202104292040 Eat the losses

Sometimes, being a leader means suffering for the team.

This relates to the fact that 202104291525 It's not a leader's job to be the best at everything. When we 202104291526 Make the hard decisions there will be times when we collect information from our team (who are the experts) and they will turn out to be wrong.

A bad leader will blame the team, the expert, or the information, but ultimately, it's the leader's responsibility to eat the loss. We should try to level up our teams and their abilities of course, but more importantly we need to unify the team around the healing, learning, and growing.

Be careful of ego. It will try to push you to make sure that everyone knows you were right or that you understand or that things are fine. Don't let it win. Remember that 202104291947 Our purpose as leaders is to serve others.

Concerning handling problems that need to go away:

• Acknowledge the thing
• Acknowledge why it's a problem
• Acknowledge your role in it
• Address what will happen next
• Follow through consistently
• Allow people (not leaders) to vent and grieve. This means that the leaders suffer in private for the benefit of the organization. Pouring out your grief about it creates less space for theirs because of your positional authority.

Another way of saying this is, if you know it's bad and I know it's bad and we're dropping the bad thing, that's the end of it for leadership. Leaders never get to kick it down the line or ask employees to eat it for your comfort. Our job is to sit in the discomfort and lead your people through their grief.