Archives For Leadership

Start | How To Raise More Leaders

17/05/2013 — Leave a comment

Every leader must aspire to lead well. No. Actually, every leader must lead well. The use of “aspiring” has been reason for too many leaders putting into the future what they should be practicing now.

It’s fairly common talk that great leaders make more leaders and not followers. It is not leadership when it doesn’t produce leaders. Leaders don’t only exist to lead people; they are there to raise leaders.

Leaders are leaders when they produce more than just followers, but more leaders.

The first step to raising more leaders is taking the “follower” label off those you lead. Those you lead are not likely to rise above the labels you place them. Treat those you lead as colleagues and not followers. Helping people realize they are more; that they can be more is the first step to uplifting them.

raise Start | How To Raise More Leaders

you’re not leading until you’re raising leaders

 

 

This doesn’t me you can’t assert your authority as leader, when necessary. It means you expect more from your team by expecting of them the leadership and thinking that your position requires. This threatens insecure leaders.

Insecure leaders are incapable of raising leaders. This is because they see any equipping as a conspiracy against themselves. To an extent, they are right.

Raising other leaders is about making yourself replaceable.

Instead of working against you this can actually work for you, in the sense that it sets you free to focus on other things. When you can grow other people to do what you do, it creates room for you, as a leader, to challenge yourself in other areas.

The reason why some leaders never grow is that they don’t intentionally grow out of their present responsibilities and positions. This starts by making sure that someone can do what you do.

Great leaders raise leaders that are, at least, able to do what they do. John Maxwell states talks about the Law of the Lid, where the leaders determines how high people he leads can rise. You haven’t led until you have, at least, brought people to your level.

Obliterate the word, “Followers” from your organization’s vocabulary. Epitomize the principle of following but stop calling those you lead your followers. They are your colleagues.

Related: What Giving Responsibility Can Do

This sets your team free from looking to you for answers. When you treat those you lead as leaders, they start taking ownership of decisions and strategies. They see themselves as responsible for thinking ahead. For innovation. For foresight. After all, these are some of the qualities expected in leaders.

Related: The Best Way To Train Leaders To Lead

You may want to stop having “team meetings” and start having “leadership meetings”. This makes your team bold in the face of decision-making…

You haven’t started raising leaders if, “Followers” still exists in your organisation… Start there.

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How Predictable Leaders Empower Teams

06/05/2013 — Leave a comment

One of the best gifts leaders can give their teams is predictability. Being predictable has connotations of being bland and boring for some. This is because they don’t understand it and the contexts it should apply.

Predictability is a way of giving responsibility to your team. When there are recurring situations and you make the same decision each time, you empower your team. In your absence, or without your consultation they can take the actions you would’ve taken. Thus, the quality of the steps and their results they take are not compromised from the standard; i.e. the leader.

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predictable things help create capacity and reserve energy for the unpredictable ones

Being predictable is the basis of creating self-sustaining systems. There are routine decisions that leaders must make or approve. However, they must be careful to always assess these decisions.

Do they have any bearing on strategic issues? What would be the impact on the organization if someone else beside, me as the leader made this decision?

Being predictable makes you more approachable. One of the reasons I’ve learned on why some issues take a long time to raise is because teams have no idea how their leader will react.

Every leader must strive to have great relationships with his team. They have a direct and great impact on their output. Relationships create a platform for team members to not only understand each other but their leader.

Predictability can only be fostered when leaders are open about how they arrive at decisions for those recurring situations. They can work at being predictable by emphasizing the values of their enterprise as the framework for all actions.

If you’re always acting on the values of your enterprise as the basis for your actions, it makes you more predictable. Your team will take cues from this. Contexts may differ but values are a compass and anchor.

Don’t be that leader who challenges his teams to take initiative and be upset when they do and when they don’t take initiative. It is this unpredictability that takes confidence away from the team.

In working toward predictability, you make highlight why actions taken by your team may not have been the best but celebrate that they took action.

When your team knows that when they have done the best they can do to make the best decision and that ultimately you will praise them for taking action, they will act more boldly. They will even be more inspired to innovate.

Predictable leaders equip their teams to plan without having to check everything with their leaders. Thus, teams with predictable leaders are rapidly advancing teams compared to ones with unpredictable ones.

Leaders who make being unpredictable a team functioning value, hurt their enterprise more than those who are predictable. You might just want to have a conversation with your team about where they need you to be more predictable. Lead well ;-)

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here The Presence | Leading A Frustrated Team [Part 4]

Leaders are most needed in chaos and uncertainty. Leadership is always about orchestrating a better future. This does not only apply to the enterprise they lead, or the cause they champion. This starts with their team.

The ultimate purpose of leadership is warding of darkness and chaos. For them to effectively do that, the vehicle through which they accomplish this must be without darkness or chaos. This vehicle is the enterprise and or its teams.

An organization or team without a leader will come apart at the seams, allowing the darkness or problem they were supposed to solve to prevail.

Here

The presence of leaders is most critical in times of turmoil and uncertainty. Leaders are there to point the way. You cannot team will flounder in your absence.

The presence of the leader is critical when a team is frustrated. When your team is frustrated that is when you need to be most accessible. Frustration makes teams vulnerable. When anything is at its vulnerable state it needs a little more attention and care.

When your team is frustration don’t go AWOL. There are two kinds of leaders’ absence that will destroy teams, robbing their cause of champions.

