Well, you’ve made it to a place in your career where you’re counted on, not just for your own work, but for the results you get through others.

How will you be going about that? You won’t be programming your people like robots or operating them like machines. Of course, you could pretend that you actually control your people. You can bark orders at them as if they were Siri, and had only to hear to obey. But I suspect if you’re tuning into this station, you already know that strategy is only going to backfire.

No, as a team leader, your main way of getting results from people is by the way that you communicate with them. You’ll be communicating with them through words, either directly spoken or written to them via emails. And you’ll be communicating to them nonverbally, through your facial expressions and body language, in person or on video conference.

Congratulations, you’re a psychologist! You are now in the business of influencing people, and to do that effectively, you’re going to need to know something about what makes people tick: what motivates them, what distresses them, what they hope for, and what they fear. Indeed, you’ll ultimately be on a journey to discover what matters most to them, what gives work its deepest meaning, so that the messages you choose can help to bring out the very best in your people. It’s a lifelong challenge. It can be maddening, and it can be richly rewarding.

In the next few posts, we’ll be examining some of the most important dimensions that leaders must consider in choosing their words and actions in order to get the work done, done well, and done in a sustainable way. But for now, let this sink in: if you are a team leader, the core of your work is the influence you have on others, and that makes you a psychologist.

Let’s discuss!

How does thinking about yourself as a psychologist change the way you think about your role as a team leader?