Building Teams is one of the greatest challenges facing leaders. Whether these teams work together in offices, factories, on construction sites or with team members working remotely such as in a hybrid structure alternating between in-person and from home, leaders are looking to obtain the best from their people.
Step 1: You can’t do it on your own
Building Teams start at the highest level in the Boardroom where the CEO / MD / owner first needs to realise that they can’t do it on their own and that they need to begin building a senior leadership team (SLT) around them. This may be hard especially if they set the business up on their own.
If there is already a SLT in place then the leader needs to assess if the team members can also deliver against future goals and “high performance” if that is the aim. If not, they should be changed. Here the leader faces the tough decision about management colleagues who may not be the right people for the journey ahead. One of the first things that Jack Welch, voted 20th Century Greatest Business Leader, did was change his SLT. He knew that as well as they had done, they could not deliver the next level of change and high performance. That’s gutsy.
For many leaders, to move towards becoming a high performing business requires a “transformation”, in other words, a change. A key step is developing self-awareness and building the team, especially the SLT. The leader looks at themself personally and critically considers how they can change and drive towards high-performance. This sounds easy but in practice it is difficult to do.
Step 2: Hire for Attitude not Aptitude
Hiring new people is another challenge. Sometimes a leader “settles” for an appointment as it is not easy to recruit. We argue to hang out for the right individual i.e. get the right person on the bus, then get the right person on the right seat on the bus.
We encourage leaders to look at employing people with a different viewpoint. Of course, they must buy into the values but a leader should not want people who just blindly say ‘yes’.
Hire for ‘Attitude’. You can train the person to develop the skills (‘Aptitude’).
Step 3: Create the right environment
Developing the appropriate environment for team members to step forward to take responsibility, be accountable and feel comfortable in making decisions is another crucial aspect of leadership and in building teams. Recent research confirms that creating a culture where team members feel empowered can boost productivity by 22% and profitability by 18%. With 69% of employees disengaged in the workplace there is much need to improve how team members relate to the organisation.
On our flagship leadership program, LEAD™, business leaders reflect on where their business is now and where they want their business to go to. We encourage the leader to visualise “high performance” and effective leadership and describe what that looks like. From there, we explore what to do, how to do it, communicating why it is important. Together with the SLT, the leader needs to create the vision and values for the organisation. There needs to be a shared vision and sense of direction.
Next steps: LEAD™ & Effectively Leading Teams
We offer two different routes of support to assist you to build teams.
Vision, values, creating high performance and encouraging staff to become empowered are subjects we explore on LEAD™. Click in the box below to read how some local companies have begun this journey.
How leaders build teams is explored on our new online course which is launched in the Autumn. For more information on Effectively Leading Teams, please fill in your details below:
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