They say that people leave because of bad (or lack of) leadership. Similarly, you can have the best vision, if you have people with a poor attitude, you still won’t succeed. People are everything. Hiring and grooming the right people will have a tremendous impact on your likelihood to succeed as a business. And I say grooming, as you can build your business, but you can’t expect employees to magically grow at the same pace with their skills, knowledge, and mindset without proper organized guidance.

One or the other?

When talking more specifically about leadership, we have to acknowledge that a person can be either a process (project) manager or a team lead. The first one believes that people are not always the best to make decisions on their own and therefore you need to plan, control and guide them to deliver the success you need. They love to manage tasks, projects, timelines, etc. The second knows that they are not responsible for the job of their team members, but instead, they are responsible for the people that are responsible for the job, so they focus on managing the actual human beings with needs.

First off, managers need to understand — when they become managers — that it’s quite possible those under them won’t work the exact same way they do, because, well, er, people are different. If the goal is “C,” and the manager would follow “Path A,” but the employee would follow “Path B,” and both get to “C” under-budget and ahead of time, it doesn’t fucking matter that the employee followed B. If your focus is on outcomes/deliverables (as most orgs’ focus are), then employees should have the ability to work in their own style so long as those are being met. Managers often get promoted and think “Well, I’ll impose Path A on this team.” That leads to dis-engagement.

My personal preference

I myself like to work with and for team leads who focus on building their people, not their processes. For me, it comes from the fact that I like to be independent in my work and I always prefer to have the power to decide how to design and deliver my job. We have to keep in mind, that there are also those individuals, in all of our workplaces, who want their team leads be process managers and to build them a “playground” where they can do their stuff that they are excellent at. Not everyone wants freedom. The secret is, that when you as a decider are shaping your team by picking new employees and managers, you ALWAYS have to keep in mind to place the right people with right managers/leaders. I have not yet seen a person who can fit simultaneously into the role of a process manager and a team lead, therefore don’t ever expect one person to have such abilities.

And unfortunately, most often companies don’t care if a manager is people-effective as long as they’re product-effective. But don’t forget that turnover and low engagement are far more costly for your company than hiring a good team lead and/or investing in developing your companies leaders and enhancing the leadership system. Take time and train your management team to be leaders, not managers.

What to understand

For myself, a great leader has to understand the basics of how humans function:

✨ Everyone is a different individual. Just because they work in the same team and have the same values, won’t make them similar in any other way. What drives one salesperson, will not even make the other one remotely excited. Know your people and understand what makes them tick. Then you will have the upper hand on assigning them roles and responsibilities where they can put their own unique skill set to the best use.

✨ Don’t be afraid to let AND HELP your people grow to become better than you! By putting a glass ceiling between your team members and yourself you are hindering the growth of the business. A team lead should never be afraid to empower their people. It is the same with hiring: don’t be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you. How else are you hoping to advance your business if everyone always knows a little bit less then you?

✨ Show your people that you trust them. And then show it even more! It is the same principle with all communications – repeat the message as often as you can, to be sure that everyone is getting it in an intended way. And trust is something you not only have to showcase with words but also with your actions – do you make your meetings as a place where they report to you? Or do you make it a place where everyone can bring one positive highlight and then you help them solve one difficult case that they choose to bring to the meeting? Do you tell them how to plan their day/do their job/prioritize or you just let them handle it on their own? Do you expect them to run every decision by you or you let them decide for themselves?

✨ Most often people are looking for a coach! Encourage and empower your employees to accomplish their individual goals. Be the person who mentors them and helps them push their careers to the next level. Do it by giving them challenges that will expand their knowledge and make them push themselves.

FOR FURTHER READING

I recommend Leslie Petrequin’s thoughts on “11 traits of unforgettable leaders” and Ted Bauer one yet again on point writing “Absentee managers are “the silent killer” of companies“, and also Harvard Business Review article on “Why Good Managers are so Rare“.  The HBR digs into the statistics on how often companies make the wrong decision by choosing managers(team leads) and what effect it has on the company.

Because of working in the training and development function for several years, I’d like to highlight one point from the HBR that I agree to be one of the keys to guiding people to pull the company in the same direction as are the goals: “But training is also one of the singular things that makes a good company great — i.e. access to it. Manager training should be commonplace and routine. Managers should be trained on communication (massively important), building relationships, working with others, rolling out new plans, etc. This should happen at least once a month, if not more. The goal should be to create “an organic” culture — not one that feels forced with a billion meetings and check-ins.”