By Oluwole Dada
With the intensity of work required to achieve annual targets and strategic objectives, leaders at different strategic positions tend to forget the team members who help in achieving those results. Either consciously or unconsciously in rare cases, they craft their territory, regional or national goals entirely around business outcomes while treating their teams as mere instruments of execution. This approach not only limits organizational potential but often leads to the very situation leaders are desperately trying to avoid. The most transformative leaders understand that to get the best from their team members, they must not let their vision only be about their goals and tasks alone, but also about the people they lead. This principle separates good managers from great leaders and determines whether organizations merely survive or truly thrive.
Great leaders know how to get the best from their team members by incorporating them into their vision. They ensure their goals and tasks put their team members into consideration. When your team sees this, they will put you too into their vision and plans. Marc Benioff envisioned Salesforce becoming the world’s leading customer relationship management platform, he didn’t just focus on market share and revenue targets. Instead, he built his vision around the concept of “Ohana” (Hawaiian for family), ensuring that employee growth, equality, and purpose were integral to the company’s success story. In other words, Benioff ensured a family-like atmosphere within the company. This has made Salesforce to be recognized as one of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” for 12 consecutive years.
Your team members watch out to see if you are selfish or selfless. They are on the lookout to see if you are just using them or if you have a plan to raise them as you are rising. The outcome of their evaluation determines the depth of their commitment. I had a line manager some years ago. He will always speak about my outstanding results when he goes for meetings in the head office. When I got this feedback from other senior managers who are always in the meetings with him, I was motivated to keep giving my best with the assurance that my line manager is also interested in my rising in the organization. Modern employees possess sophisticated radar for detecting authentic versus transactional leadership.
Oprah Winfrey’s leadership of her media empire demonstrates how this works in practice. When Winfrey built her media company, employees closely watched whether her success would come at their expense or alongside their growth. Winfrey consistently demonstrated that her vision included their prosperity. She shared ownership through equity programs, created pathways for employees to launch their own projects under her brand, and publicly celebrated team members’ achievements. Her employees observed these actions and concluded that Winfrey’s success was genuinely tied to their own advancement. This evaluation led to extraordinary loyalty and performance, with many team members staying with her organization for decades and helping build a multi-billion-dollar media empire.
Oprah Winfrey’s story contrasts with that of Adam Neumann at WeWork. Despite articulating grand visions about revolutionizing work and community, employees increasingly observed that Neumann’s decision-making prioritized his personal enrichment over team development. They watched as he cashed out hundreds of millions while asking employees to make sacrifices. He made decisions that benefited his personal investments, and he failed to create sustainable career advancement opportunities for the workforce. This led employees to conclude that they were being used rather than developed, resulting in declining commitment, public criticism, and ultimately contributing to WeWork’s dramatic downfall.
True leaders are selfless. True leaders care about their team members. True leaders put their team members into the picture of their vision. Modern neuroscience research validates that when people feel genuinely included in a vision that considers their welfare, their brains respond with increased creativity, risk-taking capacity, and collaborative behavior. Tim Cook’s leadership at Apple demonstrates this scientific principle in corporate practice. Cook’s vision for Apple’s future consistently includes commitments to employee development, diversity, and work-life balance alongside technological innovation goals. He has implemented programs like Apple University for employee development, comprehensive health and wellness benefits, and flexible work arrangements. Cook regularly communicates how individual employee growth contributes to Apple’s innovation capacity.
The leaders we remember most favorably, from Nelson Mandela to Warren Buffett all demonstrated the fundamental principle where they made their visions about something larger than their personal achievement or even their organizations’ immediate success. They consistently showed how their success was inseparable from the development and welfare of the people they led. In our highly competitive business environment, this people-centered approach is strategically essential. Organizations that genuinely embed team member development into their core vision consistently outperform those that treat people as replaceable resources. They demonstrate higher innovation rates, better customer satisfaction, superior financial performance, and greater resilience during challenging periods.
Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.
