You Are a Prism

In his seminal High Output Management, Andy Grove captures a key management role: filtering information. Managers do this in two directions. As a manager, you take in organizational context and distill it down to the key pieces your team needs to be successful. Similarly, you take all the information your team is creating and distill it for leadership, your manager, and your peers. You filter information, sharpen it, and pass it along.

But information isn’t your only medium. You also deal in culture. Because you are a prism.

One of the strange parts of leadership is that you both lead the team and are on it. When someone asks you, “How is the team doing?”, they’re generally asking about your reports. But imagine two outsiders talking and one asks about your team. At that point, the team includes you. You’re Schrödinger’s manager — sometimes you’re on the team, and sometimes you’re not.

Most of the time this is inconsequential. But two failure modes occur in two distinct scenarios: you’re highly positive while your team is highly negative, or you’re highly negative while your team is highly positive. Let’s look at each.

When You’re High and the Team Is Low

First, imagine an org-wide process change: for every pull request created, the author must record a short video describing the change. “That can’t be so bad,” you think. “Besides, this will be good public-speaking practice.” But your team is seething. “This will slow us down!” “Who’s going to watch these anyway?” Your optimism is too far removed from your team members’ reality. If you present your rose-colored view, your teammates will not only reject it but also begin to lose trust in you.

When You’re Low and the Team Is High

Second, the inverse: you’re low; the team is high. From your vantage point, you see rocks they haven’t spotted yet. Your team members, now energized, are able to think beyond themselves. They’re observant. And they notice your distress. When they’re flying high and you’re in it, they attune quickly. Your distress becomes theirs, and your gloom about those rocks becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So how do you manage these disparities? Remember: you are a prism. Reflect the energy that’s necessary, and absorb the energy that’s necessary, for your team to be successful. You also reflect your team’s energy back to the rest of the organization.

When you’re out of sync with your team, the goal is to triangulate where you are, where they are, and where you need the team to go. Then walk them there. Genuinely. Your team and your peers will spot inauthenticity quickly. Get there yourself first. Then you can show the way.

You are a prism. Reflect the light for your team.