Being a leader for a team is not necessarly what you imagine it to be. During my professional career I have met several managers of various levels who think that being a leader means to push people around, force them to work at a higher pace and just be a general hardass. They have a deep belief that they have people working for them, that they are kings and rule the teams however they please.
In my opinion this is a straight path to high employee turnover and low productivity due to several reasons.
A much more productive way to think about it, in my opinion, is that the team does not work for you, you work for the team.
Here are some of my top tips of how you can find your own, nicer, path towards being a good leader of a team.
Be likeable
This topic is sure to rub some people the wrong way. But I belive that you should put down some effort on being a likeable character at work. I’m not saying that you should try to manipulate people, decieve them in some way, or be disingenuous. But look - your job description is basically just this: try to maximize productivity from human assets in the company you work for. Doing this without actively trying to alter emotions is not possible.
If you imagine for a second somebody that you work with. Could you make them so upset that they started shouting, if you really tried? Could you make them cry? Probably yes. You know which buttons to push, you could act a certain way that really triggers them. The same is true with positive emotions, and the ones that we want to give some extra boost are happiness with their work, a sense of belonging, a sense of pride and loyalty to their team.
But achieving this is damn near impossible if people just in general don’t like you. So that’s why we need to start on that end.
One good way to achieve this is to try to find some common ground when you first get to know someone. Anything is good enough. ANYTHING. I usually go through stuff like music, movies, travelling. You will be amazed how much it pays off in the long run if you find something that you have in common early on in a relationship.
To find the common interests you might have, you need to ask a lot of questions about people’s lives. Show a genuine interest in them, and you will be surprised how much people are willing to tell you about them. Science shows that our brain actually emits pleasure signaling chemicals when we tell people intimate deteails about our lives. It feels good to open up to a new person.
Here is a book I thought was good about this subject. The Science of Likability.
Be positive
A positive attitude rubs off on the people around you. I am sure everybody has some experience of a person at a workplace that was always just happy, upbeat, positive. Laughing and seemingly having a great time. And didn’t this influence you in a positive way?
So, if you are having a bad day, just pretend that you are having a great day. If you need to vent, or get some support in your struggles, vent in private with someone you trust will not call out on your bluff when you are acting to be in a better mood than you really are in.
Often you will find that just acting to be in a good mood will put you in a better mood. Fake it until you make it.
You probably have experience of the opposite type of person, someone who complains and seems down all the time. This will bring down the entire team, motivation will dwindle, and everybody will start complaining. Don’t be this person, be the backbone of the team. Someone who withstands the valleys and reminds the rest of the crew that peaks are yet to come again.
Forbidden technique 1 - talking shit about others
For some reason tribalism is a part of the human condition that we just can’t escape no matter how we try. We, as humans, want to organize ourselves into groups of “us” vs. “them”. In every possible scenario we do this, and so also at work. It might be the workers vs managers, the people without suits vs. people in suits. Or it might be just different team’s vs eachother.
Talking negatively about other people with your peers makes this distinction clear, the people you are talking with are in your in-group and the people you are talking about are in the out-group. This boosts the feeling of being a tight knit team very quickly but doing this in an active way is to be avoided.
- The fallout from doing this might be too big for it to be worth it. Other people might hear about the things you say, and they might start rumours about you or your group. The people you are talking about might hear about this and feel upset about it to a degree that you cannot work together any longer
- You might easily fall into a trap where this is the thing you have in common, and suddenly talking badly about others might be the only thing you talk about
- Talking negatively about others will with time lead to the thought - does he/she talk about me this way to others too? Your negative opinions will reflect back onto you and people will have a more negative view about you as a person
Take blame and protect your team
Take ownership of all that happens in your team. You are probably getting a higher salary because you are the leader of your team, you probably have more responsibilities, you should act like it too.
I have found that ineffective leaders shift the blame and somehow end up always making a ton of excuses about everything that doesn’t go their way. And one of my pet peeves is leaders who blame the people in their team. It often goes like this, “his projects somehow never get finished” or “his code is often too buggy to deploy without me looking into it”, etc etc.
