Navigate the sea with your teammates
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” — Antoine de Saint Exupéry
This sentence contains the most helpful hint to building real leadership with the people with whom you collaborate every day with the labelled role of manager. You have to inspire people and gain their trust. You cannot simply share with them a roadmap and a list of tasks, but you have to engage them and build together a plan that takes into consideration not only requests that come from the stakeholders but also their feedback and their insights and why not, their ambitions too.
How you can engage people in a company vision?
First of all, you have to share with them the big picture of the company’s target, not only through your voice and storytelling but involve them in the right session, or involving the right people in your internal meetings. They have to feel part of the whole company's objectives, not only an employee committed to his daily tasks. They must be recognized, through feedback and also with action that can have a direct impact on their career growth.
They have to feel that someone takes care of them as employees who need to match their ambitions with the company's ambitions.
