7 phrases every good team leader should say to their team

In this edition:

• Announcement of the last First Class upgrade winner
• 7 phrases every good team leader should say to their team
• What are the 2 crucial factors defining the Future of Work?

Congratulations, Daliana Nicolau! We are looking forward to seeing you at the event and at the VIP After-Party

Only 15 days until BRAND MINDS. First Class tickets are sold out, Day 1 and Day 1 & 2 tickets are available at brandminds.com . Don’t miss this year’s BRAND MINDS!

7 phrases every good team leader should say to their team

1.‘You have my full support.’

Any good team leader is their team’s first and most enthusiastic supporter. To be a successful team leader, you need to have a successful team. It’s not enough to manage your team, assign tasks and oversee their performance. It’s your responsibility to set them up for success, get them the resources and tools they need to do their job and help them achieve their team goals and individual goals.

2. ‘Let me start by bragging about you and this team.’

Take every opportunity presented to you to congratulate your team on their achievements. There’s always something positive you can say no matter how difficult things are. Take a team-focused approach and also an individual-focused approach. The team is successful as a team because team members work together, communicate effectively and care about meeting their goals. That’s something that needs to be acknowledged in front of the top management and the rest of the company.

3. ‘I am sorry.’

Team leaders are human beings and like any human being, they can make mistakes. If you have wronged your team or any of its members, take a step forward and come clean. Saying these three little words can be very powerful and have a lasting impact on your team. It shows you are emotionally mature enough to admit your mistakes and being vulnerable in front of your team is actually a sign of strength. No one is right all the time and admitting that would persuade your team to respect you even more than before.

4. ‘Tell me more.’

It’s so easy to show your team members that you care about them. Just invite them to talk about themselves and their lives without any judgement coming from you. ‘Tell me more’ is the magical combination of words that encourages them to open up and share essential insights into their lives. It convinces them that you are a leader who cares about them and their interests or about the situation they are going through at the moment.

5. ‘What can I do to help you be more successful?’

All employees want to be successful at their jobs and be seen by their team leader and top management. So ask them what being successful means to them and how you can help them achieve their goal. It’s a great opportunity to listen carefully and take notes. Do they need the help of a digital tool to increase their productivity? Do they need to take on fewer tasks so they can focus on one or two projects and acquire the mental space they need to be more creative? Do they need to acquire new skills? Would they like to move to a new department or receive new responsibilities? Once you know what their needs are, map the steps or actions you will take together to help them achieve their professional goals.

6. ‘What’s one thing you did recently you are proud of?’

No matter how small, every member of your team is proud of something they did lately. Whether it’s completing an individual task on time, helping a team member or just writing a very good email headline, let them tell you what they are proud of. It’s a great way for you to learn what’s important to them and discover small wins that you might not be even aware of. And you, as their team leader, should celebrate with them.

7. ‘What talents, interests or skills do you have that we haven’t made the most of?’

Your team members are complex individuals with talents, interests or skills which they might not have shared on the job. But what if the business or the team could benefit from them? If you have Generation X team members (aged between 43 to 58), they might be interested in sharing their professional knowledge or life experiences with younger generations. You could support them write a course or setting up a mentoring program. Both options provide benefits team or company-wide: your team learns from a seasoned professional and the professional feels valued and seen. If there are Generation Z members in your team, they might be interested in developing new skills in areas adjacent to their main job: graphic designers might be interested in video editing, sales professionals might be interested in copywriting and so on.

Which phrase are you already saying or planning to say to your team? Or is your team leader saying to you? We would love to read your answers in the comments.

The 2 crucial factors defining the Future of Work according to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report:

• Employee Learning
• HR

Employee Learning is key to business resilience

Continued learning is the foundation of agility in business. Being an agile company means having employees who adapt fast to the future by learning and developing new skills.

Interesting fact: the LinkedIn report found that people who are top learners are also top performers.

What does learning mean? Leaders would love to send their teams to long-term training programs but that’s simply not agile: time is of the essence.

The answer to this question is Employee Learning through Career Development.

Guidelines on how to reward employees for the skills they build at work (LinkedIn 2023 Workplace Learning Report ):

• measure who spends the most time learning each week;
• assign extra points to the skills you most want employees to learn;
• publicize the top five employees who spent the most time learning;
• recognize them at all-company meetings;
• give them financial rewards.

Remember:? People Strategy = Business Strategy.

HR is more critical now than it has ever been

It’s high time for Top Executives to recognize the essential part of HR, now more than ever, in the company’s success.

HR professionals are agility enablers and agents of change and they understand that employee learning and talent management are now going hand in hand.

HR's new responsibilities reflect this change:

• Employee learning & development
• Talent acquisition
• Internal mobility programs

Recommendations for HR professionals to engage & retain employees:

• have career conversations with every employee,?
• talk about learning with respect to career mobility within the organization,?
• build a career lattice rather than a career ladder,?
• if internal mobility is not possible, support employees to change functions;
• invest in opportunities to help employees practice and use new skills.

Lynda Gratton is BRAND MINDS’ global expert for Team Management.

She chaired the World Economic Forum Council on Leadership and is currently co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Work, Wages and Job Creation.

She designed the ‘Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Companies’ programme and has since led it for over 20 years. The programme is considered one of the world’s leading programmes for people and organisations.

Talking about the future of work and team engagement, Lynda Gratton recommends team leaders and managers change their roles from performance management to performance development which is what today’s and tomorrow’s workforce needs.

As the saying goes, people join companies and leave their managers.{…} Having good relationships with their managers is the top factor in employees’ job satisfaction, which in turn is the second-most-important determinant of their overall well-being.

Lynda Gratton