When a country's results slip, most leaders look in one place: the task.
More calls. Tighter targets. Another review meeting.
Sometimes that is right. Often the real problem sits somewhere else.
A well-known leadership model, John Adair's action-centred leadership, describes three needs every leader has to meet at the same time. The task. The team. The individual. Push one too hard and the other two weaken, and then the task suffers anyway.
How I try to keep the three in balance:
The task. A clear objective every manager can repeat, and a plan with people, budget and priorities agreed, then reviewed monthly.
The team. Shared standards of behaviour that apply to everyone, starting with me. And one team, not silos: marketing, sales, medical and finance solving problems together.
The individual. Knowing each person's strengths, ambitions and worries, learned in regular one-to-ones. And a development plan every person helped shape.
In my experience, a team that is burning out or a strong manager who has gone quiet will show up in the numbers months later. By then you are fixing the task when the cause was the team or the person.
"Lead the task, the team and the person, or you lose all three."
“Lead the task, the team and the person, or lose all three.”
Lesson 2 of 15 in Step 7: Leading the leadership team, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.