From my perspective this says more about you as a leader than them as employees or team members. If you took ownership, you would rephrase these situations as:
“I mismanaged this project and the team didn’t understand that the deadline was a hard deadline. I failed to notice early enough that we were not going at the required speed and failed to course correct.”
“I often give this team member assignments that are over his skill level, and miss to plan in time off from projects to make sure he gets the time and support to get to the next level as a developer”
After talking about my ideas about this with some colleagues, I heard that this sounds familiar to the philosophy of Jocko Willink and his book Extreme ownership. And indeed, I can warmly recommend this book.
See faces
The empathic system in our brain is not triggered the same way by text as it is by seeing human faces with human emotions. Make sure you take the time to have face to face meetings with everyone. It is especially important if you are the bearer of bad news, or if you need to give negative feedback.
Don’t be the guy who is tough at a keyboard, hiding behind his monitor, but never says a word in real life. People will respect you, understand you, and feel for you in a different way if you look into eachothers eyes.
If you have a lot of online meetings, make sure everyone has a webcam (and make sure everyone uses it). You might not notice it at first, but it has a positive impact on the general tone of discussions and atmosphere.
Avoid saying no
Even when somebody has an idea you think is bad, avoid saying no. Instead see it as a good opportunity to see the problem from a new angle, maybe you will learn something new. And if not, try to make the person with the idea come to the conclusion it was not a good idea themselves. Saying no without explanations is an easy way to feel like you have control, that you are in power. Short term, other people might feel this too. But longer term, it will be evident that you are not looking to find the best solution to a problem. You are more concerned about appearances, and that you want to be the one making a decision.
Forbidden technique 2 - Saying no
For whatever reason, people interpret being difficult as being intelligent (at least for a while). The person in the group who is always resisting, coming up with reasons why your plan won’t work - will sometimes actually be considered as the smart guy in the group. This might not even be true, but since he is so vocal about problems, it will push down the confidence of the other people that did not see these problems. This might even feel like it is productive, to let him/her tell you of all the problems you will see in the future, but in reality, it is not.
It is a mood killer; it makes everything feel like it is going to be super difficult. It will stop momentum because it will feel like you have to “think this over properly”.
However, used carefully, this technique can be used to your advantage. Sometimes the group dynamic is such that it is not clear who actually is the leader even though on paper it should be you. Maybe you are not an assertive type of person, maybe the team members don’t trust you yet, and so on. There can be many reasons. And sometimes, you need to “establish dominance” in the old-fashioned way every now and again. If the discussion seems like it is never ending, take charge, say no, end the discussion and lay out the plan. (Just make sure you have a plan)
Failing
With some people you will fail, no matter what you do. You try to be polite, and someone dislikes polite people. You try to be funny, and someone thinks you’re a clown and should take work more seriously. It is just impossible to please everybody with your own personal style, and that is okey.
I know exactly which people did not agree with my style from my past teams. I still think sometimes about these people, and it saddens me. But this is unavoidable, don’t try too hard to please the people who obviously don’t like you, who you have no chemistry with. It is likely you will never succeed.
The most important thing is to make sure that these people still function in the group, that they do their work, and you can have a good professional relationship. You don’t need to be friends with everybody, but everybody you work with need to be doing their job properly.
If you notice that people are not doing the tasks they should be doing and everything is taking much longer to finish, and you know the reason is spite or something personal, it is time to report this upwards and suggest that this person be relocated in the organisation or be let go. Don’t drag this out, it is not going to change. Don’t give second chances, they won’t make a difference.
Conclusion
Do you feel like a fraud, like you don’t know what you’re doing? That you are just pretending to be a team lead, but you don’t know what it really means? Don’t worry, everybody else feels like that too. There is very little truths or facts as to what is a good way to succeed in this role. Everybody is just trying out different stuff and then deciding on their individual style. Don’t be afraid to try out new things, just remember to look back and evaluate what worked and did not work.