Leading Your Team To Success
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
Early in my tenure at my first CFO role, I was told by one of my direct reports what a former boss had told him about managers.
“There are no bad employees, only bad managers.”
Those may not have been the exact words, but that is how the quote sticks in my memory. At that point, I didn’t have a lot of management experience and I didn’t want to be that bad manager.
I lacked business experience in managing people. Nor did I have sufficient training from business school about how to build high-performing teams. So, I applied experiences from my personal life — as a husband, father, and youth sports coach — to leading my team.
Reflecting on my most recent decade as a leader, I know that I have learned a great deal and been, on the whole, a positive influence on my direct reports’ careers.
If I could go back and engage this earlier version of myself, I would share a few key things with him about how to become a respected and trusted leader.
Patiently Evaluate The Talent You Inherit
You’ve earned a senior leadership role in part because of your ability to make good decisions quickly amidst uncertainty.
That skill has its downsides when dealing with new people, as first impressions of people can be misleading. Patiently evaluate the team you inherit and take time in filling open roles.
When you join a new business as a manager you will get input from some combination of the People Operations department, your manager, and your team’s prior manager. They will offer you their judgment on your current team members, speaking about their strengths and weaknesses (the latter often couched as “opportunities for improvement”).
Everyone has biases. So reserve judgment until you have a good enough sample size on the actual actions of your team.
It’s possible the behavior and outcomes described by prior managers are all true. However, with a different leadership style, approach and higher expectations, you can get more out of the existing team than has been accomplished to date. Research has shown that the Pygmalion effect, which states that people perform up to the expectations placed on them, is very real.
Part of the reason you were hired is that you are an upgrade to the team’s prior manager.
In other words as a new leader, you can get improved performance out of the existing team.
Practice Self Awareness and Be Vulnerable
Self awareness means being introspective and doing your best to see yourself objectively. It involves acknowledging, accepting, and working with both your weaknesses and your strengths. To have the opportunity to grow and to develop a trusting relationship with your team, be vulnerable. Share with your team how you are working to mitigate your areas of weakness and ask for their support.
In the spirit of transparency, I’ve shared portions of my 360 degree reviews with all my direct reports. In my experience, my being vulnerable by sharing anonymously what my peers and manager gave me as constructive feedback helped my team develop additional empathy for me as a leader.
Be a Champion for the Long Term Success of your Team Members
Having changed jobs multiple times, I am well aware that a career is a long and winding road.
I have learned that being a good manager means striking the balance helping team members achieve their personal career objectives while also producing outstanding performance for the business.
And so each time I take on a new role and introduce myself to my team, I share my hope for a two-way commitment between me and each team member to maximize the outcome for all parties..
I am committed to helping each person achieve their goals at this company (in their current department or other departments, if there are openings for their skill set) or at another company (if that is the best path for them).
And, in return, I want them to give their best effort to drive success in this role, for this function and this company. I am clear that their best effort means that they should still maintain a good work-life balance.
This is my way of telling my team members that our personal relationship can last well beyond a single job. And, that I am committed to being their supporter for the long term.
Practice Outcome Oriented Management
When I described my leadership style in a recent job interview, a CEO characterized it as “outcome oriented” contrasting my style with “process oriented”. The more I have thought about it, the more I think “outcome oriented” is an apt descriptor of my approach to leadership.
Outcome oriented means that I empower my team members to achieve goals in the manner they see fit (by that I mean the details of the execution). At the outset I provide some high level constraints including: (a) prioritization; (b) time frame in which to achieve certain targets; and, (c) financial or other resource constraints. And, as projects unfold, I encourage my teams to check in with me, ask questions, seek clarification, or get guidance.
There are roles in high risk milieus such as medicine, mental health, public safety, and childcare that require following a specific, clearly prescribed process. But most roles in the business world (outside of a few compliance matters) allow for managers to give their employees autonomy on how best to achieve their targets.
Autonomy and empowerment, in my experience, have created more productive and happier team members.
Embrace a “Growth Mindset” about your Team
Most hiring processes focus on what the candidate has accomplished. Accomplishments are given a positive grade while they absence of specific experience is a negative mark in the candidate evaluation.
Early in my career, I would have accepted that rubric for hiring as reasonable.
I now find that grading system very shortsighted.
At some point, every employee accomplishes a task for the very first time.
After reading the book Mindset,I became a huge believer in what Professor Carol Dweck calls the growth mindset — she describes it well in this short Ted Talk.
When I interview people (whether I have just inherited them onto my team or if I am adding them in a new role), I am interested in what new things they want to accomplish in this role as well as what they wish they had been able to do in their last role that they were unable to do.
I see each person on my team as having potential — not that they “can’t” do something but that they “haven’t yet” done it. And, to reduce fears around doing “new” things, I encourage people to ask questions when they undertake an unfamiliar task or something they find challenging.
Given the opportunity, people have more often than not stepped up and surprised to the positive. They needed someone to believe in their potential and encourage them in their efforts along the way.
Provide Context
Employees want to understand the “why” behind the business and not just the “what” they need to accomplish.
Job descriptions list a series of tasks to be accomplished in a role. Often managers will focus their weekly one-on-one meetings only around tasks accomplished in the prior week or to be done in upcoming weeks. These managers are solely focused on the “what”.
I have found providing the “why” to my teams unlocks motivation and improves performance. Employees want to know the relationship between their daily tasks and how these tasks impact the work of their colleagues, the customer experience and the financial success of the business. Context is critical because it provides meaning and purpose which are directly linked to motivation and performance.
Walk In Their Shoes
Managers, especially in smaller companies, need to be leaders and doers. That means being able to get into the details — use the systems, understand the workflow, get deep in the excel spreadsheets — so you can understand the challenges faced by your team in their daily roles.
It doesn’t mean you need to be better than them at everything. Just that you understand what their daily, weekly and monthly job might be like. If you can do this, your team members will feel understood. And, when you offer praise for their work, they know you truly appreciate the effort it takes to get the job done well.
Building a high performing team is challenging. The common advice is to hire superstars. Most of us don’t have that luxury, given the constraints at the business we work for. There is an alternative that is often overlooked. Get the best out of your existing team by establishing a trusting interaction, uncovering their hidden strengths, and inspiring them to be their best.