Today marks the last in my series on defining characteristics of leadership.  I hope that you have enjoyed them and that you have found them beneficial.

The last facet of leadership that I will be discussing is perhaps the hardest and yet the most important.

As leaders we must release the work, the results, the process, the progress and even the direction of the organization into the hands of our team. If we don’t release it to them, they will never have the necessary intrinsic motivators necessary to be fully engaged and successful.

Our releasing actually must begin at the very first discussion about goals and organizational direction. As the leader we may have certain key components that we feel are non-negotiable but we need to keep them few and simple. Leaders must release the work to the team (and they in turn must release the work to those they lead) if we ever want to learn about team-work, collaboration, unity and synergy.

Releasing the work is a humbling process and requires that we as leaders have a trust in the character and ability of our team. Releasing the work is giving people permission to try and permission to fail. Releasing the work is opening wide the possibilities of what might be both for the individual team member but also for the entire organization. If we cannot release the work we will burnout, personally stifle the health and growth of our organization, drastically reduce the trust our team members have for us and perhaps ultimately relegate us to managers of the status quo.

Photo credit: Beverly & Pack / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND
Photo credit: realblades / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
Photo credit: Destinys Agent / Foter / CC BY-NC