Many of us when dealing as first timers with a team find difficult to get a balance between our personal objectives and those of the team. Is not a matter of ego to defend but to understand how we can create synergies between the two so that we and everybody else are satisfied.

You may have heard that common wisdom is “to handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart”. Which I think is only partially right because rationality and your heart can and must go hand in hand when being a leader. 

And being a leader implies also that you have to set the way to reach those goals making things quite complicated because pushing too much on your side will bring to a demotivated team, doing the opposite will bring to a dissatisfied manager leading happy people, which is not good either.

A good leader is the one that relies over a self conscious and well determined group that perceives as its own the achievements made, through a continuous buy-in of the actions done, the plans followed and finally the results obtained.

Being a little more cynical we can say that on a leader point of view, he/she should be able to “sell” to others the group achievement at least on both sides: for the group but also for himself.

Because if group is valued is a great achievement, but if leader is not perceived as necessary…there’s no development in your leadership and, more or less gradually, will be put aside.