My Thoughts

How to Lead a Team Without Losing Your Mind: Real Talk from the Trenches

The bloke sitting across from me at the coffee shop yesterday was complaining about his "useless team" whilst simultaneously checking his phone every thirty seconds during our conversation. Made me realise something I've been banging on about for the better part of two decades in this game.

Leadership isn't rocket science, but it sure as hell isn't what most people think it is either.

I've been training managers and running teams since Howard was PM, and I can tell you right now that 73% of leadership failures come down to one simple thing: people trying to be the boss they think they should be instead of the leader their team actually needs. The rest? Well, that's just people being dickheads, to be honest.

The Myth of the Perfect Manager

Here's what they don't teach you in those fancy MBA programs: good leadership is messy, inconsistent, and sometimes involves admitting you haven't got a bloody clue what you're doing.

I learned this the hard way back in 2009 when I was running a team of twelve in Brisbane. Thought I had it all figured out. Had my five-year plan, my KPIs, my weekly one-on-ones scheduled like clockwork. Everything looked perfect on paper.

Then Sarah from accounts came into my office crying because her mum had been diagnosed with cancer, and suddenly all my structured management theories felt about as useful as a chocolate teapot. That's when I realised that leading people isn't about having all the answers – it's about being human enough to figure things out together.

The best managers I know are the ones who can switch between being a drill sergeant and a counsellor within the same conversation. They're not afraid to say "I don't know, but let's work it out" or "You know what? You were right, and I was being an idiot."

Stop Managing, Start Leading

There's a massive difference between management and leadership, and most people get it arse-backwards.

Management is about systems, processes, and making sure the trains run on time. Leadership is about getting people to want to be on the bloody train in the first place. You can manage tasks all day long, but you can only lead people.

I see this constantly in the team development training I run across Australia. Managers rock up thinking they need better spreadsheets or more efficient meeting structures. What they actually need is to learn how to have real conversations with their team members.

Real conversations. Not performance reviews disguised as chats. Not "How was your weekend?" followed immediately by a task list. Actual human-to-human communication where you listen more than you talk and remember that the person sitting across from you has a life outside your quarterly targets.

The companies that get this right – like Atlassian, REA Group, Canva – they're not succeeding because they have better project management software. They're winning because their leaders understand that engagement comes from connection, not compliance.

The Three Things Nobody Tells You About Team Leadership

First: Your team will test you constantly, and that's actually a good thing. They're not being difficult; they're working out whether you're trustworthy. Every decision you make, every promise you keep or break, every time you do or don't have their back – they're taking notes. The testing stops when they decide you're worth following.

Second: You're going to stuff things up regularly, and admitting it is the fastest way to earn respect. I once forgot about a team member's birthday after making a big deal about celebrating everyone's special days. Instead of pretending it didn't happen, I bought the biggest cake I could find the next day and made a proper speech about how I'd dropped the ball. That team member still sends me Christmas cards, fifteen years later.

Third: The best teams have healthy conflict, not peaceful harmony. If everyone's agreeing with everything all the time, you've either hired a bunch of yes-people or created an environment where people are too scared to speak up. Neither scenario ends well.

Building Trust When You're Not Naturally Trustworthy

Let's be real – some of us are naturally more trustworthy than others. I'm an impatient bastard who talks too fast and interrupts people. Not exactly leadership material on paper. But I've learned that authenticity beats perfection every single time.

The trick is being consistently imperfect rather than unpredictably perfect. If your team knows you're going to be direct, occasionally blunt, but always honest, they can work with that. If they never know which version of you is going to show up to the Monday meeting, you're stuffed.

I learned this from watching my old boss Janet, who was probably the best leader I've ever worked for despite having the organisational skills of a hungover uni student. She'd lose important documents, double-book meetings, and once forgot we had a major client presentation until ten minutes beforehand.

But she also fought like hell for her team's pay rises, stayed late to help anyone who was struggling, and never once threw someone under the bus when things went wrong. People would walk through fire for Janet because they knew she'd do the same for them.

The Communication Game-Changer

Here's something controversial: most communication training is complete rubbish because it focuses on techniques instead of intentions.

You can learn all the active listening skills in the world, but if you're just waiting for your turn to talk, people will sense it immediately. You can master every conflict resolution framework, but if you don't actually care about finding a solution that works for everyone, you're just going through the motions.

The game-changer is this: start every conversation with the genuine intention to understand the other person's perspective, even if you're absolutely convinced they're wrong. Especially if you're convinced they're wrong.

I started doing this after a particularly brutal feedback session where one of my team members told me I listened like I was already planning my response. She was right. I was so focused on being a "good communicator" that I'd forgotten the whole point was actually communicating.

Now I practice something I call "listening with your feet" – physically positioning myself to focus entirely on the person talking. Phone face-down, laptop closed, full eye contact. Sounds simple, but it's harder than you think when you've got seventeen other things on your mind.

