Seth Dobbs (he/him): Do you know the fastest way to demotivate a high performing team? Have you ever worked on a team where your contributions felt overlooked or underappreciated, and how did that impact your motivation? Hi, I’m Seth Dobbs, and this is the Principle Driven Leadership Podcast where I share principles of leadership, along with examples of how to apply them to help make you be the best leader you can be.

These principles are based on my years of experience as an executive leader in building teams and organizations, and in coaching others to become leaders themselves. And I believe that not only can anyone develop leadership skills, but that everyone can and should develop leadership skills. I think they’re essential in helping you achieve your best in whatever way you might be trying to make an impact.

And that’s because leadership skills help you better influence others to effectively create durable results. And leadership is a journey. The step we’re taking today involves thinking about how to lead in a way that creates space for the people you lead to truly excel.

To demonstrate this idea, I’m going to talk about Hollis. Hollis worked in the digital advertising department at an ad agency. He had been there several years and had led multiple projects for a few different clients. Overall, he was regarded as a successful manager and that when you had Hollis on leading an effort, it was sure to be a success.

And of course with each subsequent success, he was assigned to larger projects. And at some point, because of all this past great work was put in charge of the work for a major new client. Now this was an incredible opportunity as an initial success could lead to millions of dollars of new business.

This, of course also meant there was going to be greater scrutiny than anything Hollis had been on before, but he felt up to the challenge.

The focus of this was on a huge back-to-school campaign for the office and school supply division of a consumer packaged goods company. The digital campaign would be large in scope with email blasts, ad placements, search advertising, all rolling out over the course of several months. There are also several partner-based campaigns with key online and physical retailers.

All of these efforts needed to adhere to a strict timeline because you can’t change the back-to-school season. So because of the import of this project, Hollis was assigned several strong team members that were pulled off of other clients to ensure the success of this work.

Things started off well, but as is usually the case with this kind of story, Hollis’s team hit a bump in the road. There were various delays in getting the first ad placements that threatened the entire timeline. Hollis’s management saw the indications of the delays in his status reports and called him to find out more about what was happening.

Hollis explained that Kayla was not working closely enough with a client to clarify needs and requirements and that Lao Sheng was struggling in getting the ad visuals right. None of which, by the way, was in his status report. Hollis’s management reminded him of the deadline and the importance of succeeding, so he in turn went back to Kayla and Lao Sheng and reminded them as well.

Kayla discovered that there was a key decision maker at the client that was not originally identified, and so wasn’t part of how she was gathering information. She quickly made time with this stakeholder and brought them into the process, which made decision making much more efficient. Lao Sheng talked to several of the clients, including the newly discovered stakeholder about his approach and the conflicting needs to meet certain brand guidelines, but also to be more attention getting.

He came up with a suggestion that the client loved and ran with it.

They were able to launch the first ad blitz on time and quickly determined that it was having the desired impact and raising awareness. At a large company meeting, Hollis’s management praised him for getting this done, and Hollis thanked the management for the recognition, and he planned to keep on track throughout the rest of the following months.

Several more milestones passed this way with challenges cropping up and the team getting things sorted out. Hollis continued to receive praise in company-wide meetings, and he always ensured his management that he would succeed. Hollis had a team meeting immediately after one of these company-wide meetings and Lao Sheng confronted him.

Lao Sheng pointed out that the team was working long hours and doing most of the work to sort out problems, to keep things on track and to keep the client happy, but that Hollis never mentioned any of them when the praise was passed around. Also based on some of the things that Lao Sheng had heard, he felt that Hollis was more than happy to mention the team when things went wrong.

Lao Sheng finished by saying he wasn’t going to work for a credit hog, and informed Hollis that he had put in a request to be moved to a different department. Losing Lao Sheng would be a major blow to the team and their ability to meet the final key milestone and Hollis was at a bit of a loss.

There are a lot of things at play here, including a passive style of management on Hollis’s part, but the biggest risk is created by Hollis not sharing the credit. Which brings us to the principle for this episode: Let Others Shine. People need the space to succeed and then to be recognized for that success.

Lack of recognition and appreciation can be one of the quickest demoralizing forces in any organization. Now, there are many ways to recognize and express appreciation, and different people will respond to different methods.

However, the consistent pattern I’ve observed is that most people will respond to a repeated pattern of no recognition, likely to your detriment as a leader. Hollis was taking an approach that was bad on several levels. When there was praise, he was right in front of it, absorbing it all.

But when there was a problem, he took a step back and suddenly acted almost like he was an outside observer and blaming others. And throughout, he was mostly just acting as a relay of information between higher management and his team: giving basic status to his leadership, passing on the reactions. The thing is that as a leader, you’re not simply a pass through of information between a hierarchical structure, you’re not a relay point.

You’re influencing and motivating others to effectively create durable results. As with Hollis, you’re at risk of not creating durability if you grab the spotlight and don’t let anyone else receive recognition, and this is more than simply a technique. Think Letting People Shine is more than just giving them praise.

You should be giving the people you lead the space to succeed, to use their skills and expertise, to bring about amazing results and to grow and to learn. And of course, you should be sure to get the credit you deserve, but that shouldn’t be at the cost of others. Now, to be clear, I don’t actually think Hollis was being deliberately malicious.

It’s likely he genuinely believed he was doing well, and in fact, he had made it this far with the same kind of patterns. So he felt he was in the right. But he had many opportunities to share praise, to point out the hard work the team was doing, to highlight major efforts and changes that Lao Sheng, Kayla, and others were making and doing that would not have been to his detriment.

He could have at least thanked them privately if there was a reason he didn’t feel he could speak up at the all company meetings about them, but he didn’t even do that. So ultimately what this principle comes down to is that people are often motivated by being able to use their expertise to solve challenges and to be acknowledged for doing so.

You as a leader, caring enough to see what they’ve done and recognize the effort will make a huge difference. It’s interesting that it appeared that Hollis actually began with a motivated team. They all understood what was at stake, and were excited to be a part of the work.

Hollis eroded that momentum. If instead he had let others shine at each milestone, he likely would’ve not put the final milestone at risk. And that’s how you see that you’re getting this concept right. Your team will take more ownership in achieving the results you are trying to achieve if they know they’ll be recognized for it.

Ultimately, I believe that a leader should do the opposite of what Hollis did. You should take accountability for problems that occur within your team and push praise to the team when things go well. Again, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take credit for success as well, but just note that the biggest successes are shared successes, and to me this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of leadership.

Bringing the best out in others. Giving the space for people to learn to grow and demonstrate what they can really do is just incredibly rewarding. It also creates powerful results, both in the near term and durably in the long term. I’d like you to reflect on the past couple of months.

Are there situations where you could have recognized a team member’s contributions better than you may have? Identify a recent project or collaboration you were part of; who contributed significantly to its success, and how could you recognize their efforts more effectively?

Thanks so much for joining me. Please subscribe, follow, comment, and share with a friend if you liked it, and send feedback and questions to contact@pdlpodcast.com. And join me next time where I’ll talk about how principles are more durable than practices.