This is the second part of my mini series of blog posts where I’m sharing with you 20 great tips for new leaders! This post picks up the action after our discussions about coaching your team members. If you haven’t already, go and check out the first part so you can feel confident you have seen all the tips! OK? – Let’s crack on:
#6 Time to focus!
By now, if you have been consistently working on establishing great relationships, your team will be transitioning into the ‘norming’ phase. Things will be less bumpy and team members will be starting to get into sync with each other. You may find members dropping the odd suggestion for improvement here or there and you may be able to sense a little crackle of energy in the background at team meetings. You are on fire!
Now, let’s start to set some great goals, and focus all that fostered creativity!
#6a – Stand up and be counted
Let’s get into creative goal setting. This is where we pin our colours to the mast. What kind of leader are you? I would like to humbly suggest that the way to go here is to be a collaborative leader!
Bringing your team along for the creativity ride is the only way to ensure buy in and shared ownership. By including every team member in the goal setting phase, you are aligning the team member’s aims and aspirations with that of your organisation.
This is the most important element of developing an agile, fluid and healthy team, which can constantly evolve and improve without propagating dissenters. (For more tips, read this article on change management, where I talk about the importance of fluidity in your organisation)
#6b – Introducing the Cs
Obviously, you have an overall outcome that the team was created to achieve. You’re not all just there to do whatever you like and get paid for it are you? (If you are… have you any vacancies?!?)
The outcome is the end result you are aiming for and will likely evolve with changing technologies or economies throughout the life of the team. But… how you achieve that outcome is as open as you dare make it.
Back in the early 2000s Google was trying to make the most successful search engine, that was their fixed outcome, but the reason they beat all the other companies to the punch was that they approached that goal creatively!
Now it’s your turn.
Sit the whole team down in a room with the overall outcome displayed conspicuously on the wall. This is where your relationship building pays off. This article will give you an idea of how to successfully engage with your team members to broker their creativity.
Focus on getting input from each team member, the first two Cs are – Creativity and Collaboration. Get buy in from the team by actively listening to their suggestions and give them free reign. Reassure them that there are no stupid suggestions, and everything will be considered. We are seeking wide ranging suggestions, which we will start to narrow down in the next phase.
The next C is Control! Between you and your team, grab hold of the goals you are setting. Map each suggested goal along the path that ultimately leads to your overall outcome. But, here is the key, identify how each goal can move you along the path and in which sequence they need to be completed, then make those goals both stretching and SMART.
#6c – Stretch yourselves
In order to make the goals work for you, they need to fulfil certain criteria, which is why you need to Control them.
To keep your team members engaged your goals need to stretch each person just enough. Too little and they won’t feel challenged, too much and you’ll risk a mutiny. This will take a little time to get right. If your team is buzzing along and their suggestions for ways to achieve the work are being taken on board, you may well find that they are suggesting pretty stretching goals themselves.
#6d – Smarty pants
When you think you understand the milestones along the path to your objective, take each in turn and examine it to see if it is SMART.
Specific – You must be able to focus the team’s efforts on an absolute task. For that reason, you need to be able to clearly tell when a goal is achieved. You must know what success looks like. Write the goal out in no more than two sentences, and be sure to have considered the following:
- What exactly will we do?
- Why must we do this specific thing?
- Who specifically will do each part of it?
- Where will the majority of the activity take place?
- What resources will we need to accomplish all of this?
Measurable – Tracking whether you are achieving your goal is essential. As a leader you need to keep your team focussed so they meet the deadlines and achieve excellence. For this you need to make sure you know:
- The quantity of things you will need to get over the line
- The exact date each sub-section of the goal must be achieved by
- How progress will be monitored
Attainable – Keep this stuff in the realms of reality. Like we’ve mentioned, everyone benefits from being challenged, but stress and burnout come knocking if you aren’t being realistic. Make sure to consider:
- Given previous achievements and accomplishments, will the team have a fighting chance?
- Are there financial or resource constraints that make this goal unrealistic?
- What obstacles might arise that you can build in contingencies for?
Relevant – You will be keeping an eye on the big picture in this step. This is where you consider all the sub goals that fit with this one and ensure this one aligns with other goals too. Keep your team’s focus aligned with the larger organisation. Be sure that anything you are proposing isn’t acting in conflict with other team’s goals or against the organisation’s core values. You don’t want to be developing a an efficient petrol engine if the company is moving to electric vehicles next year!
Consider:
- Is this goal going off on a tangent or is its achievement a significant step toward our overall outcome?
- Is our team the right team to be doing this part, or are there better placed people elsewhere?
- Does it align with our core values (or the mantra you set for your team in tip #3b earlier?)
Timely – This is where you break the goal down in to time constrained parts. You need to hold every person in the team (including yourself) accountable for getting this goal delivered on time and in sequence.
Ask:
- What can we do right now?
- What needs to be done after that?
- When must everything be finished by?
- What other time constraints are relevant – does this fit in well with the timing of other goals?
