A team gets the leader it deserves. And a leader gets the team they deserve. It sounds provocative, but there is a deep truth in this observation from organisational psychologist Manfred Kets de Vries.
The invisible interplay
The relationship between leader and team members is always an interplay. Both influence each other's behaviour, often unconsciously. A leader who controls creates employees who wait. Employees who complain create a leader who steers. That's how patterns arise that no one consciously chose, but everyone keeps in place.
Arend Ardon describes it aptly: as long as we focus mainly on what the other should do differently, nothing changes. Real transformation only begins when we examine our own role in the pattern.
The blind spot
We see the behaviour of others with great clarity. The colleague who never gives feedback. The employee who dodges responsibility. The director who only looks at numbers. But our own contribution to the pattern? That is harder to see.
That isn't weakness, it's human. We're in the system, and so we cannot fully oversee it. That is precisely why reflection with an outsider is valuable. Not someone who tells you what you're doing wrong, but someone who helps make the pattern visible.
The question that changes things
The most powerful question you can ask yourself isn't: "What should the other person do differently?" But: "What am I doing that keeps this pattern in place?"
The answer is rarely comfortable. But it is always productive.
At AVOP we guide leaders and teams who are willing to ask this question honestly. Not because it is easy, but because it is the only way to lasting change.