What your team really needs from you

Note to leaders: Your people need more clarity and accountability, not limitless autonomy.

The past decade has marked significant shifts in organizational structures, ways of working, and how leaders create value. The move to a flatter hierarchy and more empowered teams allowed organisations to become more agile and customer focused - but many leaders struggle to identify their unique role.

There is a tension between enabling freedom and autonomy in your team AND aligning resources, people, and work to create the outcomes that matter most.

In many organisations, the past few years have marked an over-indexing to freedom, autonomy, and experimentation (all good things in balance). As a result, leaders often fear being viewed as controlling or autocratic and pull back from establishing clear deliverables and accountabilities.

For teams to thrive, leaders must combine new ways of working with greater accountability, rigour, discipline, and prioritization. They must also be willing to be viewed (at least initially) as a bit more controlling. Holding the polarity of Accountability AND Autonomy is a new muscle for everyone.

The LCP retake below is from a senior leader experimenting with bringing more clarity, discipline, and accountability to his team. During our debrief, he mostly wanted to discuss the increase in his Autocratic score - even when nearly every Creative score and his overall effectiveness were rated higher than before.

In his previous profile, Autocratic was virtually nonexistent (but passive was at 40%). Decisiveness and Achieves Results were also about 20% lower. His experiment to better define and prioritise team outcomes enhanced his overall effectiveness AND even brought up his Relating scores. The slight rise on Autocratic is likely an indication that the experiment is working.

Teams thrive when leaders are clear, unambiguous, and specific about what outcomes matter most - and what great looks Like. They also must be willing to be seen as a bit more controlling, at least at first.


(Profile based on actual leader. Some edits made to ensure confidentiality)