#7 Encourage innovation and creativity – but only when you need to
When you are faced with new challenges, new goals or shifting levels of resource, you will need bright innovative people to help you. If you want people to feel comfortable to innovate, then you need to create an incubating environment where their ideas can grow.
Studies have shown that highly innovative teams demonstrate certain observable traits when they are in full creative flow. How you run meetings and planning sessions will influence the results you will get.
#7a – Interactions conducive to explosive ideas
Providing a setting in which your team can be innovative and creative should always be an underlying theme for your management style, as innovative solutions will regularly be needed. Where you can, you need to behave in a certain way which will show you are open to input from any and all of your team. This may initially feel uncomfortable, but the more you do it, the easier it gets, and your team will follow your lead. Try to model the following behaviours:
- Be attentive to team member’s needs – small courtesies, like opening doors, stumping up for light refreshments and generally showing you care are vital
- Ask lots of questions when someone makes any suggestion at all. Clearly give the message that you are interested and want to thoroughly explore any suggestion. Make sure your questions don’t give the impression that you are shocked at the craziness of the idea though! Encourage the team to all mix together and encourage everyone in the group to spend a little time talking to everyone else. Get a balance here, forced interactions come off as cringy, but clever little tactful ways of mixing up groups works wonders.
- Physical touch – I know your alarm bells are sounding right now, but trust me, we need to tap into a sub conscious feeling of belonging and safety. Obviously, make sure to remain appropriate. Encourage everyone to go for handshakes or even high fives at the end of each idea sharing session. Everyone hates this at first, I know I do, but you are just looking for a way to make people drop their inhibitions. Doing slightly silly or embarrassing things early on builds bonds between people, almost like a tiny bit of shared trauma. If you get this right, the feeling of belonging will allow team members to be vulnerable, and express ideas that they may otherwise have kept to themselves.
- Active listening – I have discussed this topic in some depth in this article . Suffice it to say here though, that when someone is speaking, listening just isn’t enough. If you really want to encourage innovation, you must over communicate that you are listening.
- Have a laugh! – Creativity just won’t happen if everyone feels uncomfortable, stifled and bored. Keep it clean and appropriate, make sure not to make anyone the butt of the joke either, nothing ruins the feeling of safety more than wondering what will be said about you when you leave the room!
- Don’t interrupt – the natural eb and flow of creative conversation is a delicate thing, and signalling to a team member that your voice is more important than theirs is a quick way to stifle input. For a team to truly be in sync, avoiding interruptions and resisting the urge to fill silences is important.
- Keep the physical lay out of the group close and compact, squash them together a little bit. Close physical proximity gives a subconscious cue, ‘It’s us against the world here team, and you are safe, confide your wildest ideas in us and let’s make them happen!’
- Keep exchanges short and sweet – no long speeches or spotlight hogging allowed.
#7b – Tried and tested
The point comes though, when we just have to get on and get the job done, not sit around all day blue sky thinking on bean bags waving balloons!
When you need your team to just get on and get things done quickly and efficiently, your focus needs to shift.
Embed behaviours in your team. Try and take out uncertainty and promote instinctive action rather than debate and indecisiveness. Once you have your plan, with an end goal and all the milestones laid out between where you are now and where you want to be, communicate that to the team… often.
Set up behaviour short cuts. When proficiency is a group’s watch word, you need to identify roles for team members, and give them clear rules to follow. Think of the quick reflexive tasks as a computer program that is written to remove uncertainty. If this thing happens, then do this. If that thing happens then do that. Team members will feel confident if they know what is expected of them as much as possible, and they have defined guidelines that remove doubt.
Where you can, trust people with as much autonomy as possible. In Ray Dalio’s book, Principles, he strongly urges leaders to hand over the reigns to subordinates up to a certain point. This guy is world renowned as a great leader, and he swears by this leadership tip. Give people decision making authority up to a certain value so things can just happen without slowing down the process. Set the levels where you are comfortable to write off the losses, then let them get on with it. Trusting people can pay off massively in their willingness to go the extra mile.
#8 Incentivise… carefully
Incentivising performance has a role to play in making you a successful leader who gets results. My feelings on this subject are broad ranging though, as I have seen incentivising outcomes work well, and on more than one occasion, backfire horrendously. A lot of this depends on the individuals concerned, and where they are already at personally.
I’m sure if you have worked in larger businesses, you will know that using money as an incentive is a common practice and can get results. But this is a hot topic of research and there is solid evidence that money isn’t the primary factor when driving longer term motivation.
This article covers some of my thoughts on team motivation, in particular that there are lots of social and emotional factors to be addressed before monetary rewards are even considered. Appealing to your team’s emotions through finding ways of publicly and privately acknowledging their achievements will be far more likely to yield sustainable results.
Try and focus on appealing to their sense of pride in being part of a high performing team, and further, having earned the right to be involved in more prestigious project roles, or to represent the team at events.
Any monetary rewards should be achievement linked and one off, permanent raises quickly become perceived as owed, and are just as quickly forgotten. Hitting a certain level of performance measured over a week or a month could attract a percentage bonus, but don’t be surprised if this only works if all other indicators of job satisfaction have been nailed.
