when you know nothing about the topic or showing your approval when you disagree with something makes you come across as insecure, insincere and phony. 

Real relationships are built on a sense of connection that only shows up when you’re your most authentic self. When you don’t put on an act of perfection and embrace your vulnerability. When you’re willing to acknowledge gaps in your knowledge and show curiosity to learn from others. When you care less about building an image and more about understanding others.  

Deception tactics only lead to fake relationships. Real relationships are built using trust. Manipulating others to like you, respect you or even trust you is short-lived. Others can eventually make out if you were genuine or just faking it.

Building relationships is not about transactions—it’s about connections. When we come from an authentic, genuine place in ourselves, our efforts to connect with people work to their fullest. Our relationships develop more easily and last longer, and we feel better about the people.
— Michelle Tillis Lederman, 11 Laws of Likability

Don’t try to fake anything. Authenticity goes a long way in building real connections.

Prioritize assertiveness, not approval

If you try to over-accommodate, suppress your own needs and say yes to others only to gain their approval, be liked and accepted, you may appear charming in the short-term, but always being compliant, flexible and co-operative makes you come across as a person with low confidence and low self-esteem. Your lack of honesty, tendency to overcommit and sugarcoat a problem instead of addressing it directly can lead to blind spots, missed deadlines and make problems linger on. Your reluctance to give honest feedback when it’s needed the most can lead to missed opportunities. 

Real relationships are built when you speak your truth, even if it displeases someone or makes them mad. When you’re not trying very hard to appear agreeable, you end up being more helpful. When you offer honest feedback without fear of judgment, you come across as bold and confident. When you set boundaries on what’s acceptable and what’s not, you build respect by showing up as someone who knows what they want. 

People pleasing only leads to hollow connections. Real relationships are built using autonomy. Putting on a facade of false harmony causes the relationship to break down and crumble under pressure. 

You will never gain anyone’s approval by begging for it. When you stand confident in your own worth, respect follows.
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman–Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

Don’t appear agreeable to be liked. Build long-lasting relationships by prioritizing assertiveness over seeking approval. 

Make others feel important 

If you don’t hold others in high regard, recognize them for their work, praise and appreciate them when they do great work, you may come across as arrogant, self-centered and emotionally distant. Not elevating others with the worry that it will jeopardize your own position, make your achievements seem less significant or steal your spotlight prevents you from connecting with them at a deeper level.  

Real relationships are built by making others feel important—speaking positively about them, inviting them to share their expertise or making them feel heard and understood by actively listening to them. We naturally gravitate towards people who uplift us. So, making others feel valued is a strategic way to strengthen relationships, increase your influence and come across as a supportive colleague. But it’s important that your appreciation comes across as genuine, not forced. Others can easily sense when you are complimenting them to earn a favor or trying to manipulate them to see things your way. Fake interactions can leave others feeling used which can make you come across as inauthentic, opportunist or dishonest—someone who can’t be trusted or taken seriously.

Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival—to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated. When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air. And after that vital need is met, you can then focus on influencing or problem solving. This need for psychological air impacts communication in every area of life.
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Put your ego aside. Create meaningful connections by demonstrating intellectual curiosity and showing interest in others and their work. 

Acknowledge your weakness

If you always portray an image of strength, you may hide your mistakes or try to cover up your weaknesses. Coming across as a person without flaws makes you appear cold and inhuman. Other humans, being inherently flawed, find it hard to relate to you. Not being able to see the “real you” behind that facade of perfectionism prevents others from finding a common link that will connect them to you. Using strength as a protective shield can also invoke feelings of unworthiness, inadequacy and self-doubt in others—they may avoid you to save themselves from those negative emotions. 

Real relationships are built by being vulnerable—showing up as a person who’s afraid just like others, someone who doesn’t know everything, who is not always showing up as a symbol of excellence. Sharing your mistakes, acknowledging your failures and openly talking about your weaknesses not only engages others, it encourages them to be vulnerable too. It unlocks conversations that are based on honesty, sense of belonging, acceptance and inclusion. It creates a feeling of shared identity and emotional connection.   

Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Stop hiding your weakness. Your flaws are what builds relationships by bringing you close to others. 

Be less judgmental, more curious

If you have the habit of jumping to conclusions, blaming others or assuming bad intent when others act in ways that do not match your interest or when things don’t work out the way you expected, you may show up in ways that come across as opinionated and judgmental. Refusing to look beyond your personal narrative and evaluate the situation from another person’s perspective makes you attribute behavior to malice, bad character or incompetence. Your judgmental attitude puts others off and strains relationships—no one likes being victimized, judged and criticized. No one likes getting a “poor” character certificate.  

