Staff can be a nightmare. Teams are composed of the most difficult material ever created - people. That requires many capabilities, but two in particular from leaders: communication and people skills. Ironically, leaders are often seriously deficient in one or both. One type of personality who gets to become the leader are the hard driving, take no prisoners, climb over the rival’s bodies to grasp the brass ring crowd. Other types are the functional stars: category experts; best salesperson, long serving staff members; older “grey hairs” or the last man standing at the end of the recession. Usually, communication skills and people skills were not prominent in their rise to this position of trust. How do we handle such a contradiction? What does it take to be successful as a team leader? Here are nine different adhesives to help glue the team together. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain When we criticize people for mistakes or poor performance, they stop listening to us and use all of their brainpower to marshal their defense or assemble their excuses, about why it isn’t their fault. We have created a barrier with them and they are in denial. The scolding, harsh direct approach may make us feel better but it leads nowhere useful, so don’t bother. Give honest and sincere appreciation Snowing staff with false praise or fake appreciation doesn’t work. People have well-tuned gauges for flattery. When they detect it, they do two things simultaneously: they ignore it and they don’t ever fully trust the perpetrator. They are saying to themselves, “Do you really think I am that dumb?”. Instead, we need to become “good finders”. Look for what people are doing well and recognise it. When we give appreciation, be very specific about what they did well, this makes it real and believable,. Look for strengths to develop, rather than trying to pull people down because they are not perfect. Arouse in the other person an eager want As leaders we want a lot of things to happen. Our targets, accountabilities and directives from above drive us. It can very quickly become all about “me” and what “I” want. Others are not that excited about what we want compared to what they want for themselves. If we can coalesce what we want with what others want we will do a lot better in terms of getting cooperation and achieving our desired outcomes. This is a communication skill we absolutely need to master. Become genuinely interested in other people We are all firmly attached to ourselves. We are the center of our universe and we want all things that are good to flow to us. As the leader though, you have to flip that self-absorption and get focused on your people. You can work 100 plus hours a week, but your team of 10, only working a 40 hour week can out work you with four times the input of hours. So working 100 hours yourself is dumb and getting your team fired up and working at peak performance is smart. Why would they do that? Because they feel there is something attractive in it for them. They feel that way because the leader has been an excellent communicator to explain the connection between hitting their own goals and hitting the firm’s goals. They are committed because they trust the leader. When Dale Carnegie did it’s global study on the emotional drivers of engagement, they found that “feeling valued” by the immediate supervisor was the trigger to having people become highly engaged. You have to know what your team values, in order to help them understand they are highly valued. Your personal values are only interesting to you. Their values, for them, are the key. Once you are really genuinely interested in your team, you will naturally understand what they value. Then you can arrange for good things to happen for them, based on what they want, not what you want. Smile We think we smile, but we do it more rarely than we imagine. We are swimming through a flood tide of emails, meetings and reporting every week. We are under pressure to produce the goods. Our internal rivals are nipping at our heals, our external competitors are making life hell. It becomes hard to smile in the face of difficulties. What our team sees is a serious face, maybe an explosive face, when the pressure gets too much. Our mood every day is the barometer of how the team feels. If we are stressed out, we transfer that stress to everyone and we take their mood straight down. We have to be up, regardless of the pressure, the irritations, the stress. Remember to smile and pass this on to your team, to keep their mood positive. Remember names Presumably you can remember your team’s names. However, in a big organisation that may not be that easy. In Japan, in larger operations, it is interesting that often colleagues can’t remember their workmate’s personal name, only their family name. You need to send an email and you ask, “what is so and so’s personal name?”. The answer is often, “I don’t ...
