Leading while the work changes.

What I saw in the best leaders

This is James's experience, not a leadership course. For nearly twenty years he recruited senior people, mostly in travel and hospitality, including for MICE agencies around the world.

We hired for experience in the exact role, or a clear step towards it. The leaders who made the real difference had something else as well: life experience, humour, contentment or something close to it, the ability to apply all of that with real people, and a clear sense of the community around them. Their teams stayed and grew. The business performed. And the customer felt it in the product itself.

Your team has seen it too

If you have had the moment when a tool did an afternoon of your work in seconds, so has your team. Most of them have told nobody either, and some of them are watching you to see whether it is safe to say.

You do not need answers to go first. Saying once, plainly, what you have seen and what you do not yet know does more for a team than any plan. The men who wait for an announcement leave their people to fill the silence themselves.

What leading is now

SI (super intelligence) is taking on more of what a CV describes: the summaries, the reports, the work you were fastest at. What it does not take on is the part nobody put on a job description. Deciding with incomplete information and carrying it. Knowing which client is not telling the truth. Being the person a supplier will take a call from on a Sunday. Making a new starter feel welcome on day one.

That has always been the job. There is just less to hide behind now.

Being the same man everywhere

James has always been the same person at home, at church, at work and with his parents. It served him well, because he never needed to act. The best people he placed were the same.

A team can tell when a leader is performing, and in uncertain times they notice it sooner. Leading as yourself is not a technique. It is what is left when the performing stops.

Where to start this week

Nothing dramatic. Write your own week down first, task by task, so you know what is actually changing in your own role before you speak to anyone else about theirs.

Then tell your team, once and properly, what you have seen. And ask one person outside the company, someone with no reason to flatter you, how you come across when things are uncertain. Listen to the answer without defending yourself.

If you want to think it through first, the guide on this site will not repeat it to anyone and will not tell you it will be fine.