Leading Side to Side

Tall fences may make good neighbors but they make lousy peer leaders.

🔥 I often see one prevailing source of friction, conflict, and counterproductivity between any pair of leaders at the same level:

A lack of mutual awareness.

When operating alongside a peer leader, there are three areas where you should seek to reach a shared understanding of your respective similarities and differences:

WORKING STYLES
Your preferred ways of communicating, taking action, making decisions, etc.

GOALS
Your respective objectives and whether they complement or compete with one another.

VALUES
The conditions, traits, or qualities you each prize most.

WORLDVIEW
The lens you each use to determine “what winning looks like” for your organization.

👯 Authentic people leaders develop and nurture relationships with their peers.

We do this for two reasons

1. We have a selfless interest in advancing everyone around us
2. We have a self-interest in maximizing contribution toward our objectives.

To properly lead—and be led by—our peers, we have to tear down the tall fences that get built between us over time.