Okay. So a lot of the times when people come to me and they want this self managed team, this team who is able to take their work and absolutely own it, who's coming to you with solutions versus problems. The leaner typically jumps to my team is unable to do that because, and it has to do with something about their people.
They don't have the skill set. They're not tenured enough. They, they're tactical thinkers. They just don't think strategically. They'd never be able to do that because they're constantly coming to me with questions. They could never just own it. They need me to operate. But here's the thing. Your people aren't the problem.
You don't need more people. You don't need better people. You don't need more skilled people. You need a better system. And sure you might find a really, really, really good people who are probably operating beyond their current role that you can drop into your non existent system and they can still produce results.
But gosh, that is not a way to lead. And that is not a way to lead. That's going to allow you to be successful into the next, um, team that you take on into the next level of leadership. Because if you were constantly having to burn. Your new team to the ground and start from scratch, stop looking at the people and start looking at yourself.
If you have to have the most high performing people who are super tenured in their field and. Have loads of experience and these awesome skill sets to be successful. We've got a problem. It is our job as leaders, not to manage the talent we're given, but to amplify their potential, to take the talent we're given and allow them to excel beyond what even they thought was capable, that is our job.
It is our job to come into teams and not look at the people, but look at the system they are operating within and say, how is this system hindering my team's ability to work at their highest level? How is the lack of clarity? around priorities. How is the wildly outdated systems? How is the processes that require 17 steps and 15 different sign offs to get anything done?
How is the toxic culture contributing to my team's ability to do that?
And instead of focusing on our team and saying, well, why can't you figure out how to work without around all of these things? Well, those things are just the norm here. We just got to make it work and put the onus on your team. How can we start taking accountability for that? Because that right there is our job as leaders is not to manage our people and be cheerleaders.
Really. Well, you can do it. Just make it work. No, our teams are tired of cheerleaders. Our teams want people. They want leaders who get in there and say, I see your barriers and here's what we're going to do about it. How can we start approaching it from a place of curiosity and saying, not, why aren't my people holding up?
Why isn't the system working for my people? And how can I create a system for them? That allows them to excel and you know what this was just supposed to be the opener of this Episode but this is about to be the whole episode because here's what I want you guys to go do I really want you to ideate on this.
I want you to go do go answer these questions I want you to think about your ideal state of what it looks like for you to operate at this level of senior leadership In your perfect world, what are you doing? What are you focusing on in a day to day basis? What does your day to day look like? How is your team operating?
What are they taking ownership of? What does that look like? And then what I want you to do is write down what are the top three to five gaps preventing you from hitting that ideal state? What are the three to five biggest things about how your team is operating, how you are leading that are preventing you from getting to that ideal state?
And for each one of those three to five things, I want you to ask the question, why are these happening? And I want you to do it five times. So when you say, I can't get to this ideal state of leading because I want to be spending my time on strategic work, but I'm spending my time constantly answering questions, reprioritizing, um, solving problems for my team.
Well, why? Well, because they're constantly doing drive bys, constantly showing up my office, constantly sending me emails, um, that I have to answer. Well, why? What types of questions are they asking you? What types of problems are they having you come to you to solve? Why can't they solve that problem on their own?
What do they lack? And I don't want you to jump straight to skill set because Nine times out of 10, they lack some sort of clarity. They lack some sort of process. They lack some sort of system in order to execute on those problems. And because they don't have those things, they're coming to you. You have become the system because we have not done the work to create the clarity, the structure they need to execute on their own.
If your team is not operating independently, don't look at the people, look at the system. If you don't have one, that is the focus. And this is the stuff that we do inside Liberated Leader. This is exactly what we are diving into in the next immersion program around self manage team. So if you're looking at your responses to those questions and you need help bridging the gap between that leader you want to be and where your team is right now, jump into the show notes and the link will be waiting for you and you can DM me with any questions.
But right now I want you to go write down those questions and do the freaking work.
