The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan, 5th Edition

CHAPTER 4Evolve the Culture. Leverage Diversity

Leaders inspire, enable, and empow‐er others to do their absolute best together to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose. But to be a great leader, you must know why people follow you, what you should do, and how you can help those following you. Because leadership, culture, and communications are inextricably linked, these next two chapters will tackle all three as you lay the foundation of your leadership to bridge tactical capacity into your team.

“They can because they think they can.” —Virgil

The goal is to build a self‐confident team. You can elicit self‐confidence in your team by delegating and building trust in four areas:

1. Direction. Providing direction helps others follow. Start with the problem you need solved or the opportunity you can seize. Be clear on what they should accomplish. Then, let them determine how to get it done. Finally, seed self‐confidence by empowering them to do it their way within appropriate guidelines or strategic boundaries.
2. Authority. It's counterintuitive to some, but bounded authority is more confidence‐building than is blanket authority. Strategic boundaries for tactical decisions give people confidence in their ability to make those tactical decisions without worrying about others second‐guessing them.
3. Resources. Instead of giving them the resources you think they need, ask ...