Sometimes leaders search for ways to be close to their teams and do so to lead and support them.

There are phases in the life of a team where such an approach is desirable and needed by the team. For the leader, however, this also means figuring out what approach works best and more importantly, what it is the team needs.

In new teams, a useful approach can be to evaluate how much the team members still need to learn to perform the tasks they are supposed to perform. The proximity with the team would then allow seeing what knowledge would best help the individual members of the team. The leader could then find himself taking up the role of a coach assisting the team in learning how to do their work.

For the leader, this could be comforting as they would then find themselves able to see how well their team performs. They could also enjoy providing more precise “how-to” instructions once problems appear.

However, in such a situation the leader needs to ask himself a few questions.

He needs to verify if he is doing it to serve his team or if he is doing it to make sure they work as closely as possible to what he perceives a job to be well done. If it is the latter, the team might find itself becoming more and more dependent on receiving instructions as to how to perform their job. They might not see enough space to take risks and make errors and thus will prefer to wait for instructions.

The leader also needs to question himself if he might be replacing leading with teaching. If it is the latter, there is a risk that the teaching becomes focused on how to do the work. The time might then miss out on learning what the work is for and thus developing the skills needed to make their own decisions. Especially leaders highly knowledgeable in their field might find it hard to let go of the art they see in their work. Having become the experts they are, they have forgotten how automatic it is for them to envision what it is for and how its results serves others. For their team, however, this understanding might remain a mystery leaving them without direction.

The hard work here may become for the leader to learn how to move away from his professionalism as an expert and to learn to trust that his team is capable to develop its professionalism once it understands what objectives they are serving with the work they do.