How to Lead People for Results
In a recent conversation I was told, “Leadership is about managing time and getting things done.” I couldn’t disagree more.
In my role at the Free Articulator, I manage and lead writers and editors every day. It has been said in the past that trying to manage artists (and all of our writers are) is a very difficult task. I can’t honestly disagree with that. The following is a recount of the experience I’ve gained thus far in building teams that do the work.
My response to the aforementioned person was this: leadership is about giving your people the tools to succeed.
Developing Relationships: The Right Foundation
I have met, and worked for, people who believed that a certain level of separation between themselves and their employees will make a better work environment. Apparently, it gives the impression that they really are the “boss,” another cut above the rest.
Do you want to be a boss or a leader?
Bosses give instructions and people follow them out to avoid a short meeting with the human relations director. If the financial need to hold onto the job disappears or another offer comes up, employees quit. The perfect example is the Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert. If you’re like that boss, your employees hate you and make witty cynical jokes about you all day.
Managers and leaders who forge relationships with employees are in a much better position. Many employees are likely to stick around even if a job with better pay comes up - within a reasonable margin, anyway. Better yet, where the employees of a Pointy-Haired Boss do the absolute minimum as ordered, those employees you have relationships with are likely to go a step further and provide you with the best outcome they can.
Rule #1 of Relationships: Be Genuine
The people who work for or with you (with you is always better) are not stupid. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but it goes without saying: develop genuine relationships. If you were to apply this advice and forge human relationships with your staff, but couldn’t manage to be real about it, then they’ll see right through it as a false attempt to care. Frankly, if you can’t care about your staff in a real way, you’re not management or leadership material. Unless you are part of the cast of Dilbert.
If you’re in charge of hiring the people you work with, you’ve got a great advantage here!
Personal Relationships Set The Tone
I work with people who can tell me about both their successes and failures in business and personal life. They don’t do it to shirk their duties, they always get the job done, barring factors that simply make it impossible. Personal relationships do set the tone for their time working with you.
The Greatest Management Oxymoron: Leaders Serve
Here’s another Pointy-Haired Boss trait: the power trip. Never get on the power trip. Never think that your position makes you more important. Your position and role is to serve everyone else. You provide direction and you provide assistance in getting the job done.
You can’t do your employee’s jobs for them, but as the go-to person you can make sure that the daily operations are actually contributing to big picture goals. If you’re a Pointy-Haired Boss, you’re not the go-to person. You’re kept out of the loop, employees deceive you rather than discuss with you, and a lack of company cohesion means more problems and more time involved in attaining those big picture goals.
So, you serve your staff. You’re there to help them get their job done, not to just tell them to do it.
The term “big picture” is important, too. If your team cannot see the end result, the reasons why, the motivations, emotions and outcomes poured into and desired from a project, then their small-time thinking will be a demotivator. Show them the road ahead, and they’ll travel there.
The Trademark of Great Leaders: Functional Teams
Teams are selected from a pool of people with different skills, viewpoints, attitudes and desires. Good teams are not chosen before the project is, because it takes a certain person, and a certain set of people, to attain different goals.
But selecting the right set of people is the easy part. Making them work together is hard.
Don’t Confuse Roles
There are times when you don’t see your team working well together and you look for ways to solve this and resolve on the easiest thing you can find: artificial situations. Asking your e-commerce programmer to look over a design with the graphic artist is an artificial situation. You can’t get relationships and communication lines to grow this way, since both individuals will be peeved with the interruption that’s not beneficial to either of them.
If good relationships don’t grow naturally, the least you can do is look for natural situations to promote them; get the copywriter to go through their content with the graphic artist, and discuss how the visual feel of the page should reflect the copy.
Make Communication Work
First, communication fails when people aren’t people, but roles and numbers. People have names, not designations. Bear this in mind when handing out email addresses.
Second, don’t CC or memo everyone on everything. Again, the e-commerce programmer doesn’t need to or want to know about the low quality of the JPEGs in a web layout. You might think sending these memos to everyone makes them feel like their part of something, but what it does is clog up information lines.
“But it’s better than nothing!”
No, it’s worse than nothing. When you clog up information lines, the information that matters - the information that does aid in building good communication and relationships - will probably go unnoticed.
Building a Comfortable Atmosphere
Still on the relationships topic, just because you try to forge them with your team doesn’t mean they’ll feel safe doing the same with each other. Eliminate the stuffy suit-and-tie atmosphere. I don’t mean necessarily change the dress code, but don’t be too formal; use it where necessary, especially when communicating with external publics, but promote a relaxed, fun yet productive environment internally.
It is safe, free-flowing communication that produces results, not forced communication. Remember that if someone has a reason not to communicate, they probably won’t. Find the barriers and shove them off a cliff when nobody’s looking.
I’ve only been doing this for a few years, but that’s my experience of building effective, cohesive and long-term teams. If you have a high turnover or low employee efficiency problem, give these tips a try. Through trial and error, they worked for me.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Joel Falconer
Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.
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Comments
Ivan says on February 27th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Wow! That person was confused. Managing time and getting things done are very important, but reside in a more personal level. Of course, leaders who have those skills are even more valuable, but not the most important skills. As you said, the true leader, more than manage time, knows how to empower others and have great ‘relationship’ skills. Good article!
Summy says on February 27th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Nice article.
“…giving your people the tools to succeed.”
