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What does it mean to light the path?

Did you ever feel lonely “being at the top”, having to figure things out on your own? To plan every move, solve every problem, make every choice?

Many leaders believe their job is to have all those answers. But what if that belief is the very thing holding them back?

I’d argue the times are gone when being a leader meant having to be the one who has all the answers.

It’s not about leading the way anymore. Leadership is (slowly but clearly) moving from “leading the way” to “lighting the path” …

Making the destination unmistakably clear:
→ “This is where we’re headed.”

Explaining why it matters:
→ “This is why it’s worth the effort.”

And helping the team believe in themselves:
→ “You’ve got what it takes to get there.”

You’re not there to plan every detail. You’re not there to carry the weight alone.

Light the path. Give them the nudge they need to overcome hesitancy and rise to the challenge. But then, trust your team to figure out how to walk it.

When they succeed, it will feel like their success (but they’ll never forget who lit the way).

Keep lighting the path!

Who’s responsible for that?

What empowerment means:
The leader trusts the team with making choices.

How it’s often done:
The leader trusts the team with making choices as long as it’s the same choice the leader would have made.

The worst version might be this:
The leader trusts the team with making choices as long as it’s the same choice the leader would have made and unfairly assigns responsibility for any negative outcomes to the team, even when the leader would have made the same choice.

Do you work for a leader who truly trusts their team? Please drop me a note! I’m assembling a list of leaders who light the path.

Making the right choices

Ultimately, the course of an organization is determined by the sum of thousands of choices that each member in the organization makes each and every day.

Some of them are tiny, others gigantic. From the intern jotting down minutes to the CEO making acquisitions, everyone plays a role in the journey. Each choice, each action collectively determines whether the ship sails smoothly or veers off course.

How often do we see organizations with strong visions crumble? Not because of external threats or market turbulence, but from the discord within. The failure often isn’t in crafting the vision but in aligning the thousands of daily choices towards it.

It’s a myth that the course of an organization could be shaped by a handful of boardroom resolutions. It’s more likely to be the result of an intricate web of choices that spans the whole organization.

Aligning those choices across the organization and empowering each member to make the “right” choices is the actual purpose of a strategy.

And it can only work when it’s communicated in a way that makes it easy to translate it into how choices are made. It’s what I call lighting the path and it’s one of the most powerful tools a leader can have.

How do you align choices in your organization?

The shift in smart leadership

“The smartest person is usually the person in the room who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room” – Scott Kelly

ISS commander Scott Kelly found that to be the most effective way of leading a mission team.

That’s a big shift in the role of a leader. A few decades ago, a leader had to be the one who knew all the answers. Not knowing an answer was a sign of weakness.

But it turns out that most questions that are easy to answer have already been answered. The important questions that remain are the ones for which it’s impossible to know all the answers.

That’s why the most effective leaders today tap into the knowledge of others. They empower their team to find answers. They inspire their audience to look for (their own) answers. They light the path and provide direction so that we can explore the path together.

Leaders are effective not because they know but because they want to know. We trust them not because they have the one and only answer but because they have the will to find the truth.

The double meaning of status updates

Monday is status update day in many teams.

Sadly, the name has grown to carry a double meaning. Because too often it’s not only about the status of the project anymore but also about the status among the people in the team.

Too often, status updates are about “look how much I did last week”, or “look what I’m up to”, or “look, I’ve got everything under control”. In too many teams, the purpose of the status update meetings is rather to ensure that the boss sees how well people do than it is to actually discuss the actual project status.

How about a shift this week? What if rather than about status you made it about enabling? Instead of “What have you done to support the team?” you asked “What can the team do to support you?”

That way, the purpose of the meeting itself becomes to raise the status of each member as much as possible. It’s about making each member the best member they can be. A team member that creates better because we – as a team – enable her to do so.

Monday could be team enabling update once a while.

Spread the Word

Picture of Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz