Like fast food or coffee at Starbucks, maybe team leadership comes in three sizes.
Extra large leadership. “This is what you’re doing. Make it happen, let me know when it’s done.” The old school, top-down approach. This is what I thought all management was like many moons ago. In my experience this is only useful when people need to think only about what they’re doing, not why they’re doing it or how they do it. Leadership sets the work, lays out the exact process for doing that work, and closely monitors the work as its done. See also: Taylorism.
Large leadership. “Here are some things that need doing. Do one of them, keep me posted.” This is where I think cohesive teams of knowledge workers should aim to be. Leadership lays out the tasks to be done, makes the work to do clear, and gets out of the way. Luckily this is a lot more frequent lately, but probably not so much in part-time labor. Leadership still monitors the flow of work, but not overtly as in Taylorism.
Medium leadership. “Do what you think is most important. Let me know how to remove obstacles.” I suspect most leaders really want to get here, but are constrained, imagined or in reality, by some organizational detail. It’s definitely where I want to be in leadership style. High trust in the team, high trust in the leadership. Lots of unicorn dust.
Oddly enough, I think some teams and projects require large leadership and some require medium leadership. Some people want a little structure to their work, some projects require well-defined milestones to rally around. Other people can effectively guide themselves to useful outcomes, other projects are less about the milestone and more about the journey.
