As a leader, the two most important things you can gift your team is pride and joy. Your team should enjoy their work and feel pride in what they worked on. These are the two fundamental premises that I base leadership on. If you are able to enable this for your team, you are a good leader.
Most other leadership traits and good working environments are derived from this base. Let us take a couple of examples, and see.
- Great teams pour their heart out into building cool stuff. Have we all not realized that, we put in our best effort if we enjoy what we are doing?
- Growth – Most folks grow in their career paths when they accomplish significant milestones. I measure milestones by impact. And people realize significant impact that they are making, when they feel proud. Pride swells when you accomplish more and more.
It is a cyclic process too. When you enjoy the work you do, you achieve more, feel pride, which makes you reinforce the joy in your work.