Who's it all for?
As a manager, I'm responsible for units of customer and business value. To make that happen, I've been entrusted with a team.
As a people leader, I have the privilege of leading the people on that team. To ensure that they're happy, productive, growing, and more...
Among my personality traits is a great regard for belonging. I truly believe that if all of the contributors to an effort find common cause, common identity, the thing will be wildly successful.
As I developed and matured as a leader, I adopted a pattern of talking about We. Shared identity. I want the team to deliver well, I want the team's code to be secure, I want the team to own their work. Team. Team. Team.
It might sound ridiculously semantic, but stay with me here. As I've developed in my career, I'm working to adopt a YOU first perspective. I want YOU to be happy. I want YOU to be productive. I want YOU to be developing yourself.
Of course, I'm going to monitor the aggregated output of the team, but if my team members are doing well. If they're happy. If they're productive, chances are the team is going to be delivering well. And the inverse is true as well.
Ultimately, I'm responsible for a number of things, but if I live up to the privilege of leading the people on my team well, all of those responsibilities will work themselves out. I'll be successful as a manager because I was successful as a leader first.
I want YOU to do well. I trust that, if you're doing well, the team will succeed. If both of those things happen, then I've succeeded.
Isn't leadership cool?