The effective communication skills training I recommend to other managers always starts with this principle: technique follows intention, not the other way around.

Delegation: The Art of Letting Go Without Losing Control

This is where most new managers completely lose their minds. They either micromanage everything or throw people in the deep end and hope for the best. Both approaches are guaranteed to create stress, resentment, and subpar results.

Good delegation is like teaching someone to drive. You don't hand over the keys on day one, but you also don't keep your foot on the brake pedal forever. You start in an empty car park, progress to quiet streets, and eventually they're ready for the M1 in peak hour traffic.

The secret is matching the level of support to the person's competence and confidence for that specific task. Someone might be brilliant at client presentations but rubbish at budget planning. You can't delegate both tasks the same way just because they're generally capable.

I've seen managers delegate massive projects to new team members with nothing more than "Let me know if you need anything" and then act surprised when things go sideways. I've also seen managers delegate ordering office supplies with a fifteen-step approval process. Both extremes miss the point entirely.

When Teams Go Wrong (And How to Fix Them)

Every team goes through rough patches. Usually it's one of three things: unclear expectations, personality clashes, or people feeling like their contributions don't matter.

Unclear expectations are the easiest to fix but the hardest to admit you've created. Most managers think they're being clear when they're actually being vague. "Improve customer satisfaction" isn't an expectation; it's a hope. "Reduce customer complaint response time to under 4 hours" is an expectation.

Personality clashes are trickier because they're often disguised as professional disagreements. Sarah thinks Tom is lazy; Tom thinks Sarah is controlling. Meanwhile, they're both good at their jobs and could probably work together fine if someone would just address the elephant in the room.

The hardest one to fix is when people feel like their work doesn't matter. This usually happens slowly, like a leak in your roof that you don't notice until the ceiling caves in. Someone gets overlooked for a promotion, their ideas get ignored in meetings, or they watch less qualified people get opportunities they deserved.

By the time you notice the problem, they're already checking out mentally. The good news is that people want to feel valued more than they want to be promoted or get pay rises. The bad news is that making someone feel valued requires actual effort and attention, not just annual performance reviews and birthday cakes.

The Leadership Development Trap

Here's where I'm going to get myself in trouble with the training industry: most leadership development programs are designed to make trainers money, not create better leaders.

They'll teach you about different leadership styles, communication frameworks, and conflict resolution models. All useful stuff, don't get me wrong. But they won't teach you how to deal with the reality that Mark from IT is going through a messy divorce and his work is suffering, or that your top performer just got a job offer from a competitor and you've got three days to convince them to stay.

Real leadership development happens in the trenches, not in conference rooms with whiteboards and role-playing exercises. It happens when you're dealing with actual problems with actual consequences for actual people.

The best thing you can do for your leadership development is to find someone who's been doing this longer than you and ask them to be brutally honest about your blind spots. Not a mentor who'll blow sunshine up your arse, but someone who'll tell you when you're being an idiot and help you figure out how to do better next time.

Building Resilience in Your Team (And Yourself)

Teams that last are teams that can bounce back from setbacks without falling apart. This isn't about positive thinking or team-building exercises involving trust falls. It's about creating an environment where people feel safe to fail, learn, and try again.

The key word there is "safe." Not comfortable – comfortable teams get complacent. But safe enough to take calculated risks, admit mistakes, and ask for help when they need it.

I learned this during the 2020 chaos when half my team was working from home, the other half was dealing with reduced hours, and everyone was stressed about everything. The teams that thrived weren't the ones with the best technology or the most detailed work-from-home policies. They were the ones where people felt connected to each other and confident that their leader had their back.

Building resilience means celebrating the attempts, not just the successes. It means being transparent about challenges without being dramatic about them. And it means admitting when you don't know what's going to happen next but committing to figure it out together.

The Real Secret to Leading Teams

After all these years, all the training courses, all the books and conferences and late-night conversations with other managers trying to figure this stuff out, here's what I've learned:

The best leaders are the ones who remember that leadership is a privilege, not a right. Every day, your team chooses to follow you. They could do the bare minimum, look for other jobs, or make your life difficult in a thousand small ways. The fact that they don't is a gift, and treating it like anything else is the fastest way to lose it.

Leading a team well isn't about having all the answers or being perfect or even being particularly inspiring all the time. It's about showing up consistently, caring genuinely about the people you're responsible for, and being brave enough to make difficult decisions when you need to.

Most importantly, it's about understanding that every person on your team is someone's kid, partner, parent, or best friend. They've got dreams, fears, bills to pay, and lives that matter just as much as yours does. If you can remember that when you're making decisions that affect them, you're already ahead of most managers out there.

Everything else is just details.

Been leading teams for longer than you care to remember? Share your war stories and hard-won wisdom in the comments. The rest of us could use the reality check.