Oh, you’re in that position? Promoted, given a leadership role or even ‘voluntold’ to take on more responsibility? And in amongst all of that… you’ve inherited ‘the team’?
Like it or not, leading an existing team is one of the toughest gigs to deal with as a front-line leader or manager and is far more common than the opportunity to build a new one.
Whether you have a team of 2 or 10+ employees, each of your team members has their own set of concerns: lots of experience or inexperience, constant need for reassurance, lack of respect, personal problems, retirement looming, complacency, poor task-performance, team politics, the fact you were their peer yesterday and much more.
And now you’re wondering how to manage this ‘new’ team with all of these various challenges. Let me surprise you.
The first thing to do… is to get to know yourself better. In other words, work on the leader first.
Establishing yourself as a credible leader first will position you to address the concerns of your team in an effective and lasting way. Regardless of your experience, you are the newbie here and on a life-long learning curve.
Step 1: be a person of character and build trust
You might be the most experienced supervisor or competent expert in the world, but if your character is not consistent with your words, your success will depend on your title. That is not an easy path.
As a leader, who you are as a person matters much more than your technical ability when it comes to influencing others and the art of getting tasks completed. People perform for the leader who consistently models the principles they live by.
How well do you communicate and model what’s most important?
Consider this checklist of ideas. How many can you tick? Be honest with yourself.
Honesty/Integrity (do as you say and say as you do)
Fairness (consistency in applying standards)
Learning from mistakes (you are only human)
Continuous Improvement (being open to new ideas)
Valuing the input of others (listening for new ideas)
Valuing people as individuals (allowing contribution)
Listening to connect (not listen to hear or answer)
Energy and Work Ethic (how do you show up?)
Persistence (continuous regardless of difficulties or opposition)
and Resilience (ability to cope with stress, mental agility)
Or, in other words, do you ‘walk the talk and talk the walk’?
But, how?
Here is a nice formula I recently came across that might help you towards positive change:
ability + commitment + action = results
You already have ability; think about which areas in the list above you would like to take action on and start shifting for results. Fairness? Valuing people?
Write them down under two headings: Commitment – what tasks/ideas/engagement do I want to take? And, Action – who can help me and when will I complete?
Ask yourself – Is there anything that will stop me from completing these actions? If the answer is no; then go forth and start your journey to knowing yourself better.
Karin Ovari Facebook Live Session
And if you would like help, come and join my Facebook Live Session on the same topic. We’ll be on air at 7:30pm on Tuesday, 24th January 2017. I’m really looking forward to connecting with you.
Stay tuned for…
Steps 2 and 3 in the series. What do you think Steps 2 and 3 might be? Leave a comment below if you have an idea.
**How else can you know yourself better?
Emotional Intelligence [EQ] and Conversational intelligence [C-IQ] are areas for self-development and key skills for the modern leader. EQ is understanding how to self-regulate and C-IQ helps you to co-regulate. I am a certified C-IQ Coach and EQ-i2.0 qualified assessor; connect with me to learn more
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