Give Your Team Space

"When you plant a seed, you don't dig it up every day to see how it's doing. You water it, give it sunlight, and trust that it will grow." - Anonymous

Leadership is often mischaracterized as a 'top-down' endeavor, a one-way flow from the decision-maker to the team. In that cramped vision, there’s no room for creative incubation, no space for team members to fully flourish. What if leadership, especially in complex, fast-paced environments, was about granting space, while also nurturing, to let ideas bloom and characters develop?

Think about it: what's the environment you're creating for your team? Is it a sanitized, corporate echo chamber where you dictate the rules, and they merely execute? Or have you curated a space where each member can make their corner their own, take ownership, and contribute in a meaningful way? Just as Deutsch argued that a child's room is an extension of their mind, so is the workspace an extension of your team's collective intellect and creativity.

Don't get caught in the fallacy that 'cleanliness is godliness,' that an overly structured, neatly partitioned workspace—or work process—is the key to productivity. Your college apartment probably wasn't spotless, was it? And yet, think of the studying, the late-night brainstorming sessions, the moments of pure, undiluted inspiration that happened amidst that 'mess.'

Being a leader doesn't mean policing how your team manages their 'rooms' or projects. It means providing them the parameters within which they can experiment, innovate, and yes, sometimes, fail. True creativity can't be expected to happen in a rigid, controlled environment any more than a child can be expected to grow into an independent adult in a household of overbearing rules. Give them a box, sure, but don’t chastise them for coloring outside the lines now and then.

Accountability doesn’t necessarily mean holding someone’s hand every step of the way, checking every box, making sure they 'color inside the lines.' Sometimes it's standing back and allowing them the dignity of self-management. At other times, it’s stepping in—not to micromanage—but to guide, correct, and, when needed, reset the course. Like a parent stepping into a chaotic room not to reprimand but to understand, leadership is about knowing when to intervene and when to let things be.

But let's be real here—granting space isn't shirking your own responsibilities. You are still very much accountable for the culture you instill, the ethics you enforce, and the general 'tidiness' of the operation. Just as a parent sets basic ground rules about safety and respect, you're in charge of maintaining a broad framework within which this individual growth occurs. The real art of leadership is striking that balance between order and chaos, rules and freedom, accountability and autonomy.

If you can master that delicate balance, you're not just a boss; you're a leader. You've created an ecosystem where accountability thrives not because it's enforced but because it's chosen. And when your team members choose to be accountable, when they truly own their space, that's when the extraordinary happens. That's when you reap the dividends of a creative, engaged, and, above all, accountable team.