So, you have just been appointed to your first leadership role and you can’t help but notice that strangely, everyone just expects you to know how to lead. Everyone thinks that because you were good at doing the job as a team member, you must automatically know how to get the best out of the team that now reports to you. You may just need a little help and between me and you, I’m going to give you the 20 tips that I believe you should concentrate on to really get yourself off to a flying start!
In the beginning…
If this is your first leadership role, this is an exciting time to be you! You may be in for some tough times, but if you focus your energy a little on getting some leadership basics right, the rewards and sense of achievement will blow you away!
Every team goes through some rough seas when it is just starting out. And that includes an already established team who have someone new appointed to lead them. This is because humans are involved, and like it or not, we have some hard wiring that makes us react in predictable ways in a group setting. Team members may challenge the hierarchy, they may disagree on the team focus and stronger personalities may jostle for position. So where should we focus our efforts to bring the team through this phase and establish ourselves as quickly as possible?
#1 Relationships need to be actively built
We’ve all seen teams in movies where everyone gets on, and the team gels together, we may even have been lucky enough to have been in one of those teams in real life. The thing is though, they don’t happen by accident. Someone must engineer that situation… and guess what? That person is now you.
#1a – Civility
Focus on the three stages of team interaction. The first stage that you are aiming for is plain old civility. They don’t like or dislike each other that much, and that’s natural, they don’t know much about each other or you. Work at encouraging everyone to adopt behaviours where no matter how anyone feels about anyone else, civility is none negotiable.
Push quite hard on this one, establish this as a clear standard through short introductions to team meetings and any other opportunity that presents itself. At this early stage, civility works well enough to ensure people have a foundation to rub along together so the job keeps getting done. But ideally, we need to push through this stage as soon as we can.
#1b – Respectability
Identify positive attributes about each team member, through initial 1:1 meetings and by keenly observing the team. It may be something like previous levels of good performance, the ability to deliver work on time, high sales figures or just that they (deservedly) hold a more senior position in the group.
Now, through your interactions with the team, promote these qualities to their colleagues, and highlight them as solid reasons for their colleagues to hold them in high regard. This pushes through to the respectability phase. We are wanting to impress upon everyone, that they should each respect each other for these positive attributes and turn to each other when they need help in that particular area.
Once you have really got people recognising each other’s strengths and respecting each other as much as possible (try not to expect miracles) – try and give active nudges to get mini mentoring relationships established. Let’s say you have a team member who lacks confidence when talking to clients, you could say, “I’ve noticed that Sally is fearless with clients, I’m sure she’d share some of her strategies with you. I’ll ask her and arrange a little idea sharing session”. Each time we do this we are reinforcing respect and promoting stronger relationships. Be subtle here, heavy handedness will come off as manipulation.
#1c – Likeability
If you have put in some solid groundwork in building mutual respect across the team and made sure not to miss anyone out, by now people will be seeking advice from one another without your intervention. As respect builds, watch for any overt poor behaviours that may need nipping in the bud (more on this later) as they can derail this process. If all follows on as it should, by arranging some simple social interactions with the team you’ll help move the natural progression on to the likeability phase. Good relationships are being fostered and barriers will be tumbling down all around you. Great job!
#2 Learn to delegate well
What is the secret to good delegation? It may not be obvious, but it is getting to know the people in your team! As you have been applying tip #1 you will be getting a good idea of your team members’ skills and attributes.
#2a – It might be painful – but learn to let go (a little anyway)
If you have been promoted as a leader, it’s a safe bet to assume you were good at one of the roles that sat within a team just like the one you now lead. Which means you probably are particular about how you like tasks done; you may even be a perfectionist.
The temptation is to want to do all the important or mission critical tasks yourself. Well, the quickest way to ruin your relationship with your team, and to suffer stress and burn out yourself is by retaining all mission critical tasks.
If you are serious about being a good leader, you will have your plate full in leading and developing a team well… you must delegate!
Maturing as a team leader means overcoming the feeling that people will see your delegations as you shirking work. If you are leading properly, you simply won’t have time for a lot of the tasks you used to do yourself.
#2b – Right person right job
The best way to establish a good work culture is through making decisions that make people feel safe, valued and comfortable. If each team member is doing the tasks that best suit their abilities, they will feel comfortable, and they will start to develop status. (Have a read of this article on workplace stress to gain some more insights in to the value of status in the workplace).
Where status and comfort are developed a positive team vibe often follows. You can help this along by celebrating each individual’s successes publicly too. Assigning a task to someone who doesn’t have the basic skills required to efficiently complete the job is setting them up for a fall, and promotes irritation in both them, and the team member who sees that as their speciality too!