I have seen greater successes with small recognitions, regularly awarded and switched up then traditional monetary bonuses. Often, something small and comedic as a token of your gratitude, publicly awarded, has a great affect.
#9 Everyone’s a critic
Giving constructive criticism is essential, obviously. But here is a little truth I picked up along the way: the feedback sandwich (sandwiching criticism between two slices of commendation) isn’t as effective as you have been led to believe! I would go as far as to say that every new leader has tried the feedback sandwich, and many will have had unfortunate results.
PsychTests.com conducted a study of more than 3,000 people to explore how criticism is received. Guess what? Most people don’t like it…
- 13% absolutely refuse to accept negative feedback.
- 34% become less motivated and don’t work as hard when their work has been criticised.
- 39% feel degraded when someone points out their mistakes.
#9a – If it’s not positive… it must be negative?
How you deliver the feedback is the key factor to getting a successful result. Now if you are new into this team, you will have not had much time to build a solid and positive culture. But a positive culture is the absolute key to getting this right. I found that if you are consistently over communicating praise to your team, picking little things to publicly praise them for, then there is a little secret you can capitalise on.
If giving copious amounts of praise is the norm, your team will expect and thrive on it… guess what happens if you then conspicuously withhold that praise from someone… they want to know why! Enter your helpful advice on where things could improve. They have sought your help, not the other way around! This works well where you have a great positive vibe going with your team, as long as you deliver the message in a certain way.
#9b – know your limits
Learning to give constructive criticism when a team member’s performance or behaviours fall short of where you need them is a skill that you should work on developing. Your motivation for giving the criticism needs to be genuine in order for the feedback to be received successfully. Take a long hard look at why you feel you need to give the feedback in the first place.
It is very easy to fall into the mindset that because you are senior to someone in an organisation, or because you are their employer, you’re in the role of general advice giver. Any feedback or direction you decide to give needs to fall squarely within your remit and be bounded by the extents of the professional relationship you have with that person. This advice makes life so much easier for you, as remembering where the boundaries of your responsibilities lie prevent you burdening yourself with worries that don’t concern you.
#9c – It’s all in the delivery
Try and have a positive to negative ratio of 6 positive observations to every negative one. If you want to achieve this ratio, you need to be doling out positive feedback more or less continuously. Again, over communicating the positive allows you to deliver criticism when its needed in a way that is far more likely to deliver results.
When we are giving constructive criticism, the aim is to achieve an improvement, and as such, we need to be sure to offer the solution. Just telling someone that they are rude or aggressive for example, isn’t helpful and comes off as a personal insult. Instead, be an advocate.
We will be giving them a formula for success in the future. Explain that in X situation, the behaviours you are looking for would be Y.
#10 Use chemicals
We want our team members to demonstrate certain behaviours that will ultimately make the team successful. To communicate the importance of those underlying behaviours, we need to regularly recognise specific achievements that manifest those behaviours.
This sounds like complicated psychological mumbo jumbo, but in practice its easy to harness! Let’s say that diligence is a key factor that if consistently demonstrated across your team will lead to your team nailing their overall purpose or target.
#10a – Set the bar low for individuals
So, try and identify a range of little things that, if achieved would show that each team member is demonstrating the underlying ethical behaviour you need, in this case diligence, then make sure to take every opportunity to reward that behaviour for each team member in a public way.
For example, Brendan has caught up to date with his expense claims and you feel that showed diligence, at the team meeting, publicly thank Brendan and give him a silly token or reward. The following week, Matt has completed all his due reports a day early, he gets awarded a certificate for completing reports ahead of time, silly right? Not really.
Regular recognition of these seemingly innocuous achievements, with tiny tokens of appreciation, like silly certificates, gifts or prizes reinforce the behaviour we are trying to instil. But what is happening behind the scenes? Brendan and Matt have each received a big fat injection of Dopamine, the reward chemical. Even if they would never admit it, they’ll enjoy it. If we enjoy how something makes us feel (even secretly) we’ll look for ways to do it more often.
Waiting to reward the big-ticket achievements won’t give you enough opportunities to fire Dopamine into your team member’s brains, to reinforce the desired behaviours, so its small low bar-setting behaviours we are looking for.
#10b – Set the bar high for the team
All the time that we are recognising individual’s mini achievements, and shouting about them, we need to remember that everyone who reports to you form the team. The SMART and stretching goals we set, back in tip #6 will (if we have done it right) be made up of measurable incremental achievements that the whole team is responsible for. These are the bigger picture items, and will be achieved over the life of the project or span of the financial year.
Now, here is the final tip for this part of the article, every time you recognise an individual for a mini achievement, you must congratulate the team as a whole for working toward the overall aims. By doing this you remove any opportunity for any petty jealousy and reinforce the link between the small achievements and the overall aim of the team!
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’. This guide is great in giving you an action plan for establishing yourself and developing a creative and motivated team! I’m sure you’ll love it!
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See you in part 3!
