Leadership used to be about the individual at the top, the one with the title, the authority, the answers. But today’s most connected, high-performing organisations see leadership differently. They unlock the potential of the team and leverage leadership as a team sport.
I recently worked with a senior leadership team who’d been struggling with silos, mistrust, and surface-level collaboration. Individually, they were capable. But collectively? They weren’t leading together. The culture felt fragmented, and so did the results.
Everything shifted when they decided to get real. And I mean really real. They dropped the polished personas. They talked about what mattered to them. They shared stories, not of success, but of self-awareness. They got honest about what they didn’t know. They listened, deeply. And they started aligning around shared values, not just KPIs.
This wasn’t soft stuff. This was foundational. The team began showing up not as individual leaders competing for space, but as a connected unit leading with empathy, vulnerability and trust. They moved from conversations about what was going wrong to conversations about what mattered most - to them and to the business.
They redefined what accountability looked like, not as pressure from the top but as ownership from within. They checked in with each other weekly, not just on projects, but on purpose. They called out behaviours that didn’t align with who they wanted to be, not just with what they wanted to deliver.
Within six months, the business saw tangible outcomes: improved staff engagement, faster decision-making, and deeper cross-functional collaboration. But the real shift? People wanted to be part of that team. Other parts of the business began asking what they were doing differently. The ripple effect had begun.
That’s the multiplier effect of real leadership when done as a team. It’s not just about individual growth - it’s about collective transformation. When leaders show up as themselves, it creates space for others to do the same. That’s when the real work - and the real connection – and the real performance opportunity begins.
#RealLeadership #LeadershipTeamWork #LeadershipDevelopment #LeadingTogether #MichelleSalesLeadership
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