Do you struggle to get your team to take action?
Is your team overly dependent on you, thus making you unable to take a day off from work?
Do you end up doing all the work just to get results?
I get you.
One of the biggest challenges of leadership is getting results through your team. Another common challenge I hear from leaders I’ve coached is the lack of time for their own wellbeing (i.e. attending training, going on holiday, making time for self-care, etc). Thankfully, the solution is not rocket science.
In this article, I will share with you what you can do to be the kind of leader that gets results through people, while enabling them to grow and be at their best.
Establish Trust
According to Patrick Lencioni, a Management Consultant and author, the most severe of the five dysfunctions of a team is the absence of trust. Without trust, members of the team would always have their guards up, careful not to make mistakes and withholding ideas, relevant information or feedback.
On the other hand, according to Forbes Magazine, the presence of trust in teams…
Builds psychological safety
Encourages questions
Creates goodwill and minimizes miscommunications
Encourages innovation and rapid decision-making
Enhances morale
How do you build trust? Start by getting to know your people.
What do they value?
What do they like doing outside work?
What motivates them?
What are their big and scary goals?
What challenges do they have?
What does success mean to them?
Remember that building trust is a process. Plant the seed and nourish it to grow.
Clarify the vision and the direction
In my last article 4 Mindset Shifts to Make you a Better Leader, I shared one of my key learnings on agile people development is to tell the why and the what and leave the how to the people. And this is the more effective way to encourage involvement and innovation within your team.
Let’s visualize an example. Let’s say you’re part of a team that’s developing a new home decor product line using flowers. Leader A might say, “We need to create new designs of flower vases” while Leader B might say, “We need to create new ways of using flowers to decorate homes.”
Which leader do you think will encourage more involvement and creativity?
I hope your answer is Leader B. In this (overly) simplified example, Leader B shared the vision of using flowers to decorate homes, whereas Leader A was already giving a specific instruction to create designs for vases.
A word of caution though. Clarifying the vision and the direction isn’t about giving limitless autonomy, but also involves setting boundaries. It is still the leader’s responsibility to set the boundaries of the “sandbox” or the space in which the team can explore ways to reach their goal. This means that leaders must still set certain parameters such as budget, milestones/deadlines, guiding principles, etc.
Enable your team
Do you have the right systems in place to help your team succeed?
No, I’m not just talking about IT systems. I am referring to the structure, processes, tools and other interrelated parts that help accomplish your goals.
You might have the best of the best employees in your team, but if you are unable to provide them with the systems and the support they need, they may disengage, underperform or worse, leave.
Enabling your team can be done in different ways. Here are some of them.
Provide them with the basic tools they need to do their work
This may be as simple as providing them with a working laptop, the software / applications they need, and a conducive working environment
Keep communication lines open and accessible
Do your employees struggle to reach you to ask for help? Make sure that you are available to them (well, not 24×7 of course!) and that you’ve established a trusting relationship such that they are comfortable to approach you when they need help, or even when they screw up.
Provide them with the resources to help them succeed
Helping your employees succeed means helping them not only in achieving the goals of the organization, but also their own personal / professional development goals. Resources could mean training, tools, technology, people or even the level of autonomy or authority they need.
Successful teams are built over time
It takes more than just leadership training to make a good leader. It takes more than just high performing employees to make a good team. Successful teams are built over time through consistent behaviors and actions from both leaders and members, that strengthen trust, anchor on to a clear vision and are supported by an enabling system.
Want to deliver excellent results through people?
Be the leader that casts a clear vision, trusts, and enables. This not only honors the humanness of your team, but allows you to be human too.
Let me know how I can help.