Not Here

The physical presence of a leader is important. Your team must have contact with you. Your visibility is important. Delegation / giving responsibility to your team allows your team to focus on what they are best at. It also trains leaders to lead. However, giving responsibility doesn’t mean abandonment.

Related: Why Leaders Should Spend Time In The Trenches With Technical Teams

Leaders’ visibility inspires. A real or good ol’ pat-on-the-back, literally, still means a lot. When leading a frustrated team remember to be visible and do all you can to be physically present and visible.

Here-Not-Here

There’s a subtle absence that leaders overlook when their teams are struggling. This is the present yet absent leaders. The leaders is physically present but he’s elsewhere. Parking your body and teleporting elsewhere does not solve your teams’ challenges nor ease their pressure.

Leader, be present. Be there. Focused. Attentive. Listen and listen intently. Your presence means nothing if it is only physical. It is also useless if you’re not exploring solutions with your team. It is pointless if you’re ignoring the frustration and its cause.

Be present. Miss nothing. The leader’s presence must be unmistakable and tower over the frustration. That you are concerned and acting against frustration allows your team to focus on what they should be and not the frustration or its cause.

Leader, I’ll say it again be present. Many problems and altercations can easily be overcome and avoided when leaders are present. Really present. Leader, be present. Really present.

This is part 4 of the series on Leading A Frustrated Team. If you haven’t already, check out:

Cool | Leading A Frustrated Team [Part 3]
Hear | Leading a Frustrated Team [Part 2]
Ignore? | Leading a Frustrated Team [Part 1]

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Posted on 03/05/2013 In Leadership, Teamwork
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Cool | Leading A Frustrated Team [Part 3]

01/05/2013 — Leave a comment

This is part three of in the series on Leading Frustrated Teams. Check out the second post here.

Teams get their cue from their leaders. Those following you see you as the mold they need to fit into. Those you serve, as a leader, learn to celebrate your enterprises’ wins from you. They learn to take the hits from how well you do it.

When you and your team are frustrated it is critical what you do. The response of your leadership to challenges becomes the response of the team.

calm Cool | Leading A Frustrated Team [Part 3]

calm from leaders is what frustrated teams need

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Burst

When you team is frustrated, regardless of the source of their frustration, you mustn’t lose your cool.

When everyone is freaking out the last thing a leader should do is join them. You cannot act rationally if you join the madness.

When teams, or anyone, is frustrated, they hardly act in a rational way. Before you can bring your team back into the game, you need to address their frustration.

Losing your temper on your team is never in the top ten list of getting rid of your team’s frustration

Dear leader, keep your cool. When you burst out in tantrums with your frustrated team as the audience, you push them further into it. Leaders with temper problems are not healthy for themselves and those they lead.

Panic

Panic is just as bad as temper tantrums. Panic is a result of magnifying your inadequacy and not the importance of your vision. Your anchor, as a leader and team, must always be why you must do what you do and not how obstacles inhibit you.

You may be in a state of panic but you must contain it and avoid further infecting your team. Keep calm and just lead. If you’re going to freak out do so with a trusted mentor and get back to your team composed.

The first step to thinking clearly is composing yourself. Leading your team in and through frustration, has to include bringing them to a state of composure or calm.

Cool

One of the most empowering things a frustrated team needs is a leader with composure. The composure of the leader is empowering. It gives courage in the seemingly hopeless moments. It communicates that it is possible to function and deliver even in the most adverse conditions.

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Hear | Leading a Frustrated Team [Part 2]

30/04/2013 — 2 Comments

This is the second post in the series on Leading Frustrated Teams. Check out the first post here.

Ignoring your team’s frustration will more than hurt your team’s morale but the pursuit of your cause. In an earlier post in this series, I covered the problem of ignoring your teams’ frustration.

You cannot solve what you do not understand. You may never fully understand some challenges or their causes. However, the more you understand a challenge or reasons for some obstacles the better at solving them you will be.

Never start hatching a plan to solve a problem until you’ve made effort to understand it and its cause.

6273248505 43d0b56424 o Hear | Leading a Frustrated Team [Part 2]

dialogue is often overlooked in leading frustrated teams

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Vent

After acknowledging your team’s frustration you need to hear them out. Create a platform for them to vent their frustration. Don’t try to ‘workshop’ problems at this stage. Don’t start working on a solution until they have vented their frustration.

Giving your team space to vent their frustration is part of solving the reason for their frustration.

Many leaders just want to wave a wand and voila! = Frustration gone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes people feel better about a problem not because they’ve found a solution but because they’ve said what is bothering them.

Never mistake your team venting frustration as a direct attack on you

It is wisest to have your team vent with you, as the leader, than with someone from the outside. Worse still if some, not all, your team members are frustrated and they continually vent with other team members it can breed anarchy.

Thus the safest environment for your team to vent is directly to you.

Dialogue

 

After the venting is out of the way, the next step is to talk with and not at your team. Listen more than you talk. Get their perspective on how they arrived at their frustration. If it is a result you failing them, own your failure.

Show them how to take responsibility for their failure by taking responsibility for yours.

Ask your team what they feel would correct their frustration. In your dialogue make sure you leave with the next practical step to resolving frustration.

Escalation

Frustration escalates when leaders are not willing to really dialogue, beyond a superficial level. Not listening to your team only makes things worse. Lead well.  Don’t be that leader who feels only they can be frustrated and their team is immune to frustration.

You can actually solve frustration by simply talking ;-)

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