name the next way to be great

If you’re in a young or growing organization, your people are probably going to have to do new, weird things that they aren’t yet experts in. Chasing your mission will mean getting yourself and your people into some good trouble.

Great managers I’ve observed have a knack for acknowledging the good moves their people have made recently and forecasting that they will need different good moves in the days ahead. So much the better if the manager knows what those moves are. If they do know them, they name them. 

If they don’t know what the next moves are, they instead remind their folks that that energetic ignorance, the not knowing what’s next but knowing we’re going to do what it takes to get good at it, is what makes them great. 

This is a way that a leader with big, humane ambition can take a volatile context and make it useful, even inspiring. We get to learn, grow, and build confidence in the face of conditions that cow others. 

-Eric