7 Leadership Commitments That Forge Top Producing Teams

Last week I wrote part 1 of a vision for leaders of the "new frontier," which you can find here!

In this weeks follow up article, let's take a bit of a dirt dive into the 7 Commitments Leaders must make, not only to themselves, but to their teams, to thrive in this new world are: Courage, Trust, Respect, Growth, Excellence, Resiliency and Alignment. Yes, they're actually placed in an order as well.

WE are all leaders. Every single member of any given team or organization is a leader with their own responsibilities and accountability. Here are the commitments we can make to both ourselves and each other, because fear of letting the team down will always outweigh the fear of letting ourselves down (we've been letting ourselves down our whole lives after all).

Courage

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Often, the first step is the hardest. It requires courage.

Do you remember the story from the Apache's about the tale of 2 wolves? Inside each one of us we have 2 wolves fighting for dominion every day: fear wolf and courage wolf. The wolf we feed most often is the one who is most dominant inside of us.

Without having the courage to step out on the ledge, put your team first, accept accountability for your responsibilities, it is very tough to get buy-in.

Operating alone is easy. You can go a lot faster. It takes a commitment to courage to operate effectively within a team. Especially in high stakes environments, those moments without courage can completely destroy the mission and prevent it from getting accomplished.

Trust

Without having the courage to speak up and step up, there is no trust. Trust is both earned and built. It can't be built without courage. Think of your favorite sports team. The players who lack the courage to take the appropriate actions spend more time on the bench than they do on the field.

In ancient warrior traditions, a lack of courage and trust would get you a fate worse than death: being kicked out of the tribe.

By sitting on the sidelines, you're not giving anyone an opportunity to get to know you better. If the team doesn't know you, they can't trust you to operate with them.

Respect

Respect isn't given, it's earned. It's earned by being bold, putting the team and the mission before yourself. If you've ever been involved in a high performing team, or even a DAO such as the Bankless DAO, you likely understand this all too well.

The "Know, Like, Trust" adage doesn't exclusively apply to sales or marketing, it applies in every category of life. Having the courage to roll up your sleeves, put in the work, and lift your team up creates trust. Trust is a bridge to building respect in any given community or team. It's very hard to accomplish a mission or a task without the respect and buy-in of your team.

The other side of the coin is the team, or community, must know you have their best interests at heart. This is a two way street and takes a lot of courage to operate and build up to this point.

Growth

A commitment to growth is our 4th commitment. Why growth? Take a look around at the world. It's innovating and changing at such a rapid pace. Technology especially has advanced to the point where a weeks worth of progress is pretty evident to years worth of work in ages past.

Looking through the covid pandemic that broke out in 2020 is makes this commitment even more pressing. Have you seen how many businesses failed to grow and innovate with the time? They all went belly up to join the dinosaurs: extinct. 

Growth is also a two way street. As leaders we must be continually seeking feedback and opportunities to grow. We must also facilitate an environment which encourages the TEAM to grow. The team is nothing more than a conglomerate of leaders. An environment of positive open-feedback loops creates an environment where everyone is encouraged and supported to grow in the ways that matter most to them.

Excellence

A commitment to excellence isn't to be confused with perfectionism. Perfectionism is only the manifestation of fear, which paralyzes us from taking action. Remember the commitment to courage?

An 80% "good enough" plan will always outperform that "perfect" plan that's too bulky, cumbersome, political, or otherwise always being revised and never executed. Excellence is a lifestyle, it requires self compassion, empathy for our peers, collaboration with "competition," and so much more.

Excellence is also subjective. It's important to remember at all times that our best is going to change from moment to moment, day to day. That's perfectly okay. As long as you do your best, there is no guilt, no shame, no blame. Only growth, respect, trust, and courage.

Resiliency

Without courage there is no trust, without trust we can't build respect, without respect our environments don't help us grow, without growth we can't achieve excellence, and without excellence it's hard to cultivate a culture or mindset of resiliency.

Resiliency comes down to how we handle adversity. Things won't always go our way. We're going to fall hard and fast at times. You've likely heard me preach the F3 method: fail forward fast. It's all part of the parcel. If we allow fear and perfectionism to hold us back, we're not growing, we're letting the team down, and we're not building the resiliency we need to face life's demands head on.

Alignment

Alignment is huge. Any team will tell you that we are only as strong as our weakest link. Without buy-in from the whole collective (or a simple majority) the barrier to entry can be quite steep. Without alignment we have chaos, lots of stepping on toes, and a toxic environment which doesn't help achieve our missions, goals or targets.

Alignment creates cohesion around a common mission, vision, ambition or goal. You remember that one guy, on that one team, who was always causing friction and wasn't aligned? Probably not, you may remember how awful their energy made you feel, but you certainly won't remember them for long.

Can you see the natural progression of these commitments, or leadership qualities? They easily can operate in reverse just as much as they can forward.

Without alignment all we have is friction, this friction can wear down our resilience and tap us out pretty quick. Without resilience, we can never achieve our ideology of excellence. Without aiming for excellence, we're not giving ourselves proper opportunities to grow. If we're not growing, it's hard to earn, achieve or keep respect. Without respect, there is no trust. Without trust, it's hard to foster courage, because nobodies listening.

The world as a whole, especially: governments, organized religion, public school, and other organization suffer from a lack of proper leadership on all levels.

We are on the frontier building a new economy, a new ecosystem, a more level playing field. I don't know about you, but if we can align around making these commitments to both ourselves and those around us, we can make this future world a much brighter and more pleasant space for us all.

I don't think any of us want to do all this work to build a new world that's going to have the exact same issues as the legacy world we're trying to leave behind.

Which commitments resonate with you the most? Drop your feedback down below in the comments, I do enjoy hearing from you and chatting with you all.

Remember, a rising tide raises all ships!

We rise together!