Leadership: be clear, keep it simple

I was recently coaching three groups of high school seniors who were leading teams of freshmen through a series of team-building activities. I noted that the leaders were having really different experiences with their groups, and I wondered, "what makes the difference?"

One set of leaders in particular got me wondering. I admired their courage--they didn't have much leadership experience and yet they were in there, doing their best. And they had the most demanding team to lead as well--very energetic, very vocal. I noticed that the leaders weren't sure about which activity to lead next--they got hesitant.

The team seemed to pick up on this hesitancy, and they soon got impatient. "Come on, what are we going to do next?" And soon after that, they started shouting out their own suggestions. The leaders just weren't sure what the "right" activity was to do next.

At this point I remembered a lesson I learned from dancing as a follower in Argentine tango. Before I learned to follow, I would fret a lot about what the "best" moves to lead were as a leader. I would think "is this interesting enough? complex enough?"

But once I started to follow, I realized that I didn't care about the complexity at all. What really mattered to me was a good connection and a clear lead. If I had that, I didn't care if the moves were extremely simple--the connection and the clarity was more than enough.

And so I asked these student leaders what they thought the team needed. They talked to the team and found out that they wanted something active, and then we came up with a very simple game that involved two outlets for energy: running and noise.

And so with a sense of clarity, the leaders led this very simple game, which responded to the needs of the group. It worked! The energy shifted, and through clearly leading a simple activity, the leaders built their credibility with the team.