Ok I will say what others may not. Most leaders carry a weight and tension they rarely say outloud. Parties external to their team like boards, investors and the genral public hold them responsible to deliver great results with their team. They want execution. They want stronger ownership. They want fewer excuses andhigher quality output. You have to PERFORM.
At the same time, you the servant leader genuinely care about your people. You want to be supportive and development-focused, but they feel they just don't have enough time to TRANFORM their team and help them all be a better verion of themselves.
If you are not careful you will drift and find you are climbing the career ladder. You are on the "Me focus" wall. You are not putting your ladder on the "One Team" wall for the team to be elevated and empowered. You push too hard on performance and people comply for a little bit but burn out and disengage. This is the performance treadmill.
You can go to far the other way and add a perk, a new initiative around culture and hope performance will improve.
Short term easy is long term pain. An extra shot of expresso only adds energy for a short period of time. It is coddled mediocrity or worse people begin to drift away.
What the team wants is:
* Clear expectations. They want to know when they are winning.
* Involvement in the team winning
* Focus on individual and team development so they grow
* Real recognition and improved culture.
Create an experience where the core conditions people work in Every Day lift people up.
Short term solutions (easy) lead to long term problems (pain). Have the important fconversations which might be short term pain and you will see longer term success.
Avoiding the hard conversations and acting like everything is OK is not OK. Standards quietly lowered in the name of empathy are not OK. It shows up when friendship replaces authentic coaching.
When a leader is deeply commited to people and equally serious about performance then you truly "Have their back". You get coached excellence.
You don't grow a business. Sooner or later leaders realize they can't be the hero and carry the load on their own. People grow the business. Raise your people on the Team ladder and they will Grow. Develop them and hold them accountable to the standard. Recognize them when they meet the standard and celebrate them when they climb further up the ladder.
Coaching and real authentic performance conversations is all about living witht he lights out. You need people to do what the team needs them to do when you aren't looking.
Don't lower the bar. Raise the person.