Real relationships are built by validating assumptions, showing curiosity to understand others and exploring alternative perspectives. It requires not labeling others as “lazy, boring, incompetent, stupid, irritating, biased, reckless or rude” and instead giving them a chance and getting to know who they really are. When you make an attempt to listen with curiosity, you show your intent to understand others. Feeling heard and understood is what builds great relationships. 

It’s not at all hard to understand a person; it’s only hard to listen without bias.
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

Don’t be quick to judge others. Asking what happened gets you closer to understanding, which connects people and strengthens relationships. 

Give with no strings attached

If you tend to put your own interests ahead of other people’s needs, you may evaluate every situation based on how it benefits you. Will sharing knowledge increase your visibility? Will solving other people’s problems earn you credit? Will attending an office party lead to better connections with the higher-ups? When your interest and participation is only based on what you’ll gain and what you have to lose, anything that involves a lose-win situation is out of scope. Anything that involves a sacrifice without getting anything in return is a big “no-no.” Anything that does not make you look better or supreme compared to others is of no value. You try to give based on what you can get. This keeps your relationships superficial and need based. 

Real relationships are built by putting other people’s needs ahead of your own. Sharing your knowledge and experience without boasting, helping those in need without expecting anything in return or mentoring others without any recognition makes you come across as a genuine person who actually cares about others. Your “giving” attitude plays a big role in the love, support and respect you gain. Giving does not mean sacrificing to the level of personal harm or always putting others ahead of your own needs. It means not evaluating every situation through the lens of gain and loss, not trying to turn every situation to your advantage and not making a big deal out of every contribution.

Success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people. Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?
― Adam M. Grant, Give and Take

Don’t treat others as your points of leverage. Bond with others by lifting them up and trying to give more than what you take. 

Connect beyond work

If you keep your interactions limited to work—bug to fix, feature to build, tasks to complete, design to review, projects to deliver—your conversations feel emotionless and transactional. Without emotions, people feel detached, disconnected and indifferent. They forget about you as soon as the work is done. Without making an attempt to know others beyond work, you fail to find a common link—like a shared interest, similar life experiences, cultural similarities or even alignment on personal philosophy—which keeps your relationships superficial without establishing a deeper connection. 

Real relationships are built by taking an interest in others beyond work—showing curiosity to know about their background, their family, their schooling, their likes, dislikes and their personal goals. When you take a moment to understand the human behind work, you create the opportunity to make them feel seen and heard. It creates an instant connection that no amount of work can do. Knowing others’ background, history and experience also puts you in a unique position to show empathy and compassion. 

Perhaps to really know another person, you have to have a glimmer of how they experience the world. 
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person

Don’t make communication transactional. Build strong relationships by opening up, sharing your history and inviting others to share it too. 

Summary

1. Faking interest in others just to get closer to them doesn’t build a lasting relationship because others can sense when you’re genuinely interested in them and when you’re just faking it. Also, putting on an act of bravery or portraying an image of expertise makes others feel cheated which leads to disconnection and distrust. 
2. Becoming too agreeable or constantly seeking approval does not make you likable. Rather, it makes you come across as a person with low worth and self-confidence. To build relationships, be assertive—show up strong, confident and decisive. 
3. When you refuse to lift others up out of fear of being overshadowed or less respected, you give up on the opportunity to make others feel valued, understood and appreciated, which is necessary to connect and form meaningful relationships that are based on feelings of trust and mutual respect. 
4. If you put on a facade of perfection by hiding your mistakes and weaknesses, you prevent others from seeing the “real you.” Deep connections are formed by accepting your flaws, embracing your vulnerabilities and showing a deep desire to learn and become better, not by hiding imperfections.
5. It’s easy to label others negatively when they act against our predisposed beliefs, ideas and expectations. Not considering the context or the alternate perspectives makes you assume the worst in others, when there are other possible explanations. Being opinionated and judgmental strains relationships instead of building them. 
6. When you keep self-interest at the core of your decisions, you evaluate every situation from the lens of how it benefits you, not how you can help others. Selfless contributions without expecting a return on investment of your time, energy or attention is necessary to build real relationships that aren’t based on give-and-take.
7. When all your interactions with others are confined to projects and tasks, you fail to see the human behind work. This keeps your connections superficial, emotionless and transactional. To build real relationships, you have to take interest in people that go beyond work.

Recommended Reading

How to Know a Person By David Brooks

Get Better By Todd Davis

The post How to Build Real Relationships at Work appeared first on TechTello.