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Good leaders never leave behind an empty chair. Instead, they leave behind a team of people who have the talent and aptitude to step into their role.
Leaders are recognized as someone who bring a unique and unmatched value to the company. They always strive to build an organisation that is successful, and respected in the market place.
A leader always focuses on building a good team which is self-driven. He ensures that there is no leadership vacuum after he retires or exits his role in the organisation.
To succeed in a fast-changing dynamic world, organizations must be increasingly flexible and adaptive. Self-managing teams are a key tool in creating such organizations. Such teams are more agile and innovative to respond quickly to the evolving market situations.
Based on my learning, I am sharing some thoughts that have helped me in my journey of over two decades as a business head.
I joined a young organisation which grew at a blazing speed in the initial years. I always believed in building self-managed teams, which could perform on their own. I picked up the most capable member among them to be its team leader, before I could move on to the next project / expansion lined up in the organisation.
This helped me grow along with the organisation and become its business head at a fairly young age. I focused on the following attributes:
Company first:
I always kept the company’s interest foremost in mind, and worked towards bettering the company. I firmly believed that the company employs us, not its bosses. One is often faced with a dilemma between the company and the boss, I always went by what the company wanted.
To my teams, I have always communicated very clearly the organisation's values, ethical business practices and an inspiring vision to work for.
Lay foundation of honesty, Integrity and humility:
The leaders who build a foundation on strong values and good intentions, are able to build a better self-managed team. Besides skills, a leader needs to have good values and the right mind-set.
The difference between a good leader and a great leader is humility. The qualities that are essential for a leader are ethics, empathy, emotional intelligence, resilience, impartiality and inclusiveness. He should keep transparency in policies and practices.
A leader should be transparent enough and have the courage to admit to his mistakes, so that those who are around can benefit from the learning. People don't have to reinvent the wheel all over again. Admitting your mistakes earns you the respect of your team mates and makes your leadership more human.
In the digital age, it is extremely important that you develop ability to understand and handle digitization. It makes you more confident and agile to adapt the 'speed of change'.
Build Trust:
Good leaders fuel their teams through building an environment of trust with high psychological safety. This encourages development of attributes like exploration, risk-taking, creativity and innovation among the team members.
The most valuable quality for a leader is empathy. Get to know your team members’ strengths, weaknesses and also their emotional side of the nature. No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care about them. Care builds trust and trust brings in the commitment and performance.
There is nothing wrong in being a tough boss, but be consistent in treatment to everyone and never single out one person. Be assertive and decisive. Treat employees with respect. Provide feedback in a manner that doesn’t offend or belittle anyone.
Protect the dignity of team members. Humiliating people earns zero respect. A bully mentality might impress for a while, but when the dust settles, people see the truth.
Focus on Team work
Until now, great leaders were associated with higher power, self-achievement and self-capability. But today, the organizations are increasingly looking out for leaders, who are not only successful self-achievers, but also have the ability to bring greater success as a team.
The success of a leader is in his ability to unleash the potential of the team and lead the whole team towards success. A leader encourages to develop an appetite for continuous life-long learning. He teaches them to view mistakes or failures as an opportunity for learning and improvement.
To increase a sense of ownership that drives accountability and engagement among the team members, he ensures the following:
Communicate clearly the objectives.
Define roles and responsibilities of each member and provide them proper tools & training. Give the required authority along with responsibility.
Be approachable when they bring up issues. Brainstorm with them and coach them to find a solution.
Insist on participation of their juniors during the above sessions. More often than not, the leads come from the junior most employees on the ground. This also ensures that the whole team develops motivation and courage to pitch in with their ideas, and in the process own the action plan.
Display your appreciation & recognize a team member, whenever he / she comes up with good ideas or contributes by putting extraordinary efforts.
Give credit to the team when the problem is solved and celebrate success.
Conflict Resolution & learn managing failures:
Conflict resolution is a common occurrence at the workplace. It can either propel or disrupt the momentum of the team or at times the entire organization. The workplace environment can become toxic when leaders allow the conflicts to fester. Conflicts must be confronted head-on.
More often than not, the conflicts arise when the teams come across failure. In such situations be the 'part of the team'. Shield the team from undue outside criticism. Turn the things around by seeking everyone’s input. Do not limit or isolate yourself to the echo chamber of a select few. Do not tolerate manipulative behavior. If situation demands, call a separate meeting of the infighting members, have an open discussion to resolve the issue impartially & decisively.
Communicate Optimism. Leaders lead teams by showing confidence in a better tomorrow, despite initial setbacks.
Empower them:
You can’t be around all the time. Give them freedom to perform. Do not micromanage.
Leaders focus on enabling a collaborative environment. They help members learn to complement one another as they work towards fulfilling a common goal. Leaders do this by recognizing and leveraging on the strengths of the members, amplifying their talents and building synergy among the team members.
Leaders inspire everyone around to become excited about their work. They encourage creativity by allowing freedom to experiment with the new ideas. They focus on the individual development of the team members along with the team. They must ensure that no one feels less valued than another and everyone knows they have to work hard to succeed.
Create atmosphere to have fun at work by focusing on having a positive outlook and a sense of humor.
Monitor & Review:
The leader has to be a facilitator. He should be ready to manage people who know more than him. To be able to lead the way through the various tasks, the leader has to ask the right questions. While he can share his learning from his years of experience, but should be open to learn the skills he does not possess from his team members who have them.
Leaders who constantly set and review performance goals on the basis of dynamic business scenario, and provide real time feedback to the team mates, seldom fail. They must lay down systems to digitally gather data and convert into information. They should cultivate the habit of periodic reporting & review of the team's performance.
Good leaders positively differentiate high performance among the team mates while giving away rewards and recognition. This ensures motivation to sprint in the right direction. Such a race for performance by individuals and teams lead to sustainable organizational high performance.
Nurture home grown talent for future leadership:
There is a global shortage of talent and good leadership. The problem gets aggravated in a country like India, since it is growing at a very fast rate. This has created unprecedented competition in the industry to acquire & retain the talent.
Workforce planning has become an integral part for any high performance organisation. Otherwise it generally leaves the organisation unprepared to respond quickly to business opportunities. It is a constant struggle to have the right people in the right jobs at the right time in order to deliver improved business results.
In the above scenario, it is always better to have a systematic development program of nurturing the “home grown” talent for future leadership in house, rather than opting for lateral hiring from outside. Organisations sustain & thrive with good home grown talent.
Lay focus on recruiting young fresh talent every year. Treat this as an investment for future.
Identify among them the candidates showing traits of enthusiasm, cooperative attitude, and inquisitiveness to learn.
They should also have common sense, commitment and perseverance to work.
Recognize these candidates as star performers. Plan their growth at an accelerated pace to help them grow faster than an average employee in the organisation.
Ensure that you pay them well as per industry standards, so that they do not find any incentive to look for alternative opportunities outside the organisation.
Impart them cross functional training & experience. This will allow you to build a team of young, loyal & home grown talent to lead your organisation for the future.
Lateral outside recruitment should be kept at minimum, and only used in critical times.
Over a period of time, every organisation has its ups & downs. In tough times, such home grown talent will show the perseverance to stick around and brace the storm.
Exit to make way for future leadership:
It’s the responsibility of a leader to reproduce other leaders. Our attention should be on investing in the right people who have the talent and aptitude to step into our role. A successful leader is one, who makes himself dispensable by training his successor.
If you stay too long in your current role, either you become stale or you drive talent out of the organisation as they become impatient. Therefore it is very important, that you exit your current role gracefully at an opportune time and move to other opportunities in your career / life.
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