Motivate your team
One of the most important jobs as a leader is to motivate the people on your team: you need to be constantly communicating, trusting and investing in your people, and empowering them to achieve great things
As a leader, one of the most important jobs you have is to motivate, encourage and support your team. No team ever stands still: there will always be new joiners and frequent changes in people’s roles and personal circumstances.
Your job is to somehow bind together this merry, ever-changing band; to feed a collective culture and team ethic at the same time as encouraging individuals and helping them to develop their own careers.
It’s a fine balance: you have a part to play, but while you may make some key decisions, much of what happens within a large team will be determined without you ever seeing and hearing about it. US General Stanley McChrystal has the right idea when he describes the role of the leader as a gardener: you can plant the seeds, nurture the soil and water the plants as they grow, but only so much is in your control. The growth of people and teams is also organic and uncertain and it’s your role to create hospitable conditions that allow your team to thrive. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Talk to the team
Communication is both one of the most important and often most neglected aspects of good leadership. You might be making decisions and setting things in motion, but are you letting those who need to know – and those who want to know – aware both of what is happening and why it’s happening? What we have found is that it is almost impossible to over-communicate; however much you’re communicating, some people will still feel as though they don’t know what’s going on. People don’t like being surprised, they don’t like being the last to know and they don’t like feeling they’re in the dark. As a leader, it’s always good to talk.
Tip: At team meetings, give your people a dedicated platform to contribute their own ideas and thinking. Always give them an opportunity to ask questions and offer to respond to questions by email too – not everyone feels comfortable asking questions in front of the group.
Trust the team
If you can’t delegate, you’re dead. A leader who is reluctant to let responsibility pass to their team clogs up the system and makes people wonder why they are not being trusted. It doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but unless you show your team that you believe they can and will deliver, you will always be knocking their confidence and restricting their potential to grow.
Tip: Make a rule that you only attend a meeting if you’re convinced you’ll add unique value to the conversation. If there is no specific reason for you in particular to attend, then don’t; it gives responsibility to others who will thrive on it, and frees you up to tackle the rest of your workload.
Invest in the team
Often, you’ll be asking a lot of your team and you want them to be prepared to go the extra mile. It’s important to reward them financially of course, but this is little more than hygiene: the minimum requirement. It’s much more meaningful to reward people with responsibility, recognition and to give them the opportunities to learn and step up themselves. Consider what personal development opportunities your team will benefit most from, and invest what you can in providing them, from training courses through work shadowing and secondments. In addition to formal training, encourage your people to attend and speak at conferences and industry events, so they have the opportunity to build their profile in the broader industry. Make it your mission to help your people develop and grow: your team will deliver even stronger results and your people will get more out of their working life, helping to create a virtuous circle of commitment and loyalty.
Champion the team
Don’t forget to find and make opportunities to celebrate the great work of your team; to champion excellence and reward high performance. That not only gives individuals a sense of achievement and satisfaction: it encourages a culture of aspiring to the best level of performance within your business. As a leader, you should take every opportunity to spotlight brilliant work, and to make your team feel good about what they achieve together.
Tip: You don’t need grand gestures to make people feel good; persistent and public recognition can be far more effective and have a longer-term effect. Look for small but meaningful ways to recognise people’s contribution and achievements.
Empower the team
Give team members autonomy to do their best work – because autonomy is one of the most valued gifts you can give your people, creating a sense of ownership and accountability, and the more ownership your team feel, the better the results they’ll deliver. Always be looking for opportunities to help people on your team progress in their careers. Outside of standard promotions, find ways of giving people the responsibility to take on more of a leadership role. Create a fast track where those who want to advance quickly are empowered to do just that. It’s a win–win if you have more people, with more experience, moving more quickly into leadership positions; they will feel great about what they’ve achieved and you’ll be gaining a reputation for being a talented gardener, nurturing talent and growing the company’s next generation of leaders.
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Ultimately, your people are your greatest asset, and one of your most important responsibilities as a leader is to support and develop them on their journey. Many leaders find that one of the things they’re proudest of is the team they’ve built and the individuals who go on to enjoy varied and successful careers. Investing in great people isn’t just beneficial for the short-term prospects of your business; it’s also a long-term bet on what they might achieve long after they’ve moved on to other things. The individuals you help, who go on to become brilliant leaders in their own right or create their own successful companies, often become the most powerful – and loyal – advocates in your network.
Words of wisdom: The team will help you scale
As a single person, you can build something amazing. But if you want that something amazing to be accessed at scale, you’ll need a team around you. Don’t be blinded by the celebrity of the leadership personality. Not only are people like Mark Zuckerberg the exception not the rule in terms of his level of success so young and so fast, he did not do it all alone, he has a strong team around him and has provided the company with strong leadership.
DEIRDRE MCGLASHAN, CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, MEDIACOM