While often times knowing when to lead and when to guide team members can really help long-term organizational relationships, I find that my greatest "leadership skill" would be in my ability to understand business needs, translate them into actionable technical solutions that help the true technical experts understand the desired outcomes and then understand the final solution so that it can be understood and agreed to by all stakeholders.

I lead by a mix of hands-on and co-learning. As a long term technical generalist, I've successfully performed every role in a Technology Department and am comfortable in that I can sit down with any team member and not only understand what they are doing but also perform with them. I use this to break the ice, relate to them and then they can teach me what has changed, how they do their tasks and I can use my experiences to show other ways of achieving high performance. I prefer collaboration and mutual understanding of the vision and goals, where we can all agree and work towards the same end result.

First we must understand what the end result is. Then we break down what steps are needed and understand from the stakeholders and action-takers what our restrictions and time estimates are. From there we come up with realistic expectations and set our goals on that. They take some discussion at times but ultimately I look to set short and long term goals with clearly defined milestones that represent completion steps towards the goal. I will also add little rewards for hitting goals or hitting them early to help keep myself and the team motivated. 

Immediately and with facts. If time permits and I can understand potential solutions to get a plan back on-track then I will prepare those for when we deliver the news however, it's more important to ensure communication is prompt and accurate so that all stakeholders and are aware of changes.

Communicating with team members really depends on each person for one-on-one interactions. As I seek to understand what works best for each individual and use that in my discussions with them. For team communications then fact based emails or Teams/Slack communications work well with a final call to action inviting questions or feedback so that alignment is clear. I will also ensure that key individual contributors are followed up with personally so that a clear vision of the final goal is always maintained.