The whole business about managing people is interesting. The less we have to manage people the more space we have for leadership so teams can grow together and flourish. Teams grow together and flourish because they have good leadership not because they're being managed. The point of good leadership is to create a team that can manage its own learning, its decisions and its alignment.
The most vital sustainable level of motivation for teams is when teams work from intrinsic motivation. This means that on a daily basis they feel a sense of authorship over the way work gets done, the way they plan and problem solve, and the way they grow. Slow teams are slow precisely to the degree that they feel they need to be managed and that their leaders believe they need to manage them. Nimble teams are nimble to the degree that they have good leadership which helps them discover how to manage themselves in their work.
Among the many reasons not to manage people and provide leadership instead, here are three.
To engage their goodness
Goodness is the unique constellation of skills, abilities and knowledge each of us has that supports doing well in our work. In every team people have complementary goodness. Each person has a kind of goodness that represents goodness that others want to grow. People have a lot to learn from each other and teach each other. As leaders we do not have to be the ultimate source of all learning. What we know about learning curves is that people actually get better at something when they engage that goodness in helping others learn. So we accelerate a team's capacity for growth when we engage people through their goodness.
To share decisions
When we create an environment where knowledge is transparent and there's a culture of curiosity people can make decisions quickly and well together. As leaders we do not have to be the bottleneck for decision-making. When people are entrusted with decisions, they get better at decision-making, the team becomes more responsive and resilient and they become smarter together. In fact we all become smarter together when the team shares decision-making and we can make that possible as leaders.
To work by agreement
When we help the team learn how to work by agreement they manage their own tensions, disconnects and opportunities for alignment and collaboration. Working by agreement means they share awareness of when each other needs help, how they can help each other in their work, and how they can create and test agreements that they can all support in their work. Agreements create trust, alignment and velocity in the team's performance and growth.