The only exception here is where the task is an opportunity to develop new knowledge or skills or a deeper understanding of the organisation and how it works in a less experienced team member. Only use this approach though where you are either willing to coach the team member yourself, or better yet, set up a mentoring relationship with another team member as in #1b above. Finally, it is important not to use the ‘learning opportunity’ approach where time constraints would just put excessive pressure and stress on both team members.
#2c – Capacity
Part of being a team leader is being responsible for utilising the people in your team to achieve the aims of the company, as efficiently as possible and without burning people out. So, develop a way of monitoring what tasks people have outstanding, and what capacity for new tasks they have.
There are lots of ways of doing this, but unless you have bespoke software, design a simple system of your own. Knowing what people are up to, and how much time they have available is essential if you need to allocate tasks.
As you get more experienced in the role, you will develop a knack of knowing who is able to cope with differing levels of work and still meet deadlines. A common pitfall is believing the keenest members of the team when they assure you they have capacity to squeeze in the next high profile piece of work. Eagerness to please or desire to progress can skew their ability to be realistic with their capacity, whilst others may not be as willing to take on work even when they do have capacity.
Learn how long things take and use a simple system to monitor performance of tasks. Set up regular (at least monthly) meetings with each individual and check with them on their progress. Record the outcomes of these meetings and share them with the team member. Remember, as much as we need the tasks done, we also need to avoid perceived favouritism.
#2d – They aren’t treats!
We are in the workplace now, and not back in junior school. Your job is about getting the job done, quickly and to the highest possible standard with the resources you have. Except for the most basic tasks, you should avoid simple rota systems for task allocation. It may look like you are ‘fairly’ distributing the work, but there are so many factors to consider (like those above) that this method will let you down very quickly.
#3 A code to live by
In new teams, when they are going through Bruce Tuckman’s Storming phase, negative emotions may run high. People are looking to establish their place in the new environment and to see where they fit.
I recall years ago; I was working for a Local Government which was going through amalgamation with five others to form a massive unitary authority. The six Public Health teams were being merged in to three larger teams, and I felt strongly that I should be in the running to be the leader of one of them. When the dust settled, not only had I not been appointed to lead the team, I hadn’t even been given the opportunity to apply for the position, due to the roles being ‘ring fenced’.
I was livid, and I didn’t believe the person appointed to be my manager was any more suitable than me. I was determined to be as obstructive as possible and make his life difficult. Through no fault of his own, my new boss was firmly in my crosshairs and he didn’t even know it. It was through observing how he coped with this situation that taught me a valuable lesson: Build good ethics and then lead by example.
#3a – Develop strong ethics
Think about the kind of team you would like to work in. Close your eyes and imagine how you would like it to be. Let me throw out some suggestions;
- Everyone does their best, does what they say they are going to do, tells the truth, looks out for each other and is honest. In other words, integrity.
- Everyone is treated fairly, given the same opportunities, there are no closed-door deals, what you see is what you get. In other words, equality.
- People are valued for their skills, knowledge and experience, interactions are polite, appropriate and positive. In other words, respect.
- The team’s goals are achieved through amicable and fair work input from everyone, no-one shirks their fair share of the work, and everyone takes ownership of the outcomes. In other words, responsibility.
- Services are offered to everyone, from every background equally, with all people being represented and catered for, all viewpoints considered. In other words, diversity.
- People innovate and aren’t afraid to try new things, people put themselves out for others and are willing to go the extra mile for the underrepresented. In other words, courage.
- People turn up on time, and deliver on time, they work hard to get the job done and don’t leave all the work to others. In other words, dependability.
This sounds lofty and aspirational doesn’t it? The thing is, if you give people genuine ethical values to hang their hats on and reinforce these through all aspects of how your team runs, eventually people will see their merits. Consistency is the watch word for this to work. Drastically over communicate these messages!
Over time you must help team members see that it is they who are the intended benefactors of this stuff, not some airy fairy imaginary customer.
#3b – Lead by example
Taking the ethics that I have suggested in #3a, a great method of instilling these is to produce a punchy mantra. This is separate from anything the rest of the organisation may have (if you are part of a larger organisation.)
Think of this as your team’s catchphrases. The cornier the better and based on the solid ethical behaviours you want to embed. Trust me, everyone will groan and sigh at the beginning. It will be seriously uncool to be heard repeating any of this stuff at the start, and they may even think you have lost your marbles. But, time and time again this has been shown to work in extremely successful organisations. Before long, these catchphrases or mantras will embed in everyone’s sub-conscious. But here is the most important part:
You must follow these ethical values to the letter! You must be the very embodiment of these values, day in and day out. My boss did this, and I thought he was a total creep, right up until I realised that slowly and surely, he was building a killer team that I loved working in (despite myself).
