One interesting challenge I’ve been faced with after being promoted is how much visibility I should give my team regarding “what happens above” them.

As a team lead, in my mind, I am supposed to shield the team as much as possible from external pressure. I have, however, observed that, if I do this too well, the team won’t feel pressure to perform as well as they would otherwise. This isn’t a dig against them; if you’re too isolated from the outside world, from the impact your work has, you start feeling that what you do doesn’t matter, so you get demotivated. I suppose this is not too surprising (and, perhaps, basic) if you’ve done some reading on leadership, but I fell in the role a bit by parachute, so I’m learning as I go.

That’s one extreme. The other is to be completely permeable and allow them to see all the pressure on top of me to somehow try and “motivate them” to perform. This, however, feels too much like shifting responsibilities (read, blame) from me to them, which is not what a team lead does.

I’ve been trying to juggle between these two extremes, perhaps with not a lot of success in the beginning, but with increasing success as time goes on. I suppose this is only natural: the linchpin on which this balance lies is team trust, and you can only build that as time goes on and you all know each other.

Tags: #Leadership