Management is a gift, and leading teams is a privilege. Congrats on your new leadership role, but with great power comes great responsibility.

Owning a company and having people work for you IS a TRUE privilege. And our teams can only be as successful as you ALLOW them to be.

Leadership is not about you, it’s about them. Just like marriage or having children, it’s important to understand that there will be challenges but the healthiest relationships rely on give and take.

Here are 5 imperative leadership skills to create healthy sustainable teams.

1. Autonomy

Your team members need autonomy to growth. They need to understand their work flow and build their day around the goals that are set. As a hiring manager for any team, part of the reason they hire you or keep you on board is to assume you do the hard work to get from point A to point B.

2. Safety, Support + Self Care

A sense of security that they will keep their jobs and thrive. If you are threatening an employees employment, you better believe they will be applying for jobs if they are smart and take action right away on breaking up immediately.

3. Healthy Internal Competition

The team will fight here and there, but they also need to challenge each other to break through roadblocks. Life is hard. Work is hard. No one said it was going to be easy.

4. Embrace Your Top Performers

Don’t be threatened by them because of your own insecurities and selfish motives. Embrace and reward them for their unique ability to challenge themselves, hard work, and winning over new business.

5. Support

If your team has a problem, it’s not theirs. It’s YOURS. Repeat that. Let me help. If your team has a problem, it’s YOUR problem. How are you going to help them?

SUMMARY

Accountability for teams performance is critical in management. How can you take accountability? Keep them feeling safe and autonomous, while non-condescendingly and supportively collaborating on growth. Yelling, blaming, scaring, and shaming will only spark them to apply for new positions and leave you. This creates a ripple effect on the economy of the company, and you may have a short term win, but in the infinite game you will lose.

What are your management roadblocks? How have you overcome them? Let me know in the comments below!