Lesson 7 – Learn the things that you shouldn’t do in the team
There are many disadvantages to running your own business, but one advantage is being able to work the way you want; particularly when the subject of this blog is asleep at my feet.
Lesson 7 follows on from Lessons 1, 5 and 6, and relates to behaviour that is not accepted by the team.
Trust is built over months, not seconds.
It took me quite a while to realise this, but the relationship between a dog and its owner is all about trust. There are certain things that I expect Jake to do, and there are certain things that he expects of me. When those expectations are met and not broken, we have started to build trust. For me, trust is a fairly simple thing to define:
Trust – the knowledge that someone is going to do what they say they are going to do.
Greet your team members like you are meeting them for the first time every day.
This lesson sounds over the top and cheesy, but give me the opportunity to explain.
I am sure that you have seen dogs like Jake before; as soon as I get home there is a huge wag of the tail, more jumping than I would like, and a desperate need to be patted. There is no doubt in my mind that he is happy to see me. Jake also has the advantage (or disadvantage?) of having a tail that completely reflects his mood – if the tail is wagging he is happy, wagging furiously and he is excited.
Listening and Being Present are Important to you Team
Having a team leader that is motivated, passionate, driven and excitied by making change are all wonderful things to have when you are in a team. Equally, it is very comforting to know that your Team Leader is there to listen and provide advice when you need it – it provides the ‘steady hand’ that is required to guide a team through difficult times.
Jake is the newest member of our team / family. He is an 18 month old labradoodle (pictured) and the last 15 months have been an exercise in joy, commitment, frustration and persistence. When I think on the impact our new member has had on the rest of the family, I have realised that it is not very different to a new person entering a team in business. I have also realised that animals know an awful lot about being in a team – they have existed and survived in packs for thousands of years.
Here are some of the lessons learnt with Jake on being a good team member and being a good leader of a team.
Understand the unique behaviour and skill set you bring to the team
Having Jake in our home has forced everyone to consider what role we have in the family. Jake looks to each of us to provide different things for him; what he expects from me is different to what he expects from my two children. Each of us has roles that Jake expects us to fulfil, just as we expect him to behave and act in a certain way. Each member of our family has a unique set of skills and characteristics that are appreciated and recognised by other members of the family. In fact, we wouldn’t be the family that we are without those skills and behaviours.
Look after your team and they will look after you.
While the concept of looking out for your team is not new, many people seem to forget that the process is ‘give and take’ rather than just ‘take’. A common mistake amongst new team leaders / supervisors is to assume that they can ‘take’ from their new team without giving anything in return.
Breaks in discipline / performance can’t wait until later to fix.
Discipline has become a dirty word. The word itself brings up connotations of punishment and detention (at least in my mind anyway!). A new dog in the house has forced us to look at discipline in its truest form, that it, correcting behaviour that is not at the right standard. The same behaviour change process applied with Jake is also used by successful leaders managing successful teams.
Leading the Team is Not a Part-time Responsibility.
Owning a pet, much like deciding to have children – is not a decision to be taken lightly. You are responsible for the welfare, care and protection of something / someone other than yourself. This task requires you to perform many different roles requiring many different skills – some of which are innate and others that you learn as you go. All of these tasks require responsibility and dedication, and are not dissimilar to the requirements for leading a team.
Leadership is a very popular topic at the moment. Politicians don’t show enough of it (or the right type), mining CEO’s are vocal about it and football teams have so much of it they have leadership groups and sub-groups. Everyone has an opinion on what is good leadership, and (according to the media) it seems that all of the identifiable leaders in Australia seem to lack it in some substantial way.
Have we made the definition of good leadership so unattainable that mere mortals can’t achieve it?
You arrive at work with a clear idea of what you want to achieve for the day. There is a morning meeting, you have a few reports to read and respond to, and you need to check on your team. You have a report due to your boss by COB, but you have the afternoon to complete it – plenty of time. As you settle in to complete the report, your office / workspace becomes like Heathrow Airport, no sooner does one person leave than you are faced with another question, another email, another phonecall, another interruption to what was a perfectly planned day.
Are meetings taking up far too much of your work life? Feeling frustrated by poorly planned meetings or Chairpeople not controlling the participants? Feel like the meetings you attend are directionless or out of control? Are you often wondering why you were invited to the meeting at all?
The wonderful thing I love about working in the leadership development space is that inspiration for great leadership can abound everywhere. While traveling for my last international training engagement, I stopped at the airport newsagent to pick up something to read. I usually head for the management books (a little sad I know), but one magazine on sporting rifles caught my attention.
The leadership hierarchy needs to be understood by all of the team.
Nothing confuses a dog more than a lack of understanding of who is the leader. Having recently worked with a dog trainer to help us with Jake, I was told that most families confuse their dogs (and the dogs understanding of their place in the family hierarchy) through a lack of understanding of some very simple actions. Who provides the dog its food, who gets attention first and who leads when going for a walk might seem like small things to us, but they communicate an awful lot to a dog regarding their place in the team.
In a recent editorial in BRW (Mar 1-7), Kate Mills highlighted her 5 lessons that company leaders should be taking from the recent power struggle between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. Kate stresses that the leadership crisis isn’t just in politics but in leadership in the corporate world as well.
In this respect I couldn’t agree more. Employees and middle Managers in all industries are looking for authentic leaders that can think beyond the bottom line and provide them with real goals, real understanding of what they are doing and real meaning to make their job worthwhile.
Consider this – how many emails do you delete a day without reading the entire email? 10, 20? What makes you delete them so quickly? Another thing to consider – have you every attended a meeting where you just wanted to person talking to get to the point? If so (or if this person has been you), then perhaps they / you need to consider what is being said and ensure that it is more effective. Here are a few tips to help.
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Ever wanted to know what your supervisor / Managers expect of you, the boss? Having facilitated hundreds of Managers in leadership training courses and focus groups, the answer to the simple questions ‘What skills and qualities do you expect of your Manager?’ and ‘What skills and qualities do your people expect from you?’ are remarkably consistent.
From banking to printing, military to Government Departments, manufacturing to telecommunications, the expectations of supervisors are clear and consistent.
Have you worked for a leader that truly inspired you? Made you feel like what you did was worthwhile? Alternatively, have you worked for a leader that made you feel worthless?
What have you based your leadership on – emulating what a good leader has demonstrated for you or making sure you never repeat their awful mistakes?
About 6 weeks ago I wrote a short blog post titles ‘Where have all the role models gone?’ It was born out of frustration at the lack of values and clear decisions being made by political leaders in my country. In my last blog post I put forward that there are several things you need to consider to fully assume responsibility as a leader for your team.