Management Mess to Leadership Success summary

When you eat at a hotel breakfast buffet, are you the type to try to beat everyone to the punch of ladling impossible quantities of every food item onto your plate, or do you recognize that there’s more than enough food for everyone and that you can let your neighbor grab a croissant first? The first reflects a scarcity mindset – I need to get as much for myself before it’s gone. The second is one of abundance – there’s more than enough for everyone.

Now, imagine one of your colleagues approaches you with a concern: they feel you’re overshadowing them by taking credit for all their projects and contributions – you announce all of the major campaigns and projects they’ve spearheaded without any mention of their contribution. This isn’t an easy conversation or confrontation to navigate! Let’s take a cue from the previous section, though, and say you take a few breaths, temper your first instinct to indignantly refute their confrontation, and reflect on the matter. Maybe you recognize that this isn’t unlike the breakfast buffet scenario: in hoarding attention, laurels, and accomplishments, you may be failing to think abundantly, and poorly attempting to forward your own reputation and career at your teammate’s expense.

Think for a moment about the commitments that form the cornerstones of your life. Perhaps they include working a job; exercising weekly; raising a family; nurturing friendships; taking a foreign language class; or spearheading a philanthropic fundraising drive. Your list depends on your current timeline and responsibilities, but the specificity of your duties isn’t as important as your approach to them. Everyone drops the ball on something sometime, but if you’re consistently overcommitted and burned-out, it might be time to set aside some time to honestly assess your capacity and priorities.

Like Russian dolls, each of these commitments in themselves contains further commitments. If you’re a boss, for example, part of your job is leading difficult conversations, giving tough feedback, and firing people. If you're taking a class, you need to do the practice assignments and homework. There are varying levels of quality on the deliverables, of course, and there’s always more you can take on, but that’s the crux of the matter at hand: Do you know when to say no?

Being a leader means facilitating and nurturing positive change. Remember, leaders aren’t hired to maintain the status quo. Whether you like it or not, change will come no matter what, in the form of market competitors, legislative changes, pressure from the board, pushes to expand the bottom dollar, organizational and structural reshuffling, global pandemics – the list goes on and on. Many changes aren’t under your control, but what is under your purview of impact are your relationships with your team and your people.

Nurturing and investing in your interpersonal relationships, mentorship, and communication will impact you as well as the team and company’s performance. All relationships are bidirectional and cocreated, so how you relate and feel about the people in your teams will influence your performance, your approach to problems and solutions, and the attitude and morale of your colleagues.

Your team will be happy to have a flute of champagne at the standard, yearly holiday party, but you know what can leave a bigger mark? Investing an hour of your time to draft a list of each colleague’s special contribution to a big win and sharing it in person the next day – bonus points if you memorize the list by heart. It may cost less than a case of wine, but this method of sharing credit and showing gratitude in a personalized way reflects your sincere appreciation and is sure to be unforgettable.

Many leaders tend toward perfectionism; setting your sights on cosmically high goals may have gotten you to your position, but you need to temper that when you’re working with a group of people and within the earthly constraints of a business. Instead of focusing on what’s perfect or not, try to define what extraordinary looks like. Practice valuing and recognizing when your team achieves it. This doesn’t mean institutionalizing a regular, watered-down kudos circle – people want to feel like they’ve worked for a real win and are celebrating a hard-earned victory, not getting a perfunctory pat on the back for maintaining a baseline. But if it’s been a months-long grind in the office and that impossible project reached the finish line in the nick of time, that’s a win – and it’s a cause for taking a breather and reflecting and recognizing the group’s accomplishment.

You’ve learned the value of listening, attuning to change, and leading your team to victory. 

And remember, not only are the principles outlined here applicable across all fields but also beyond the confines of the office. Authenticity, character, gratitude, and grace are timeless values that you can practice to become a leader in your department, company, home, and – well – everywhere.