Teams are a reflection of the leader

There is one statement that underpins the success of any team: “The quality of the team is a direct reflection of the leader.

If we swim through all the countless leadership theories and identify the fundamental concepts that effective and efficient leaders have, it all becomes very straightforward. How straightforward? There is one statement that underpins the success of any team: “The quality of the team is a direct reflection of the leader.”

Let us take a slightly different tack, we are going to throw out all the research, the input from those leadership experts that clutter the bookshelves and websites (well sort of). We are going to take the ideas of the experts and distill the conversation down to those concepts that, over the last 12 years of being a professional speaker in this area, have been observed working in the trenches of leadership.

Beliefs

None of our time together will be well spent without this first and underpinning concept. Those leaders that build high performing teams have the belief that their team is ‘actually’ a reflection of their ability as a leader. In reality, this may not be true, although as we know beliefs drive thoughts, thoughts drive words and words drive actions.

Consider the limited impact a leader will have if they had the opposite belief. That is, “I have a team that is full of useless people.” Which belief will get a better outcome? This doesn’t drive blame, rather responsibility, and from this, actions and strategies can be put in place to produce a better outcome.

Leadership of service

Movies, books, and televisions drive the understanding that leaders need to be the font of all knowledge and cast this wisdom across all those that require it, all while driving outcomes from the front. Although this could not be further from the truth.

Modern leaders truly understand the need to get out of the way of their people and allow them to deliver results. The leader’s role is to remove barriers and provide support to ensure their people can achieve. They serve their team rather than the other way around.

This concept also starts to challenge cultural norms that the only measure of a team’s success is through the delivery of the process rather than the management of people. A total focus on KPIs drives task-related decisions rather than people orientated and therefore sustainable decisions. The effective leader needs to find the balance.

End point – and the clear path to it

If we reflect back on the great leaders (Churchill, Martin Luther King, Gates, and Obama) all of them have the amazing ability to define what success looks like, or the endpoint of their vision. This isn’t some half-hearted, corporate-speak attempt at a vision statement, rather an emotional description that team members can almost feel.

The ability to define and then describe this is essential to get teams moving on the same path. Once this has been provided to teams, then leaders get down to ensuring clarity around roles, responsibilities, and expectations of individuals as they move forward. Usually, these discussions are had WITH team members rather than just dropped on them.

Mindset

Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People outlines a simple yet powerful model to support leaders in managing their energy and time throughout the day. Only focusing on things that you can control (your reactions and emotions) and influence is essential. Anything that sits outside these two areas should be let go of.

This extends to the ability of the leader to influence the conversations and focus of the team to produce the highest standards.

Where is the focus?

I have seen it over and over again. Either around meeting tables or individual conversations, leaders spending significant time discussing a problem that has already been defined rather than focusing on the solution.

Furthermore, leaders encouraging their direct reports to come to them with problems rather than with a possible solution as well. These types of actions encourage a culture where the focus is always on the problem rather than the solution. You can only imagine the impact this has on team culture long term.

Building relationships

If your boss turned up right now and asked you to come to their office for a talk, what would you think? Would you think … ‘woo hoo’ or ‘yikes I am in trouble’. The second answer seems to be a common response. Is this a reflection of a positive culture?

As the use of email increases, face-to-face communication decreases and leaders are spending less and less time with their direct reports. People are social beings and relish the opportunity to mix and understand the person that is providing the direction for the team and ultimately decides whether they have a job not.

Building relationships with people is essential. Do you know if your people have families? Do you ask them about it? What do they do after work? What motivates them to come to work?

Communication

Great communication skills for a leader is so obvious that it shouldn’t even need to be mentioned. It may be obvious although the message isn’t getting through. The how and what we communicate is shifting rapidly, and those leaders with poor communication skills are going to suffer.

This article first appeared in the CEO Magazine

By Shane Cubis

You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your colleagues. Here’s how to make it work at work.

“That’s the sad thing about The Monkees,” Ken said, as ‘Daydream Believer’ played for I-swear-to-God the third time on his Spotify Radio playlist while we were having beers at his place lamenting the perils of fixing team culture.

“They broke up because they hadn’t chosen to work together. They were put together.”

“Who does get to choose their workmates?” I replied. “For the most part, every team is ‘put together’.”

Much like The Monkees, I’m part of an international team working in the music industry (minus the fame, millions, adoring fans and syndicated TV show). We toil at the pleasure of a major company, and for around a year now the team has been mostly dormant. Until the past few weeks, when things have really ramped up and it’s all go, go, go.

And it’s obvious we have to rebuild the culture, almost from scratch. Processes have been forgotten, the pan-global at-the-coalface camaraderie has been replaced by snarky sniping and feet-dragging, and nobody’s laughing at my cryptic emoji gags on Slack.

In short, things are functional but dire.

Fixing team culture

A successful team, as any musical Svengali will tell you, needs three things: a shared purpose, cheerleaders and a bond. These are the building blocks of fixing team culture.

Whether you’re in the same office, scattered across the planet or harmonizing in front of an adoring crowd, these constituents are critical.

It’s not enough to establish these things at the outset and assume they’ll last forever. My example is fairly extreme, given that dormancy, but it’s an interesting object lesson. We should all have a shared purpose – meeting deadlines with the same workload we used to have in exchange for money being transferred into our bank accounts – but that doesn’t factor in the personalities at play and the subconscious resentment that’s obviously bubbled up over that quiet period.

I’m not anyone special within my team – just an Aussie editor who puts ‘u’ in the word ‘colour’ and speaks in ‘OTT Strayan’ slang when liaising with my Seppo, Pomgolian and Canuck counterparts. But it’s in my interest to work with colleagues who are happy and interactive, so I’m doing my best to re-establish that cultural bond.

I’ve been talking to the ‘traffic cops’ on the project about the way they communicate with us and different methods of disseminating information. People tend to gripe amongst themselves rather than with the people who control their income, and it’s clear from the responses I’m getting that the feedback channels have been clogged.

But in addition to being a benevolent narc, I’ve also been doing my bit as a cheerleader – talking up the benefits of having colleagues around the world, sharing photos of my workspace (and asking for other people’s to compare), even discussing the weather.

This is probably annoying to some people who just want to log on, do the work and log off, but that’s the kind of input it takes to rebuild a team bond. I believe it’s important to share your days and dreams when you’re a team that’s been put together.

You could say I’m a daydream believer.

#CorporateCulture #WorkCulture

This article first appeared in the CEO Magazine