I agree - that’s my feeling as well. I would add that super leaders also inspire them to use the tools correctly or even build their own…
Florian Potschka says on February 27th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
You did a really good job summing up some of the most important rules regarding leadership. Sometimes it takes a long time, until people understand that the hole team (including the leader) has a common goal. The leader should do his best to support his team and to ensure that the communication-infrastructure works really good. It´s all about the people.
James says on February 27th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Leaders serve… brilliant. Tell that to my last boss though. She served her superiors first and foremost and treated her staff like… well, you can guess
Someone needs to rewrite management 101 rules that businesses seem to be following atm.
James, Organize IT
NDK Creative Artist says on February 27th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Excellent summation of workable leadership principles, Joel.
Relationship is in my opinion key, but it’s not possible to forge strong relationships with every individual in a virtual medium; some can be quite insular and isolated and this makes it harder. Relationships can take time to reach a level of reliance and trust that works for both parties, and some are better at forging and maintaining that depth than others because their communication skills and ability are extremely high enabling them to make such shortcuts.
The role of trust in forging relationship is also immense and often overlooked and the virtual medium can create a sense of restriction and constraint that is really more to do with perception than reality.
Personally, I think the medium of the web demands a greater degree of high quality communication than is required in face-to-face communication, as the record of communication is captured and available. This develops an etiquette and code of virtual communication practice that is a long way from where it was when the Wild Whacko Web became *de rigeur*.
Those who are making virtual communication work are creating some amazing relationships that are accomplishing meaningful things that are extremely rewarding and make one proud to be human.
william says on February 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I’d love to see more articles about being comfortable with not wanting to be a leader.
Brian says on February 28th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Hi all,
I’m calling out for help from people interested in the law of attraction or personal development. I know many people have vision boards and big dreams. Here is my dream…
I want to collect dreams. Dreams of anything. Actual dreams when you sleep, or dreams of where you want to be in 5 years, what you want right this instance, dreams of career, family, relationships, money, life. Anything. I want to leave it open-ended just as a “secret” can be. A chance for us to share our goals, our desires, our dreams. If you have a vision board that’s already a great start. If you have a secret that is full of hope and love, then you fit right in.
It is a combination of 43 things, Post Secret and a chance to make our dreams come alive in picture form. Feel free to write stories or captions. I would love to see anything your creative mind has to offer.
So here’s the bottom line,
Illustrate your dreams (passions, goals, desires, dreams when you sleep, stories and more) how you see best and please send them to every1dreams@gmail.com. (will be kept anonymous unless requested otherwise)
My dream can be found at the site of Every1 Dreams
http://every1dreams.blogspot.com
Thanks so much,
This means the world to me!
Brian Wu
Kennette Reed says on February 28th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Being an effective communicator and the ability to build relationships are two important componenets for effective leaders. Yes, aptitude and experience are important, but attitude can make up for a lower degree of aptitude or experience. Research shows that IQ and EQ (or EI) are necessary to be most effective in the workplace.
Organizations need more leaders with a team mentality, a willingness to listen, a desire to seek understanding and the ability to develop individual relationships (based on individual understanding (EI)).
Managers and leaders who are poor communicators, don’t work to build trust and fail to develop individual understanding are most often the reason why departments are poor producers, have low retention levels and high incidents of conflict.
The quality of workplace relationships often determines whether people stay or leave an organization. People more often leave managers who fail to recognize the employee’s contributions and expertise, than those who leave due to salary or promotion related concerns.
If organizations want to improve productivity, employee engagement, individual performance and employee retention, they should place more emphasis on hiring managers for attitude, communications and relationship building skills.
When people start to listen more, have more meaningful conversations and get to know those they work with, they’ll work more effectively both as teams and individuals.
Kennette Reed says on February 28th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Being an effective communicator and the ability to build relationships are two important componenets for effective leaders. Yes, aptitude and experience are important, but attitude can make up for a lower degree of aptitude or experience. Research shows that IQ and EQ (or EI) are necessary to be most effective in the workplace.
Organizations need more leaders with a team mentality, a willingness to listen, a desire to seek understanding and the ability to develop individual relationships (based on individual understanding (EI)).
Managers and leaders who are poor communicators, don’t work to build trust and fail to develop individual understanding are most often the reason why departments are poor producers, have low retention levels and high incidents of conflict.
The quality of workplace relationships often determines whether people stay or leave an organization. People more often leave managers who fail to recognize the employee’s contributions and expertise, than those who leave due to salary or promotion related concerns.
If organizations want to improve productivity, employee engagement, individual performance and employee retention, they should place more emphasis on hiring managers for attitude, communications and relationship building skills.
When people start to listen more, have more meaningful conversations and get to know those they work with, they’ll work more effectively both as teams and individuals.
Kennette Reed
http://www.resiliencecoach.com
http://www.kennettereed.com
Dina says on March 1st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Most of managers I have ever met are bossy. They always order me or force me to do this or to do that.But one is exception and he seems nice to me. You know what happened? I never thought I am unknowingly falling into a trap.What a bad life I have!
David Hutchison says on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:18 am
Brilliant review and a very enlightened view of leadership. Servant leaders are far more effective in today’s world. Communication with your employees - making them part of your team rather than servants is crucial.
Well done.
jrandom42 says on April 21st, 2008 at 5:25 pm
MY question is this: With all these leaders, who are they leading?