The Cost of Leadership: Giving Up Agendas

There is a big difference between organizational initiatives and individual agendas. 

Initiatives are strategic.  They are designed to bring the team together around a central idea. They help the team focus on setting common goals that are an outgrowth of a unified strategy.  

Agendas center more around the individual. They often prioritize personal goals and perspectives over the strategic direction of the team. Rather than unify, they often create silos.

Don’t get me wrong. Every member of your team has their own personal perspectives, values, and goals. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. In fact, that is what you want! We need hungry, goal-oriented people on our team. But when those positive qualities cross the line into personal agendas, inevitable conflict arises. 

It is all about the balance and alignment that exists between individual priorities and corporate initiatives.

That presupposes, of course, that your team initiatives are clear, concise, and compelling. It also assumes that each individual on your team understands how their role fits into the totality of the organization. Like the orchestra that sits down to tune before a performance, you need a baseline before any kind of intentional alignment can take place. In music, this is called “taking a tuning note.” In an orchestra, this comes from the principal oboist. 

In life and on our teams, this “tuning note” comes from the leader.

It is the leader that must go first when it comes to sublimating personal agendas for the good of the team and, instead, focus on articulating clear organizational strategies and initiatives. If we want our organizations to play “in tune” without waves of conflict, we as leaders have to sound the “tuning note”.

Organizational “tuning” only takes place when we as leaders give up our right of having personal agendas. We have to go first if we want our teams to align around organizational perspectives, values, and goals. Like the principal oboist in the orchestra, we can’t sound the tuning pitch if we don’t know what it is before we start playing.

Our teams need us to spend our energy in developing clear, concise, and compelling strategies that they can align their personal goals and perspectives around. If we want our teams to unify, we have to go first when it comes to giving up our personal agendas.