When There Is No Manual

It’s not always easy to tell who’s really leading when an entire team is just going through the motions and following procedures in a manual that they’ve all used before for similar projects. When all the variables for a project are known and the expectations and plan are clear to everyone from the very beginning, all it really takes to move things forward is keeping people motivated and on task. If everyone knows their role, and team members direct themselves to get their part done, you really only need someone to organize and report, which isn’t necessarily leading. It’s managing.

Effective leaders are the ones who take charge in a group when a task or problem is completely new, the next step isn’t obvious and there is no manual. When others hesitate and look to their peers for answers, the leaders are the ones who are busy breaking the problem down, creating structure where there is none and developing a plan that they can communicate and act on. When new problems that require novel solutions come your team’s way, take a moment and observe who everyone looks to when someone asks “what do we do now?”. Those are the people who are really leading.