3 Leadership practices to promote collective leadership

If I've got a team and we've got a task, I want everyone to buy into that task. I want everyone to have the opportunity to contribute to a solution, because what I've found is that if you've contributed to that solution, if you're allowed, if you've got the culture of being able to contribute, then as a follower, you really bought into that particular idea.

And you will then go and execute that task, which is what this is all about, to the utmost of your ability, and have an understanding of why we're executing that task as well.

I think a lot in the military is talked about, and outside the military as well, there's the famous story of JFK, whether it happened or not visiting the space programme, and the guy who's sweeping the floor in there.

JFK saying, what are you doing? And he says, I'm putting a man on the moon. That's ultimately, as a leader, what you want everyone who works for you to be able to understand where they fit, where their little cog fits in the big machine, no matter how small that cog is, and to understand why they're doing that.

Because if they do that, they'll go to the ends of the earth for you. And I, as a leader. I don't need to be stood there barking orders. There's times for that in a wartime situation, World War I, the trenches, those sorts of things, very different kind of leadership style may be required.

But to me, it is about empowering the people that I work with. It's about an understanding of the task, and it's about being able to contribute throughout.