You don’t have to look too far to find articles about leadership, inspiration, motivation. Infact there is so much written and said about this topic it can be a challenge knowing where to start.
Well for me, the place to start is not you and how you lead a winning team. It is the team. You may have seen my earlier blog about creating winning team. If not take a look as no matter how good a leader you are, without the right people around you are doomed to failure. If you don’t have the right team you can either continue with mediocrity or, face the situation and change the team! WOW that was a bit direct. Well in my opinion you have to be bold and make big bets if you are going to go from good to great and if you want to win.
OK so I’ve once you have the right team with a mixture of Head, Heart and Hand (confused? Then read my last blog!!) so how do you lead them. I believe that there are four key elements.
Vision
To lead, you must get people to follow! To follow, people need a direction. A direction is delivered through a Vision. As a leader you must set a course and ensure that all the team understand the course and most importantly understand how they contribute towards that course. The vision can be a 5 year plan or a brief for a two week pitch. It doesn’t matter the duration as long as it is clear, concise and communicated. As Reverend Theodore Hesburgh said ‘The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.’
Empowerment
So you set out your vision and the team are bought in so what now? You must let the team members get on with their jobs. You have chosen the team based on their abilities and skills so let them use those abilities and skills. Don’t build a great team and then tell them what to do at every stage of the journey. If you do this, one of three things will happen. They will conform and you lose their expertise. They will fight you and you have friction in the team. They will leave the team and you have lost a valuable team member. You’ve hired them for their Head, Heart or Hands so let them use them.
Empathy
Different people work differently. They are motivated by different things. They work in different ways. They communicate in different ways. As a leader you must get on their wavelength to get the best out of them and in order to be efficient with your time. Sometimes it is obvious what makes people tick, other times it takes a bit of trial and error. Either way, as a leader you must invest your time to get it right.
Accountability
The buck must stop somewhere. True as a leader, the buck ultimately stops with you. That is true when representing the team and protecting more junior members from unhelpful attention. However, if people are being empowered they also must be accountable for their actions. If people have failed to deliver as agreed, then they should be made aware of this and the impact of their failure. This way people learn and grow.
So once you have all the tools you just have to get on with it. Don’t expect it to be plan sailing as it won’t be! You will get things wrong. You will misjudge situations. You will mis-read people.
But, most importantly if you are open and honest with your team, If you acknowledge your shortcomings along with theirs, you will win their trust, respect and maybe friendship.
by Richard Wright
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