Leadership: 8 Principles for Working with a Team

At Monday's meeting, the manager says they trust the team and welcome initiative. On Wednesday, an employee reports that she cannot finish by Friday: the data she needs still has not arrived. The manager's first response is to ask why she did not think of this earlier. She starts defending herself. The conversation grows longer, but the data does not appear.

Different conclusions can follow that meeting. The manager may decide that people lack responsibility. Someone on the team may conclude that bad news is best kept back. Meanwhile, a practical task remains: identify the dependencies, reconsider the deadline and agree how to notice a delay earlier next time.

Leadership becomes visible in these ordinary decisions. The eight principles below can be examined through your own meetings, messages and agreements. They do not require everyone to adopt the same management style, but they can help reveal a gap between what you say you value and what happens at work.

When a project runs late, reconstruct the sequence. When did the missing data become an issue? Who was supposed to provide it? How could the team report the risk? Some causes may be external: a supplier, a client or a technical fault. Others concern how work was organised: a deadline agreed without checking, an owner never identified or no intermediate meeting.

A manager does not need to take responsibility for everyone else's decisions. It is useful, however, to name their own contribution specifically: “I confirmed the deadline without checking this dependency.” That makes it easier to assign next actions than a general accusation of irresponsibility. Acknowledging your mistake does not remove the need to understand other participants' actions as well.

Respect for time sounds convincing until an urgent assignment arrives in the evening with an expectation of an immediate reply. Autonomy also remains unclear when every small detail requires approval. People notice what the manager does when following a stated value becomes inconvenient.

If evening contact is sometimes necessary, define what counts as urgent, whom it concerns and what response is expected. If you want autonomy, agree which decisions a person can make independently and which require approval. A general value then gains clear boundaries, and the team spends less time guessing.

Bad news affects managers too. You can be angry about lost time and still gather facts before responding. What is known? What is an assumption? Which decision is needed today, and which requires more information?

Amy Edmondson studies team psychological safety: a shared belief about whether it is safe to take interpersonal risks, such as asking a question, acknowledging a mistake or expressing disagreement. In her study, psychological safety was associated with team learning behaviour. Edmondson's research.

This provides something concrete to observe in everyday work. What happens after an uncomfortable message? Can people examine the problem, or do the next twenty minutes go into defending the person who raised it? Expectations of performance can remain clear while early reporting of difficulties is treated as a useful part of the work.

“We need a strong presentation” is insufficient when participants picture different results. One prepares detailed calculations, another creates striking slides, while the manager expects a brief decision for the client. Everyone may work hard and still face extensive revisions.

Before starting, agree whom the work is for, which decision the result should support and what criteria will be used to accept it. Then check time, access to materials and decision-making authority. If a new task is being added to an agreed workload, discuss what changes in the priorities as well.

One employee wants to learn a skill, another wants to improve a difficult process and a third values predictable hours. A shared goal can accommodate these different interests. Requiring everyone to be equally enthusiastic about a project only makes it harder to discuss what actually matters to them.

A question about motivation is meaningful when the answer can influence something. Could part of a new assignment go to someone who wants to learn, with support available? Could important meetings avoid hours already agreed as non-working time? Be honest about constraints too, so that a discussion of interests does not become a promise you cannot keep.

When a colleague presents a fact that contradicts an announced plan, defending it can be tempting. Time has gone into the decision, the client has been told, and changing course may feel like losing confidence. For the work itself, however, the question is whether the plan's underlying assumptions still hold.

You can say, “I hadn't accounted for that dependency. Let's check what it changes.” Then establish who will clarify the information and when the next decision will be made. A revised deadline has an understandable reason. If the plan stays, explain why the new information does not change it.

“You're irresponsible” leaves little room for a practical conversation. A specific description offers a different starting point: “The report arrived two days late, so colleagues could not prepare the proposal.” You can then find out what happened and when the delay could still have been noticed.

The agreement that follows should also be specific: what risk should be reported, to whom and at what point, and what resources are needed for the next assignment? Afterwards, check that you understand those actions in the same way. If a similar problem recurs, examine it in light of the previous agreement rather than beginning each time with the same judgement about character.

The article on emotional intelligence and IQ looks more closely at distinguishing your own reaction, an assumption and another person's behaviour.

Sometimes a manager's help consists of removing an obstacle: getting an answer from another department, clarifying a priority or arranging access. The team can then complete the task itself. If the manager repeatedly takes the work back, people can struggle to understand where their responsibility ends.

Before delegating, agree on the expected result, deadline, authority and an intermediate check-in. If the method differs from yours, return to the criteria: is there an error, or is this another acceptable approach? That helps distinguish a necessary correction from a preference for having everything done your way.

Choose one situation in which your words and actions diverged. What was promised? What did you do when difficulties appeared? Which next actions became clear to the team? Where possible, check your assumption with a direct question rather than deciding on other people's behalf what they thought.

Choose one change for the following week: checking dependencies earlier, describing the result more clearly or agreeing an intermediate signal of delay. Then look at what happened to a specific assignment. Was there less rework? Did important information arrive sooner? Were fewer expectations left unagreed?

These observations cannot provide a final verdict on a manager, but they can make the work easier to understand. If people are trying hard and the result is repeatedly unsatisfactory, the way work is organised also deserves attention. See “Why maximum effort does not always produce results” for a closer look.