For a stretch of my career, I worked with a team where my business partner was the managing partner. She was the one in front of the team. I was the one in the background, designing, thinking, writing, doing the work that made the work possible.

I was all in. I just wasn't in the room.

I didn't think of that as being absent. I thought of it as the job.

What I thought my team could see

I assumed effort was visible. If I was putting that much into the thinking, surely it showed up somewhere. In the design, in the writing, in the way things came together.

What the team experienced was someone who wasn't at the team meetings. Someone who wasn't there to explore the thinking with them while it was still taking shape. From where they sat, the work arrived, and I didn't.

I only saw it when I finally spent real time with the team. They told me how much they'd missed me, and wondered what I'd been doing. It hit me then. It wasn't evident to them at all what I'd been involved in, or how it was supporting their work, even if not directly.

Both things were true at once. I was working hard for them. And they could feel me not being there. I didn't know I was absent. They did.

It was a missed opportunity, really. Not to take credit, but to share what I was engaged with and how it connected to what they were doing every day.

What that cost

When a leader's thinking happens out of sight, the team is handed the output and none of the reasoning. They can't question it, shape it, or feel part of it. It's hard to feel connected to someone you only ever meet through their work.

I've since come across new AMA research that puts a number on this kind of gap. 62% of managers said their engagement went up over the past year, while half of employees said nothing had changed in their managers, and one in five said it had dropped. I don't think those managers are fooling themselves. I think so much of the real work of leading happens where nobody can see it.

What I actually needed

I didn't need to work harder or be more productive in the background. I needed to see that the work isn't finished when I've done the thinking. It's finished when the team can feel it. Small things would have changed so much. Sitting in on a team meeting to think out loud. Sharing an idea before it was polished. Letting them see me working it out, rather than only receiving the result.

What I want for the leaders who come to us

So many of the leaders we work with are giving everything and quietly wondering why their teams don't seem to notice. Some of them are the ones out front, running at full speed. Some of them, like me, are behind the scenes, doing the thinking that holds it all together. Either way, the team is looking for the person, not only the output.

This is why the Foundation work in Leading Teams Academy starts with who you are as a leader and where you tend to show up, or not, when things get busy. Knowing your pattern is what lets you catch it before your team pays for it.

One thing I know for sure

Doing the work and being with the people are two different things. Your team needs both.

It isn't my natural instinct, but it's something I'm much more aware of now when I work with teams. I try to be explicit about what I'm working on and why, and to be present with them, so they can see it and get real value from it. Not for recognition. Because the work only helps when people can feel it.

If you'd like a place to start looking at that, there's a short quiz that shows where you tend to lead from: https://link.tekmatix.com/widget/quiz/89ZVAWDXnX8eoYoCeECA.


And if you're ready for the fuller version of this work, you can find out more about Leading Teams Academy here: https://teammattersnow.com/leading-teams-academy