Especially at the beginning, it was hard for me to hand over projects and tasks. Although I knew that as Team Lead I would no longer work actively and operationally on campaigns or client projects. I had consciously decided to do so, but it was a bumpy start for everyone involved. You tend to get too involved in the operational side of things, particularly at the beginning, and I’m sure each of us can think of at least one example where we were annoyed ourselves that a leader interfered and took things into his or her own hands that we actually wanted to do ourselves.  

As a manager, however, it is no longer about you and being the centre of attention. It’s about creating a space for your team to develop and shine with their skills. The challenge here is to let go and banish the feeling of missing out or wanting to do something yourself. It is about strengthening and empowering the team so that they can master the tasks, projects, challenges. Of course, we support and guide them, but we stay in the background. But please do not misinterpret it. It is not about leaving the team or the individual team members alone or delegating all tasks away, but about giving them the opportunity to show themselves and to develop. 

Kelly Bennett once expressed it very aptly. He compared a team to a band and said „You’re like a band and everybody plays a solo once in a while, but everybody knows the basic melody and if you have two players dropping out, the lead is able to jump in.”  And that’s the art – on the one hand being involved enough to be able to step in at any time, and on the other hand letting someone else play the solo. I don’t say it’s always easy but I would like to inspire you and illustrate how it’s possible with four different examples.

Stepping back

I worked with one of my team members on a client pitch for a big luxury brand. The presentation was supposed to be in front of the creative director of the luxury brand. What an honour and opportunity. We had been preparing for this for several weeks in collaboration with different teams. I was very curious and wanted to meet the people. But with a heavy heart I decided against it! I let my team member lead the presentation alone with other colleagues. I knew that especially in this kind of company, job titles counted a lot. If I had been there, the focus would have been on me. My team member did a great job of selling our concept and she managed to get the chance to give the same presentation a few days later to an even more senior member of the company. This meeting and experience helped her to grow her confidence and to practice how to present in front of senior management. Believe me, she learned a lot since it was different experience for her to know that this time there was no one in the back to jump in. A few days after that, I got messages from other involved team leads saying how great she did and thanking me for both of us being so great to work with. These are the moments that make me proud – even if my ego would have liked to be there. As I said it’s not always an easy decision to step back and you need to consider if your team member is capable of holding the presentation. The key here is to trust your team members that you taught them enough to handle the situation. 

Actively ask & Show them your trust

I had chosen one of my juniors to help me develop a concept. She had helped me with a few projects before and I knew she loved designer brands. The project was about developing a social media extension for brands for a global campaign. She had put a lot of heart and soul into the concept and came up with great ideas. Together we refined it and put the finishing touches on it. So far, I had always presented the concepts to our internal teams and answered all the questions. A few days before the presentation, I asked her if she would like to present the concept this time. She seemed surprised and asked for time to think it over. On the day of the presentation, however, she dared and I could see from her face how proud she was that she did it. A colleague wrote to me while she was presenting how proud she was that she presented it and how well she was doing. Today it is no longer a question of who is presenting – it is her stage. To see how she improves from time to time makes me happy. 

Handover a task that you love & your team members know about it

I love introducing our service to new clients and I can talk passionately for hours (no joke) about our campaigns or marketing activities. My team knows this and I have infected them with this passion. In the beginning, I gave this presentation alone or split it up. For the past six months, I’ve been pulling out completely and only being present when requested or when my team members allow me to have the fun of presenting. It was a difficult step for me because I love this task, but my team members have learned so much in that time that they can now do it on their own. Since they know how much I enjoyed it, they appreciate it even more that I handed over the task to them. 

Don’t do something just because everyone is doing it this way

In December we had a meeting with our whole department to celebrate our year. We were very successful despite Corona and all the circumstances. Each Team Lead was asked to put together the highlights of the year for their team and present them at the meeting. And what did I do? Exactly – I had people from my team presenting. They did the work and should therefore get the recognition. 

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What I want to show with these examples is that I consciously take a background role and let my team take the stage. Of course, there are situations or presentations in front of certain groups where this is not so easy – but even here I talk to my team members and explain to them why. Of course, our tasks are not always about presenting, but it is about giving team members the „public“ space to present their work. 

I know from my own experience that this is not always easy. In many professions we are trained to be in the foreground and then all of a sudden we are supposed to let others take the stage. Of course, we then lack the recognition we used to get. It is also not always immediately visible to others what or why we are doing this… but it will have an effect on your team and their satisfaction and therefore their performance. And believe me that will come back to you. 

It takes a while to sharpen one’s awareness of not falling back into old behaviour patterns and putting yourself in the foreground. Now, the biggest compliment for me is when other colleagues or outsiders praise someone in my team for their work – because that’s when they didn’t realise that you were pulling the strings in the background. Remember the example of the band – like in a band, it takes one player to hold everyone together so that the one playing the solo can actually play the solo.

Just recently, in my own development review, I got feedback that someone wrote that my team is the one that makes it the most fun to work with! Need I say more 😉

My advice:

• Put yourself back into the situation when you were still in a different role. What reaction would you have preferred from your lead? E.g. as a Junior, wouldn’t you sometimes have wished that your lead would have trusted you to take on a task?
• If you don’t want to give someone else the task, e.g. a presentation in front of a group, look at exactly why you feel this way. Is it the ego that speaks to you and would rather do it yourself? Or are there really demonstrable concerns or other reasons not to assign the task?
• If you cannot delegate a task to a team member, be transparent and explain it to him/her. We all want to improve and know what we need to learn and/or understand why, maybe for political reasons, we can’t do it.
• If you have a team member that you sometimes have to force to get into the foreground and assuming it doesn’t put anyone in trouble, you can also have a very important last minute meeting at the same time of the other meeting… 😉