Many years ago, I used to use a Stanford Graduate School of Business case study titled Keith Ferrazzi in my leadership teaching. The case revolves around Keith Ferrazzi and his evolution as a leader, and then in January this year, I came across an article by him on forbes.com https://www.forbes.com/sites/keithferrazzi/2025/01/31/stop-being-the-hero-leader-why-great-teams-need-less-leadership/
His piece talks about how leadership needs to evolve from a traditional leader centric or wheel and spoke model where everything goes through the leader to a “Teamship” model where the leader focusses much of his/her attention to “creating the conditions for peers to elevate each other to extraordinary performance.”
Teamship
I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree with what Ferrazzi is saying here. My experience however is that many leaders are still stuck in the Hero trap where they derive their satisfaction, fulfilment and recognition from directing and leading from the front, or as Ferrazzi puts it, from the middle of the wheel, where everything goes through them.
This is all the more interesting given that in the Stanford case, colleagues at one point in Ferrazzi’s career remarked that “We had trouble feeding his desire to be in charge.” Ferrazzi has fundamentally shifted his perspective and approach as he learned from bitter experience that this wheel and spoke approach limits the potential of the team. Since then, he’s built a highly-successful consultancy business that helps organisations and their leaders shift their perspective and approach and get more from their teams.
Being in charge vs Being accountable
Being “in charge” is not the same as being accountable. The leader is still accountable for the performance of the team, but this accountability is an accountability that he/she shares with the team. So, instead of managing team member performance by managing team members individually, or through the spokes of a wheel, the leader cultivates a team environment where teammates “are committed to lifting each other up and pushing each other to greater heights” using “modern collaboration practices and tools that enable bolder innovation and faster decision-making.”
In Ferrazzi’s words, this requires:
• Moving from conflict avoidance to radical candor
• Building purposeful rather than serendipitous relationships
• Shifting from individual to collective resilience
• Embedding peer-to-peer coaching and accountability
The challenge for leaders is to let go of the appearance of control and the apparent security it gives them and instead focus their attention on team functioning and team dynamics. Deriving their fulfilment and recognition, not for directing the team but for creating a “teamship” culture that leads to superior performance. But that shift takes courage; dare I say, it takes Courageous Leadership.
