Lead, follow, OR get out-of-the-way. Thomas Paine said it a couple of hundred years ago. Business and military leaders have reused it persistently since.
The conjunction is wrong.
The accountability to lead is obvious.
The need for a leader to follow is less obvious. Powerful leaders can stifle good discussion, idea generation and decision-making just by their presence and strongly held perspectives and opinions. The leader by title is not necessarily the best person to lead a specific discussion or decision-making process.
…AND get out-of-the-way. The direction is clear, the team is aligned and moving forward. Competent team members are running their parts of the business. Don’t be the bottleneck that slows things down. For expediency, effectiveness and agility most decisions need to be made without you. Trust your team to do so. Stop inserting yourself in the process and stop second guessing the decisions made by your team. The quality of decisions made without you are a good meter of how well you have set the vision, aligned the team and established the right parameters.
It is a good thing when your team functions well without you. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.
