When you need to lead your team: My 4 go-to skills
When we talk about leadership, the topic conjures many ideas and visuals in our heads. We think about skills, behaviors, actual people, or situations we found ourselves in both positive and negative. Leadership, as a concept, is something we think about all the time in business. We all have examples of amazing leadership and terrible leadership.
Terrible leadership can be anything from inaccessibility to evasion to distrust to dishonesty to command and control behavior. Amazing leadership has many faces -- too many to list. When it comes to leading a team, we can get a little more narrow in our leadership skills, however, and I will focus on my top four in this blog.
As a Talent professional, I have been in many conversations where we differentiate between management and leadership. We do this to articulate skills and levels in an organization or even in a development program. But as I wrote last week, leadership starts with self, and it doesn't necessarily mean you have direct reports. Anyone can be a leader and demonstrate leadership skills.
In my career, the best leaders have not necessarily been those C-level folks at the top, although I have seen many great leaders at that level as well (the focus of next week's blog). Some of the best leaders I have interacted with have been my front-line manager. For managers, we tend to focus on what I call the "blocking and tackling" activities and skills like interviewing and hiring, managing performance and capacity, and delegating.
All these activities and the skills to execute them are critical to being a good manager. Being a good leader at the team manager level takes a few more skills. Here are my four go-to's that may seem obvious, but in times of stress or great change, they can quickly become our lost skills.
Communicate
You guessed it. The top of my list is communication. When we are stressed, sometimes the last thing we are thinking about is asking questions, actively listening, and feeding back what we heard. For some of us, depending on our innate style, we may move into dictating mode or withdrawal mode, which doesn't help us or our teams. However, this is natural and it is okay as long as you recognize this in yourself and take active steps to flex your style to be more open and communicative. Good managers who lead proactively communicate, proactively check in on their team and proactively seek to understand and share what they can from a strategic direction at all times.
Support
Offering and providing support to our teams can be interpreted through many different actions. Providing support does not always mean playing the role of counselor, although that sometimes happens. Support can be delivered through communication, as I mention above; through being accessible; through being clear about roles and responsibilities (my personal favorite); through helping to prioritize work; through removing obstacles; through being a sounding board for new ideas; through providing career growth opportunities; through getting out of your team's way. All these actions are supportive of your team and their needs to be successful.
Coach
A hot topic of today -- coaching -- combines the two skills above. Great leaders coach by asking questions. Most people can coach themselves so providing time, space, and the right questions to inspire self-reflection is the best form of coaching. Coaching can be about feedback on performance, future career direction, or solving sticky problems. Being available to have all of these conversations is a critical role for great leaders to play.
Recognize
Great leaders recognize effort, achievements, anniversaries, and good behavior you want to see replicated over and over again. Recognition can be monetary but simple appreciation can go a long way, especially in remote or hybrid situations where teams may be unsure they are truly being seen for their efforts. The best leaders also know how to not be the one in the spotlight. This is one of the hardest steps for people to take when moving into leadership. Presumably, you received accolades for your individual performance before being promoted into a leadership position. By stepping aside and letting others shine, you are demonstrating selflessness and support. Great leaders surround themselves with great people and know when to shine through others.
Leading teams is truly a privilege and one that shouldn't be taken lightly. My four go-to skills sound simple, and they are, but they are not always easy to execute, especially in times of great stress, strain, or change. When high-stress situations present themselves, first, take a breath. Then, think communicate, support, coach, and recognize. This is the best engagement strategy for any organization to follow.