The main reason people stay at or leave jobs is their manager. So obviously every company on the planet puts a lot of money and effort into training great team managers.
Just kidding. No, that’s rarely even on the radar. It falls to people like you, people who go out of their way to read about things like this, to make a difference.
Let’s start from the top: the word manager is bad already. If that’s all you’re aiming to ever be, you can skip the rest of this piece. Leading is much more than managing.
Being a team leader is another job on top of whatever your job is.
It doesn’t matter your background or your industry. As a team leader you’ll need to create a team culture that makes people want to work for you, for each other and for the company.
We’ll discuss how to create a culture in a future article, but first we’ll put forward what we believe the standards are for team lead to hold themselves accountable to.
Shape yourself to shape other around you.
Responsibility: You understand you are the role model and act accordingly
How do we talk to each other here? Who do we admire? How do we handle pressure? Can we really be ourselves at work? How much, though? Whether people ask these questions out loud or not, they will be observing and absorbing the answer to them from you. All other standards follow from this.
Courage: You don’t run away from difficult conversations
Whether it’s with your own managers, managers of other teams or the people reporting into you. Difficult conversations are a very important part of your job from now on. It’s ok to dislike them, even fear them. It’s not ok to avoid them.
Consistency: You strive to be predictable
Few things can be worse than an unpredictable team leader. It leaves the team uncertain about how they’re expected to act at key moments. If they’re distracted trying to imagine what you’d like them to do, you have work to do. If your team joke about how well they know what you’ll say or how you’ll react to certain things, take it as a compliment.
Clarity: You strive to be clear
Clarity goes hand in hand with consistency. Pay very close attention to how the team are reacting to what you communicate and how they put it into practice. Take responsibility for making people understand what you mean, rather than just for communicating it.
Empathy: You take an interest in the people in your team, not just the professionals
We could say that if you want to motivate someone you need to get to know them. And that would be true. But let’s go one step further: life is not worth living if you’re only ever surrounded by acquaintances. Dedicate emotional energy to really pay attention to your team members. Ask ‘how are you’ and mean it. Truly listen to the response. Show you care about people and people will care for each other. And that should be your ultimate goal.
We’ll continue this series going more in-depth into each of these.