Leaders: Do You Even Deserve To Have A Team?

In the past, I have built a great team, in my own standards- despite a mixed bag of personalities. It is not ideal as I have not hired most of them myself. You find a lot of them completely opposite of what you want to surround yourself with or the talents you’d like to hone within.

But that is the point of leadership: to be constantly challenged, confront it, and turn it around to work for you. It is just the way it is. Without this, do you really even deserve to have a team?

There will always be people working for you that are difficult, self-destructive, “emo”, whiner, gossip-monger, etcetera. It will never be perfect, but it is not really all that bad. You lead because that is part of your job. I always believe that you will always learn something from anybody in this world, which is no different. Avoiding the situation and passing the issue to others won’t do the job. You’re pushing the chance to fix your team, and you lose your credibility as well.  Why not take this as a challenge? Why not get your hands dirty, get to the root of the personality and find ways to turn them around, focusing on their strengths (despite the bad attitude), empowering that portion and transform the aura of that person to meld to the mould? Too much of a job? Well then, goodbye, respect!

It is presumptuous to think that you get to a high position in a company and you expect to do less of working and do more of bossing. There are so many of this around; it is a virus. Don’t be one. It is quite… what is the word… caustic.

No matter how you think you could entrust your employees to other people, you just need to trust the good. After all, we’re all adults, and we all have to take our individual responsibilities. You just hope that they’d carry on no matter what with a smile on their face. It could happen, for sure. But dynamics are a tricky playmate.

Unfortunately, it is not a good ending within this story. Things crumble down for some. People do things differently and destroy the utopia of ambitions. Not everyone could be a great manager. They destroy things by avoiding the situation and letting it burden the rest. It is a domino effect. You still hope for the best. You find silver linings. But having the knowledge that a situation crumbled your team down is disheartening.

It is hard not to care for something that you invested your passion in, something you’ve built, only to learn that it is just a sandcastle.

The point is, you are given a team, face them. Stop fidgeting around, saying how much you dislike them and do your job. Whoever leaves will carry your name forever – it depends how good or bad is reflective of what you’ve done for your team in the end.