How team members can respond when feeling beat down and what authority can do better to help their people feel strong and succeed
Remembering that the organization chose to hire a professional based on trust can be difficult to keep in mind in the moment.
“Building a successful team that wins requires engagement of all team members, even those yet unproven-but-talented team members. Isn’t that why you hired them, to add value to your team?” says Cheryl L. Mason, J.D., a TEDx speaker and the CEO of Catalyst Leadership Management.
“Often, leaders make the mistake of going to their go-to team members, especially if they view the project as a must-win or high visibility and they sideline the unproven team members. This action signals to the unproven team members that they are not real team members. If it continues to happen, these team members will begin to believe they don’t have what is needed.”
Mason shares a story from her experiences and how it affected her.
“This happened to me when I was promoted to new team,” says Mason, who is the first woman to serve as the CEO and Chairman of the VA Board of Veterans' Appeals.
“I was supposed to have responsibility to lead a new project but leadership put a more senior person in charge of it and did not engage me,” she remembers. “At first, I thought it was a mentoring role so I could learn but it quickly became clear my input was not valued or wanted. It kept happening and I felt frustrated but also worried that the leaders didn’t believe in me.”
Read the full article here: https://communicationintelligence.substack.com/p/leaders-can-kill-peoples-confidence
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