Leadership

the work environment has been changing quite a bit over the last few years. during my first few years at this company, our team was entirely in one city, one building, one time zone. the organization of the team was very straightforward. there was structure. there was clear expectations and team goals. it was like a well-defined, (somewhat) smoothly operating machine -- after all, every team has its challenges and nothing is perfect.

But now today the structure of the team is in three cities in three different countries, across multiple buildings, dealing with three time zones not to mention that English may not be the first language or language of preference. The cultures of the team are so different that we can no longer make certain assumptions when communicating ideas or plans and often requires everyone to be more understanding of who it is they are interacting with. it certainly makes for a much more challenging work place. it takes more effort to build relationships with those that you work with, especially when you cannot see that person face to face in the hallways -- especially when you've never met this person before! it takes more energy to communicate because you need to be intentional about your choice of words. Avoid slang. avoid the use of idioms in your emails and speech. confirm that the person you are speaking to actually understands your train of thought and ideas and see that they are on board.

So this post was about leadership but it seems to be a rant of the challenges of working in a team environment that is becoming increasingly global. but actually leadership requires developing interpersonal and relational skills where the goals are still the same, regardless of who it is you are leading : do i have a vision for my team, what are the goals to achieve as a team, do i know my team members, do i trust my team members, can i/do i empower and enable them to do their best work, do i know them personally aside from their work and what they can do for me, how can i serve them?

i don't pretend to know anything about leadership because well, i haven't really lead anyone before! but as the work environment changes, it's exciting for me to consider answering the call to leadership and step into this role with a whole lot of fear mixed with lots of anticipation of all that I will learn in this role but also all that i might be able to do to watch those i lead grow and flourish.