Three Ingredients for HiPo Team Recipe

Managing people to work as a team, has been the most satisfying experience for me. After thirteen years of teaching career, when I took on academic leadership role four years ago, I came to realise the immense latent potential that I have inside to have useful impact to nurture others around us through simple actions and apt words. And if it is true for me, how much more it will be true for you because really, I have had a very humble childhood, education and general life. So, I write this piece as a gesture of gratitude to nurturers around me.

I want to share how I found team development and deployment extracting the best of my own reservoirs - emotional and behavioural.

Over time, I have come to understand that there are some key ingredients that need to be put in my leadership recipe, so that High-potential (HiPo) team members keep performing. Relentlessly.

I would like to share these with you. Please do not hesitate to write your comments and may be, by sharing our experiences, we may understand the 'recipe' more deeply.

Ingredient #1 : Converting the strategic vision into simple tasks and planning the tasks, keeping the team members in mind

The organization has its own goals, own vision and these big plans are influenced by internal conditions as well as market responses. Team members may or may not understand what the organizational goals are. Even if they do, the scope of what the members could do to actually impact the big plan, is beyond their immediate job description.

So, I have found team performing better over and over again when I am able to break the BIG VISION into small digest-able, do-able tasks.

Once these tasks are written down, assign them to team members - such that there is a match between, what the member aspires to do and is willing to do.

In past, I used to assign tasks to team members whom I found had the competence to do it, but over time, I discovered that competence does not guarantee excellence.

The flavor of task diminishes if it needs to be repeated again and again by the same person every season. So, I tend to give repeatable tasks to different people every time.Doing the same task again and again, brings efficiency but dulls the individual's enjoyment.

And, in case it's not possible, then a direct conversation with the team member on why the task is important and why s/he is selected for the task, helps motivate the doer.

Ingredient #2: Engage with the team , real time, every time

Being task-oriented person, it took me some time to understand that leaders need to spend time understanding individuals, deeply and genuinely. Leaders can not have personal likes and dislikes. You might challenge me saying "that's impossible". Well, at the risk of being judged lofty, I confess that once I initiated spending time honestly trying to understand my team members (what they aspire, fear, avoid, envy, covet....) with the pure intention to develop them, excellence in performance started showing up.

Understanding people needed time. Mere office presence didn't work. Monthly meeting with the members, taking notes and subtly making observations, reading books on behaviour and triggers of behaviour, talking to leadership experts - all of these efforts took half of my time. I strongly recommend that you spend 25-percent of your week on developing your observation and decision skills.

I have maintained a journal. The journal is reflective in nature. I pen down what happened, why it happened and what could I have done better. These notes help me form a scaffold which help me build by decision making skills for later. With experience, these tasks became easy to be noted mentally and senses became sharper to get perceptive of the slightest cue.

I am not good, yet. But, from where I was, I am much better.

Engagement has a flip side. Because this needs to be honestly done, I sometimes got caught in what we call the "mother/father-in-law" act! I could not always be "pleasing". In life, we all have true relationships with our parents, spouse and children. I decided to be sometimes hated, just the way my children hate me when I decline their requests or when I correct them. So was the case with my team members :-)

In time, team members find out, that my decision was for their good. But, this had put an immense pressure on me to be transparent and brutally honest about why I take a few ''tough-on-you'' decisions.

Ingredient#3: Shower Visibility

People join an organisation for a functional role and for a salary. That's the second level of Maslow's Hierarchy (need of security) fulfilled. After joining, within three months of service, the need level jumps to third level , i.e., need of belonging and need of achievement. It is here that team members need to be recognised for their contribution. Older the team member, greater the hunger for recognition.

I have seen that regular, routine jobs do not bring prolonged motivation. Small projects pave way for mini-collaborative tasks, thus making small wins possible. And, when wins happen, making noise will not hurt anyone! Large-impact wins must be followed by big-noise across the organization. Small wins can be celebrated with an emoji in the Whats-App team group! Point is, as a leader I learned to open opportunities so that my people are visible to others.

More lessons to come ...

Leadership is an ego-eroding life-experience. The more time you are in a leading role, the more you understand that its a royal servant-hood position. Servanthood for others' welfare! The more I am sensitive to the fact that my decision impact the emotional-financial-social well-being of my team members, better is the impact on their performance!