How Do I Lead My Team without Strategic Direction from the Top?

Coaching Real Leaders

Harvard Business Review / Muriel Wilkins

Executive, Business/careers, Leadership, Careers, Business/management, Sessions, Hbr, Coaching, Review, Society & Culture, C-suite, Leaders, Harvard, Business, Management

4.8 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He leads a team at a large global organization and gets positive feedback on their work. But he’s having trouble leading his team with a clear vision amid conflicting priorities and without direction from his senior leaders. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how he can help his team have organizational impact, with or without more clarity from above.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBRR podcast network.
0:12.4	I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a bump in the road.
0:17.9	My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring
0:21.8	out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work
0:27.3	with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching
0:31.8	meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing.
0:45.7	Today's guest is someone will call Michael to protect his confidentiality.
0:50.7	He's been at his company for some time, and several years ago was given the chance to build his own team within the broader organization with the goal of helping
0:54.4	individuals and teams do their job better. It's an innovative team at a large global organization,
1:00.6	but Michael is finding it hard to tell if the team is still having its intended impact.
1:06.1	Within the team, we're constantly talking about our success stories, constantly talking about the different
1:13.7	groups that we're working with and how they're constantly coming back to us saying,
1:18.3	I need more of you in the organization. We need more people like you. And that's to everybody
1:24.5	in the team. People say, we need more of that. And then when we think of
1:28.6	beyond that into the higher levels of hierarchy and up to, say, the sea level, there's not as
1:36.3	much stickiness or even whether they know we exist. Michael has a passion for helping others
1:42.7	succeed inside and outside of work.
1:45.0	And he was excited by the challenge of this job, so he's pretty motivated by his work.
1:50.0	But beyond navigating the complexity of running a unique team at a large organization,
1:55.0	he's also finding it hard to get his bearings as the leadership team keeps changing course.
2:00.0	We're finding that there's so much change constantly happening around us that sometimes we're not sure what our motivation is.
2:10.6	Why do we do what we do? Is it impactful? How do I keep myself motivated and keep my team motivated because of these constant changes in the environment?
	...

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