Be A Teacher

If you have a team of people working for you, whether it's in your own startup or a larger business, part of your role is to be a teacher to the more junior members of the team. You have the most experience, and education is an important part of your job. You're not telling people what to do, task by task. You're setting the objectives , asking each member of the team to figure out what their contribution (strategy) is to meeting those objectives and then filling in the knowledge gaps.

Remember, you can increase the power (or capability) of your team by adding knowledge. A team member who understands and then adds their own creativity is far better than one who does things by rote, and without question.

At Sendo they called me the Teacher because my approach was less about what I wanted done and more about why. I would explain why something was important.

It wasn't up to me to find the solution; we were employing intelligent people for that.

So my role was about putting things into context - challenging and explaining why. The result was a much better what, from people who really understood what we were trying to achieve.

Being a teacher requires care - if you go in like a bull in a china shop you can come over as a know-it-all or excessively picky. So my approach is to lead with questions. "Can you see why that's important?" "Can we work together to figure out how this might be more efficient?" "Does that make sense?"

Go on, put on your teacher hat.

Next Butt