Team Dynamics & Leadership: The Core Functions of Exception Performance & Results.
A few years ago, I stumbled across Ray Dalio's rather radical approach to leadership and how he'd always ensured that the best ideas from anyone in the team won, not the person's position, age of any of the other biases we often bake into our decisions at organizations.
My key takeaway then was how do you get your team's objective and even subjective assessment of themselves and you as a manager because only then can you start understanding the work behind your team dynamics.
Now as a team leader, I went about creating an environment of mutual & radical accountability. This exercise was vital in uncovering what a team leader would look like for our team.
As I'd suspected, this wasn't the norm in Uganda's corporate culture where superiors are equally accountable to their subordinates therefore, whenever I offered my team the opportunity to quiz and demand deliverables about my performance, they'd pass.
To get everyone jumpstarted, I decided to change our entire performance review and meeting structures where I would give them a detailed review of what I had done, how it had contributed to what we had agreed to do and where something hadn't been done and why plus remedies, where available. They would then easily jump in with their views.
In short order, I was demonstrating the kind of review and attention to detail I expected from them so that our performance reviews were less about fulfilling an obligation and more about openly and honestly assessing our individual and joint performance.
This approach also achieved something I have also been keen on; ownership of one's performance, results and ultimately, their career development.
This approach shaped my role more clearly which required me to lead, not manage their every aspect because from day one and as we eventually discovered, we had different expectations from a teammate and a manager.
I took these expectations to distil the overlapping qualities to see what a team leader would look like. (More on that later*)
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First, a small detour on something similar I observed in "A Promised Land", Obama's memoir, a birthday gift I got from the team after mentioning it in passing as one of the books I wanted to get my hands on but for whatever reason, I hadn't.
After three weeks of studiously ploughing through the +700-page first volume of his memoir, I noted a common thread in what enable him to pull off some impressive results, the great, good and even those that fell short of his ambitious agenda & vision in the first term.
My fascination with the memoir was more to do with the leadership style especially of his team and the complex system of government as sophisticated as any can be in the twenty-first century that he deployed his career defining moments.
The most prominent feature of Obama's leadership was working and surrounding himself with some of the brightest people in their fields across the professional & political spectrum.
This wasn't just for his core-staff but, the entire administration. He was keen on tapping into the invaluable resource of human knowledge even from the previous administrations.
Particularly his economic, national security and energy teams. The shear size of the kind of issues he confronted in fact demanded the need for such ultra-skilled and experienced professionals and whether it was his predisposition or his own brilliance, he chose the less egotistical decision to select the best team possible rather than a bunch of "yes-men" and gave them the room to operate and use their own brilliance to everyone's advantage in the long-term.
There are two standout moments for me in the memoir when this served him well beyond the equally daunting ones like saving the American & global economy;
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Therefore as a leader, surrounding yourself with the best people and letting them do their part enhances the chances of success and even when you come up short, you know you gave the best possible effort rather than imagining that the brilliance of the people around diminishes you, you need to re-frame the perspective.
It also echoes the same elements that I covered in an article I wrote about a year ago about what set great companies apart from good ones. Leadership, the right people are top of the list. You can read more about that here.
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Now back to our team dynamics;
This brings me to a conversation I had with my team recently where we discussed the traits / features we wanted in an ideal team member, this was key for us to access our team dynamics.
Gladly, we were succinctly matched.
The answers were widespread and shortly after, I asked them what characters they wanted in an ideal manager.
Whatever responses we collected, we blended them to see how they line up to each other and in between, we would know who what we want in a leader.
Why this approach? Well, a truly leader, at least for a young dynamic marketing team like ours is someone who comfortably straddle between been an ideal teammate and an ideal manager.
This means when your team needs your support, you step up, you collaborate and encourage them to keep pushing while when they need a manager, you're approachable and fair in assessing the challenges or whatever they bring.
I love how non of the traditional traits show up here for a manager and maybe it's a generational distinction but, I also noticed the three overlapping things they need in a leader; creative (of course, we are in marketing after-all, but I sense this applies to more industries than just marketing), flexible and open-minded.
The last two go back to the radical approach where the best reasoned ideas win, not your position.
The team was charitable with their assessment, giving me an 8/10. My apparent Achilles' heel was over ambitious with every quarter and astronomical high expectations of them.
The responses were equally well received and after a bit of haggling about my team's selfishness (which they denied vehemently, of course*??????), they asked me the same questions;
First, I told them my responses applied to both a teammate and manager because in my view, both were interchangeable.
My responses were three simple answers; someone dependable, smart and hungry.
I went ahead to elaborate what dependable meant and how they always turned in an impressive showing and performance when we really needed it.
It also went as far as being dependable with reliable communication, something we had to put in the work to really get right and establish trust in the team.
On smarts, I wasn't and I have seldom ever referred to book smarts (though they're all exceptionally technically well gifted), I looked at the ingenious ways we had circumnavigated the odds to deliver on some good initiatives and campaigns.
Lastly, the hunger, well that is where I was mostly guilty of being overly ambitious. In fact one of the team members calls me Black Lightening ? but, equally as a team, we have also pushed ourselves to not remain too comfortable doing only the things we know.
And that's it for this edition.