#4 Let’s get physical
This one is simple. If you have any kind of control of the physical environment that your team is expected to work in or meet in, and if you want to promote productivity and creativity, you need to de-clutter.
If you run a workshop, and there are car parts, half full oil cans, offcuts of wood, saw dust or plastic wrapping everywhere you are fighting a losing battle to motivate anyone for anything. What about the office environment? Piles of paperwork or folders and files on desks are just as overwhelming. Clutter is known to be a significant cause of stress, anxiety and depression, and additionally, thanks to something known as the clutter stress cycle is a strong indicator that someone is suffering from workplace stress too.
(For a great strategy on how to manage workplace stress head over to this article)
As a new leader, take the opportunity to address distracting and stress inducing workplace clutter as soon as possible. If an individual team member is obviously struggling in this regard more than others, it may be worth tactfully discussing some of the resources available to tackle stress and anxiety offered by health professionals.
#5 Coach to GROW
A great way to establish yourself in a new leadership role is to give a little of yourself to team members. By offering to coach them in areas of their professional life, you are showing strong leadership. It is now one of your motivators to develop people in your team, so that you can progress the team as a whole through the Tuckman stages, right up to the point where the team eventually disbands.
I have written a whole post on the subject of using the GROW model to coach and mentor people in your team, but essentially, you are looking to help your team members to visualise and realise their own path to improvement that they identify themselves.
The model looks like:
#5a – Goal
Help the coachee to establish their own goal. Through asking directed questions, help them to identify a goal that follows the SMART model (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely – have a look below for more detail). The areas you need to help them explore are: What they would like to achieve from the sessions? What goal is ideally at the end of the journey? How will they know when they had reached their stated goal? What would need to change to achieve the goal? Why do they want these changes? How would all this benefit them?
#5b – Reality (the situation as it is now)
Here you are looking to help your team member realise the starting point, the context and how far they need to travel to reach their destination. It is important to keep this section light and breezy, establishing the length of the journey needs always to be contextualised as achievable, so as not to discourage them.
Ask them what the current situation is, who is involved in it, how often it happens and importantly, how they are affected by these current conditions. Help them identify what is positive about the current situation and how to retain those positive elements. Then identify the areas that need to change to reach the destination.
Cover in some detail what has already been tried, and what resulted from that. Through this approach they can identify stumbling blocks and then steps that they could take to prevent similar obstructions in the future.
#5c – Options
Now start looking to the future. This section invites the coachee to explore their options, what positive steps they need to take to reach their goal. Talk about the stages of the journey, the milestones and the specific actions needed to reach each stage. What are their options? What can they do alone who can they turn to for help?
Remember to bring forward the things that have already been identified as successful from the reality section and keep those in the mix. Perhaps look for ways to expand those actions as well as finding new ones. Put the actions in to a workable order and identify which ones the coachee feels will be the most difficult to achieve. Try and encourage them to look at the pros and cons of each action, and where they are reluctant to try things, talk about the worst- and best-case scenarios resulting from each.
#5d – Way Forward
Here you are consolidating the actions they have identified into an ordered plan of attack. Straight out ask them how they are going to approach each action, when they are going to have undertaken the action by, and if there is anything stopping them starting straight away.
Ask them to explore thoroughly any perceived roadblocks at this stage, so they are identified early, and in a rational conversation help them see that most of them will be surmountable. This is to prevent the process halting or stalling before your next session.
Through this coaching, keep in mind that the end goal is to help the coachee improve and to show them that you are in their corner, and genuinely want to see them succeed. By giving them this solid attention, you’ll start to build a solid relationship with them, and its likely they’ll give you good press with the rest of the team. (this article discusses the importance of giving team members individualised attention, you may find it helpful).
(For access to a great monthly focus meeting template which includes a section on feedback, check out the Let’s Work Healthy Shop)
OK! So far so good!! We’re establishing solid relationships, learning our team’s skills to nail delegating, setting our ethical standards, building a creative environment and coaching the team. In the next part of this series of blogs, we’ll be looking at focussing the team’s efforts!
Get involved
As you can see from the post, I am trying to give simple practical help to leaders wherever I can. I would love to hear your thoughts on the tips in this article, so it would be great if you could leave some comments below. Have you got any great tips for new leaders too? Let me know below!
I will be offering lots of pointers on this site as I develop the content and so let me know about anything you’d like me to cover too. I am also developing some great resources for leaders, and if you subscribe in the box at the top of this page, you’ll get FREE access to the new 32 page E-book, ‘New Leader Quick Start Guide’. If you want to establish yourself as a great leader and develop a creative motivated team, this E-book is for you!
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See you in part 2!
