How Leaders create the conditions for successful teams …

Inside a team a leader has two main roles.

Role one: to be a great team member - a consistent example, walking the team’s talk on values and actions.

Role two: to generate and sustain the culture or atmosphere of the team.?

Let’s consider the specific challenges of role number two??

1. Working with fight or flight

Once upon a time (truly) the sabre-toothed tiger was a fearsome creature who terrified our ancestors. He helped us humans build the fastest possible neural pathway in our brains. This pathway connected our amygdala to our hearts, lungs and legs - so we could run away (fast) or hide (quietly) until the danger had passed. Without that fast-track our ancestors may not have survived for long. And we might not be here…

Your modern brain (and mine) are still wired with that fastest possible pathway to react to fear and danger. Our neurology still runs the show. Social threats (Understand your social brain) and the mystifying nuances of life at work have taken the place of the tiger. As leaders we need to know that work relationships are anchored in this wiring, in our team's emotions, their attention, and their cognition/understanding.?

Put another way - my ability to commit my discretionary efforts to getting the crucial work done, depends on my emotional responses. or reactions, to the clues and cues around me. A leader must be able to address my unsaid or understated fears, to enable me to modulate my emotions. And feel good about the efforts I am making.

2. What we believe makes all the difference

Academics researching effective teamwork reference ‘Collective Efficacy’, which you and I might call a ‘motivating shared belief that we can do well together’. In their book ‘Primal Leadership’ Goleman, Boyzatis and Annie McKee, use the concept ‘resonance’, which they translate as that “reservoir of positivity that unleashes the best in people,”. How does a leader create and sustain that resonance?

Boyzatis, Goleman and McKee explain that leaders must ‘reach inside’ to find their own truths. Leaders cannot be resonant (or generate resonance) if they’re clueless, if they’re pretending, or if they’re simply manipulating people. “You have to speak from your heart, and you have to do it in a way that speaks to other people’s hearts.” Some call this authenticity. When you can articulate a goal positively, stay optimistic, enthusiastic and motivated in delivering the mission and the messages, you WILL spread the message and the mood (and the predisposition) to the team. Goleman reminds us that ‘Emotions are contagious, and they are most contagious from the top down.’

It’s also worth noting that the opposite applies. There are leaders, you have probably encountered at least one in your journey through life, who create negativity.(I am planning a short blog, very soon, on managing up for just such a leader.) See It’s Not All About You (hbr.org) for more on collective efficacy).

3. Every aspect of good leadership is learnable (and there are maturity levels in leadership)

Considering a generation of leaders who cut their leadership teeth in the days of ‘command and control’ or ‘mechanistic’ models it’s worth asking how might we teach “old leaders to learn new tricks,”. Every one of the skills and aptitudes, even our progressive journey up the levels of maturity are teachable, learnable and achievable; it doesn’t matter how long we have been leading.

Goleman says “It’s not too late, if you’re motivated. The key is to get a leader interested in changing. It does not work to arbitrarily send someone off ‘to be re-tooled’. These kinds of changes take our willingness and effort.”

Leaders willing to look at changing, might start by understanding the impacts, or negative effects of their leadership style or skillset. (In an evidence based culture this may land best through an effective 360 process, which has factored in Emotional Intelligence and Maturity, such as the ESCI). (https://hbr.org/2017/08/good-leaders-are-good-learners )

Next the results of this data gathering, from people we work with, must be shared in a way that allows leaders to learn. Organisations who ‘dump the data’ on someone, can cause upset and make things worse in their leadership landscape. Delivered well this requires a safe and supportive framework,with a? focus on strengths, as well as on the opportunities to change for the better. Skilled coaches can enable leaders in developing a learning plan which will leverage their on-the-job, day-to-day situations as a laboratory for their learning. (Every step of this journey will build your leadership capability and the resonance of all of your teams.)

Successful teams and organisations create and sustain a culture where learning, courage and humility are valued attributes for leaders. Such teams and organisations hire, and promote, for these traits.?

4. Ever had a ‘bad day’ when you are not at your best?

Join the club! Human leaders who are willingly moving up the maturity levels as we learn will still have bad days! I acknowledge that when I am under pressure some of my (bad) old habits return.?

Boyzatis’ research (reported in Primal Leadership, (Primal Leadership) reinforces two things which make sustainable success (better leadership across a long period resulting in new habits that stick) more likely. This works well when:

ONE - New habits and the change which they deliver are connected to what those individual leaders want for themselves (their legacy, the difference they intend to make), giving them the motivation to sustain the change.?

TWO - Leaders who ‘practice’ in on-the-job situations, get to do something crucial (neurologically), they get to inhibit (stop) their real ‘old’ habits, and replace these with even-better, new ways of doing things.Just like any new skill (or maturity level), the more you practice the easier it gets.?

If you’re a leader who’d like to learn more about your own development, or your team’s development get in touch??Team Coaching is growing fast as global best practice for learning organisations. We are delighted to be running an “Introduction to Group and Team Coaching” 30 CCEU/CPD programme with Helen Zink.

(View Helen Zink’s profile)

If you’d like the brochure it’s here Team & Group Coaching - Coaching Pacific Nga mihi manaakitanga, Mary