Leadership Philosophy - Todd Henry

This episode of the Herding Tigers podcast on Leadership Philosophy by Todd Henry is one of my favorite. It is a dense one that clearly outlines how to lead a diverse creative team well. This episode is worth 11 minutes of your time: Your Leadership Philosophy Herding Tigers podcast

Some leaders never successfully make the transition from control to influence. As a result…

the team is essentially cursing they’re over controlling nature behind their back because they don’t feel like they have the freedom they need to be able to deliver ideas on their own. So, the capacity of the team never expands beyond the capacity of the leader.

One of the “transitions we have to make when we move from maker to manager is we have to transition from control to influence. It is no longer our job to do the work, per se, but it is our job to lead the work.”

Henry goes on to quote Brian Koppelman:

The only way to lead such a diverse team of creative people is ensuring that the driving vision is clear then letting people do what they were hired to do.

How do you set a leadership philosophy?

1. How do you define what quality work looks like? What is the criteria you are using to determine if something is good enough? Clearly articulate to your team what works, what doesn’t work, what good is, what good isn’t.
   1. “It’s really important for your team to have target to shoot for, if they don’t have a target, or the target is constantly moving, they’re going to struggle to bring their best effort because they’re not going to bring their best effort if they feel the target is going to move tomorrow.“
2. Risk and failure. Have a serious conversation with your team about what kind of risks are acceptable what happens when someone takes a risk and fails? Are you going to protect them? Is it ok that they fail? Is it ever ok that they don’t fail? What are the circumstances?
3. How do you determine the right idea? Any criteria you use?
4. Credit. Articulate who is given credit for the work. Is it the team, is it the individual, how does it work?
5. Conflict. What should team members do when there is conflict? Ignore it? Bring serious conflicts to me so that I can make sure everyone gets an equal hearing?
6. Opportunity. Who gets opportunity on your team? How is it that people get promoted?

If you have not articulated this clearly to your team, you might start by asking a team member some of these questions. “How do you think I determine what quality work looks like? How do you think I give credit?”

How do we establish a bounded autonomy? Determine and communicate a leadership philosophy.