Lead the Change, Keep the Team

There’s an old African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

I reminded a coachee of this recently. He was preparing to launch a new initiative and anticipating resistance. He felt strongly about the importance of this project to the organization’s success, yet knew the magnitude of the change would unsettle some of his direct reports; leaders who had been with the organization for years and were deeply invested in the past, not the future.

He could “go fast” and arrive alone at a solution that might look elegant on paper but prove unworkable in practice. Or he could learn to “go together” and build the kind of ownership that makes real progress possible. (more…)