Larger Team? Then Let's Scale-Up!

You are probably reading this article now because you have finally gotten the promotion you were waiting for. To everyone else, it was a well-deserved victory because you worked hard for it. But while everyone is celebrating and drinking on your behalf, deep down, you are wondering how you will be able to cope with the greater responsibility that comes with leading a team more extensive than the size you were leading previously.

At this point, I want to reassure you that it is not out of place to feel overwhelmed and unfit. It is not even abnormal if you have developed an imposter syndrome for this new job. However, as a leader, you should view this as an opportunity to develop the necessary skills and strategies to help solve new problems.

One of the mindsets you need to sustain at this point is the belief that this new position will open you up to new levels of influence. It will also, at the same time, bring with it more formidable challenges. Regardless, whether you stand firm or get smashed from the weight of responsibilities depends more on what you do next. Therefore, I will share with you timeless strategies that can help you overcome the fear of incompetence and increased responsibilities below. Let's jump right in.

#1. Have a growth mindset

A growth mindset is vital to your success as a leader. As a leader, you stand as a model among the people you are leading. Your actions and inactions towards challenges speak volumes. Having a growth mindset means keeping a positive state of mind toward reaching the desired outcome, bridging the gap between logically knowing what is needed and actually doing it. 

As a leader with a growth mindset, you are more concerned with questions like "What is this process teaching my team and me? What have we learned from this experience? What should we do differently next time? " You are expected to break in the face of challenges but to view unexpected outcomes as opportunities to grow and learn. 

As a team leader, one of the effects a growth mindset will have on your team is to remove the fear of failure and instill the spirit of accountability and self-resilience. Your team will be more grateful to take up new challenges and work wholeheartedly. Also, in cases where you are unavailable, they can develop skills and solutions that could be working towards solving the problem. 

#2. Understand your team

You may probably be saying, "How am I supposed to know and understand all these people"? If you keep asking these questions, you certainly won't get any work done until you discover you should get to know and understand each person in the first scenario. 

Tell them who you are and what characteristics make up your personality. Help them understand you better and know what you expect of them. But then, it doesn't end there. Get to know their personality and performances. Make it easier for you to assign the right task to the right person with the right skill and competency to handle it.

For teams where there is understanding and trust tend to be more productive than teams that don't. If you aim to build trust, knowledge, and understanding in your team, you need to communicate clearly with those you lead. When you go out of your way to create an enabling environment that will foster trust among the people you are leading, winning becomes far easier. 

#3. Communicate clearly and effectively.

Why do you have to work towards ensuring your communication is clear and compelling as a leader? It is because the performance of your team is mainly dependent on the effectiveness of your communication. Believe me, half of the problems you spend time trying to provide solutions to would have been avoided with more effective communication.

Communication for a leader goes beyond the expression of self or transmission of information. We have to create a connection between the data created in our minds and how others receive it. Effective communication aims to ensure that the end product reflects the goal in mind.

As simple as it sounds, communication is one of the most challenging skills to be developed by most leaders. Communication goes beyond the one-way medium of giving out information that starts from the leader.

Here are three items to think about to know that you communicated effectively;

• The message has not been compromised from your mind to the receiver.
• The receiver understands the message as it is in your mind.
• The receiver provides feedback that is in line with what you communicated.

The critical element here is that communication is not effective until there is the feedback that does not compromise the leader's main idea.

#4. Motivate your team

Well, before you begin to question the need for motivation, it is my pleasure to let you know that communicating with your team is not all there is to get the job done. You have to spice it up with active motivation. Motivation is a resultant effect of being accountable. So, if your team is willing to be accountable to you despite their personal goals, you need to motivate them so that they can give their best.

So what could happen if I decide not to scale up?

Remember, when scaling or leading large teams, it is better to focus on the growth process than the end product or outcome. However, where you don't adopt any of these strategies in scaling up or leading our larger teams, you will be giving room to the following:

#1. Unproductivity:

When you fail as a leader to develop strategies to lead your team, you are giving room for unproductivity, which slows down the organization's purpose and goal. This can lead to low self-esteem or morale amongst your team's members and eventually take its toll on you. While it is unrealistic to expect workers to be 100% productive through every working day, research finds that most organizations operate with a five to ten percent productivity drag that better leadership practices could eliminate.

#2. Disputes and distraction: 

A team is a group of people working together to achieve a common goal. Lack of oneness of heart can therefore defeat the whole aim and hinder productivity. As a leader, it is your responsibility to create a common vision and goal. Missing this vision gives room for different goals by different people in the same organization. So unless you are ready to get them to work towards a single goal, you cannot have a winning team. 

Sometimes as a leader, you may not realize which of your actions resulted in your team's underdevelopment. It would be wrong to conclude that a leader would destroy his/her teamwork intentionally. So, I will be sharing below some of the actions that hinder the scaling up or leading of large teams;

• Starving the team of resources they need to be successful. Why hide the idea that software or tool would help your team ease productivity? As a leader, you need to be willing to make readily available the resources required by your team to reach the collective goal.Larger Team? Then Let's Scale-Up!
• Always give room for your team members to express themselves. Understand that you cannot carry out most functions by yourself. It would help if you had your team to get the work done. That is why it is called teamwork. You cannot avoid failure. Sometimes, it is inevitable. So give room for your team to share their thoughts on how activities could be done. Even when there is an unexpected outcome, still let them share their opinion on how things could have been done.

Conclusion

One of the advantages that come with the privilege of leading and scaling up a team is that it helps you groom your team members to become leaders. It is also more satisfactory to have a winning team than a winning individual. Always remember to define roles, set expectations, and let them work. Also, note that strategies vary from team to team and individual to individual. But, in the end, it's all about finding the right combination of things and strategies for scaling up and leading across larger teams.