Have confidence in your team.

Working closely with the people you’re collaborating with helps you identify the gaps in ability, understanding, process, and knit the whole fabric into one whole. I had a designer who it seemed like the first time I talked to him about a new assignment it didn’t really sink in. When I would check back in with him it seemed like only 20% of what I said stuck. I learned to start a little slower with a bit more background on the assignment, go a little more slowly, and even repeat the key elements until I knew he was processing it fully. These days I can tell he’s much more engaged in the communication process and much quicker on the uptake. Going through this type of process with each individual builds confidence both ways.

Give people the opportunity to fail

I’m hesitant to call this approach out on a page about leadership, but it’s critical to how I approach creative work. While failure is largely frowned upon in the business community, I find it’s part of my process and a key ingredient in finding the best solution to complex problems. In design school, we didn’t call them “failures” ; they were sketches, and you were praised for doing hundreds of them. The idea was to ramp up your exploration and your output of ideas. Sure, some of them might be misguided, but they were simply part of the process of figuring out what you wanted to do. I like to apply this thinking to projects at a high level.

Stand by your team & acknowledge their victories

I like the maxim “a rising tide lifts all boats”. I also like to think of it as feeding the soil as a team leader : you have all your individual seeds and they’re going to grow as their own ability dictates, but if you provide a healthy and supportive foundation, that’s the best way to enable people to grow on their own. And ultimately all of a teams victories belong to every member on the team, so acknowledging great work helps team members feel like what they’re doing matters.