“It’s very easy to bond with your team over a shared moan. It’s a lot harder to champion something you didn’t pick.”
Hey Rollers,
It’s been a couple of months since the last one of these. I’ll spare you the excuses and get straight into something that’s come up in a few of my conversations with clients over the last month.
Picture a manager walking out of a leadership meeting. A decision has been made, and it’s not one they love. They head back to their team, and it comes out something like this:
“So… they’ve told us we have to do this. I know. I know. But what can we do?”
I understand why it happens. You spend most of your week with your team, not with the leadership group. You want to feel like you’re part of the team, and in that moment, sharing a bit of a moan, you are. It feels like loyalty.
I don’t think it is.
What the team actually hears is that decisions are things that happen to them, and that the person meant to lead them through this one doesn’t believe in it either. And leadership, when it eventually filters back up (it always does), sees someone who isn’t really one of them.
So you end up in no man’s land. Not quite part of the team anymore, because you’re the one rolling the thing out. Not part of leadership either, because you’ve just distanced yourself from it. Floating somewhere in the middle, on your own.
The fix, I think, starts with one word. Swap “they” for “we”.
“We as a leadership team have discussed this, and we believe we need to do it because…”
But it only works if you’ve done the work first. You’ve got to land the why in your own head before you take it to anyone else. If you can’t explain why, that’s a conversation to have with your leadership before you have it with your team.
It also doesn’t mean faking enthusiasm. Most people have a pretty good BS detector. You can absolutely say, “I’m not sure about this part yet. Here’s what I do know, and I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.” That’s honest and it’s still leading.
The reality is most of the change you roll out as a manager won’t be change you chose. Championing it anyway is the job.
Until next week.
Keep rolling.
Justin 👊
Take Action in 3 Minutes:
Think about the last decision you passed on to your team that you didn’t love.
👉 What words did you use? “They” or “we”?
If it was “they”, ask yourself: what would I need to understand to genuinely say “we”? Then go and get that answer.