The essence of leadership: facing the challenge of being the new manager

To meet the challenge of today's work environment, the leader of a professional, technically skilled, and highly diverse work "group must be an enabler of people, a facilitator of groups, as well as know how to be an effective group member" (Blanchard et al, The One Minute Manager Builds High Performance Teams, New York, NY, William Morrow, 1990). To accomplish this the leader must participate as a member of the work group as well as identify areas of needed management support and direction. Creating the climate that allows professional work teams to develop and mature is both challenging and rewarding. Fully mature, high-performance teams require minimal direction from the leader. At this stage empowerment is reached: the leader lets go so that the team can get going.