Sometimes it seems that weeks go by without me confronting some kind of leadership folly in myself or a teammate.  We just go along our days, getting the work done and doing the things.  This week I found myself ending the week with an apology tour.  An apology tour sounds awful, but it can be one of your most effective leadership actions.  

Here's what happened: I was in a meeting (virtual) with three of my team members, one who is my direct report and with whom I have established a lot of trust over time, one who is a brand new report to me, and one who is about 90 days into the company and reports to someone else on my team.  At some point something came up that triggered me to be really annoyed.  I let that be known by interrupting who was speaking and saying my piece.  The meeting went quiet and the person speaking stated understanding then resumed the discussion.  The call ended and I had to immediately jump on another call.  I felt awful.  As soon as I could, I personally apologized to each person on that call.  I appreciated their grace, but knew that me taking the time and being very clear about how my behavior was unacceptable was telling them three very important things to help foster our work culture: 

1. Leaders apologize 

2. That type of behavior is not acceptable on our team

3. Their psychological safety and comfort at work is important to me

I didn't apologize for me, though I did feel better.  I apologized for them and for our culture.  Leaders must take very opportunity to foster culture and built trust.  The times when you falter are the biggest opportunities you have to do this and taking action works wonders for you and your team in the trust-building department.  Years ago I might have apologized via email, likely after a team member was strong enough to tell me what I did that caused harm (and I think about how many times I caused harm and no one told me...).  Today, I know when it happens immediately, I take personal, thoughtful action quickly and take the time to reflect on how I got there so I can improve.  And if I don't notice it, I have team members who know my committment to culture and trust our relationship enough to tell me that I faltered.  This is the biggest win I have recognized for myself and I continue to hold gratitude for all of the leadership content out there that focuses on building and fostering psychologicaly safe workplace culture.  I have internalized so many of these learnings and, in this instance, I heard both Brene Brown and Kim Scott telling me to 1. fix this and 2. use this as a leadership tool for myself and my team rather than wallow in my "mistake".   

Cheers to another day in leadership, 

LS    

For a year I listened to one of my Directors talk about being overwhelmed.  For a year I witnessed her overwhelm.  I felt hamstrung and concerned that I wasn't going to be able to see her through it.  I didn't see any obvious fixes and I was just kind of waiting for her to arrive at some peace and to get through it; I saw my role as standing by her.  And I did stand by her.  And she did get through it.  

Over the last few weeks our leader team has found ourselves confronted with the outcome of some serious neglect in one area of our program.  The leader with direct oversight of that piece of the program is the leader who was experiencing overwhelm over the last year.  The leader I stood by. The leader who stated over and over that she didn't have the time to dedicate to oversight.  I heard her saying what she couldn't do and but instead of really listening and providing some path to resolution, I commiserated with her.  

While some might see the failure of her piece of the program as a failure of her management, I clearly see the failure as my leadership fail.  I oversee the operations of the entire program so in that vein, it's clearly my responsiblity.  That is an easy step to take and it doesn't feel great but it's not really taking accountability for the fail.  As this Director's leader, I am accountable to her and by failing to take the time to understand her overwhelm and commit myself to considering a course-correction, I allowed her to to fail. With this realization, I saw that by not serving this leader, I created the path for her part of the program to fail.  This has created a lot of angst and work for the whole team and so it is critially important that I recognize my part in this so that the next time a leader is in overwhelm, I take the time to form action rather than simply commiserate.  It's importa