1 HELPING YOUR TEAM TO SEE YOUR VALUE TO THEM AS A LEADER

The focus of this chapter is helping your team to see your value to them as a leader. This involves learning to listen more than speak, to ask rather than tell, to open doors so people can shine, becoming attuned to the unusual or unexpected and above all making sure credit for good things always lands in the right place.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Many IT people get promoted to a leadership position because they are good at their current job and that job is likely to be a technical one. The role of a leader is, however, very different from that of a ‘doer’. Often IT people are expected to perform as a leader with little training, guidance or preparation and just to make this even more difficult, there are seldom good role models to follow. Sometimes you may find yourselves having to lead former ‘workmates’ and, other times, you may find yourself leading very intelligent technicians with little respect, or regard, for the leadership role. As you become a more experienced leader, you also become more distant from your technical roots and soon find that the people in your team know much more than you do about the technical aspects of their job. Whatever your circumstances, you need to earn the respect of your team.

Leadership is an art, rather than a science; it is not just about process and procedure: it is about communication, influence, teamwork and the ability to inspire and motivate others. It is about keeping your eyes open and your hands off, rather than your eyes down and your hands on. It is about asking the right questions, rather than searching for or providing the right answers.

THE IMPACT OF THE ISSUE

If your staff don’t respect you or your role as their leader, you will not get the best out of them and sometimes you will get the very worst due to boredom, frustration or simply because ‘they can’t be bothered’.

If you are ineffective in your leadership role the organisation will have suffered a double whammy; it will have lost a valuable team member while gaining a poor leader. Principal reasons for this include:

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Poor communication – staff don’t know what is expected of them or how they are meant to do it.

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Lack of teamwork – staff expend effort in ‘doing their own thing’; there are no guiding principles to bring the individual members of the team together.

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Lack of a shared and compelling vision – there isn’t anything for the team members to believe in; no group purpose or vision to see where they are heading.

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Lack of urgency – there is no drive, energy or motivation to perform and achieve.

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

Leadership is not about having all the answers or always being right; in fact one of the best ways of gaining trust from your team is to openly demonstrate some humility. Increasingly this is being termed ‘Humble Leadership’ and is characterised by a willingness to admit mistakes, empower followers and take risks for the greater good (that includes putting the needs of your organisation or team before your own needs).

Remember your success rests on the willingness of your team to volunteer their energy and initiative to your cause. Telling them what to do may produce short-term compliant behaviour but gaining their trust and releasing their potential is the only sure way of producing long-term commitment and results.

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Your first duty should always be the welfare and growth of the people in your care. You should aim to create a climate in which others can shine.

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HELPING A TEAM MEMBER

A new project manager saw an opportunity to support one of his team members. Bill was a brilliant technician with great ideas but was highly introverted and sought the background rather than the foreground. This lack of visibility meant that nobody outside the team knew how good he was. Bill’s project manager helped him create a ‘personal brand’ highlighting his values, the reason to believe in him, the benefits of working with him and what made him unique. He also worked to help Bill see how his knowledge and insight related and contributed to wider issues within the business. As Bill started to engage more openly in the team his project manager worked to give him the opportunity to ‘live his brand’, first by sharing his ideas within the team and, as his confidence grew, by inviting him to a number of meetings with business partners, not as the tame ‘techy expert’ but as a valued colleague who could add an extra dimension to understanding and solving key issues. This increased Bill’s visibility without ever stretching his comfort level too far. As wider exposure grew so did Bill’s self-confidence. Six months later Bill received a well-deserved promotion.

As the leader, you enjoy levels of organisational access that are not available to your team. You get to hear things that they don’t, you are invited into discussions that are closed to them and your level of organisational autonomy allows you to access resources and leverage relationships that can help your teams work with much less stress. Your team has to play the hand of cards that it is dealt, but your position allows you the opportunity to stack the deck slightly in its favour.

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Learn to exercise your position and influence for the benefit of your team. Ensure your team members take the credit for their achievements and get the exposure that they deserve.

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BRINGING DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATIONS TOGETHER

A new team leader told the story of how animosity between Development and Operations was getting in the way of his teams’ project implementations. He adopted the role of mediator or ‘marriage counsellor’, bringing the two sides together. The team leader facilitated a discussion whereby the Development manager agreed to follow the process as laid down by Operations willingly in exchange for a commitment from Operations to introduce a new ‘fast track’ process for urgent changes. Both parties were pleased with the outcome and general relations and results improved significantly.

PRACTICAL ADVICE

Successful team leadership requires you to simultaneously operate at multiple levels of both attention and abstraction. You need to be able to focus on important details whilst never losing sight of the greater goal; this ability to zoom in and zoom out is a key skill and not a simple one to master. You also need to exercise your influence and relationship-building skills in every direction: downwards, sideways and upwards.

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QUICK WINS

A new IT manager identified the 10 key influencers and adversaries of IT. She then engaged in a relationship-building exercise whilst at the same time gathering information about pain points, irritating niggles and what was keeping the team awake at nights. Armed with this intelligence she identified a number of quick wins. This won her much credibility and demonstrated the value of her leadership role; it cemented relationships within the team and with the wider organisation that came to value and view IT in a different light.

Increasingly as you move to more senior positions, technical ability counts for less than your relational skills; it becomes less about knowing ‘stuff’ and more about a way of seeing differently, communicating widely and wisely and evoking a passion within your listeners. Ultimately you need to find a new way of being in the world.

As a personal health check, which of the behaviours listed in Table 1.1 best describe your current leadership behaviours?

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Table 1.1 Dos and don’ts of team leadership

Do Don’t
  • Value your staff and take an interest in them personally.
  • Demonstrate, through action, that you can do things for them that they could never hope to achieve without you.
  • Ensure they have the tools, resources and necessary access to training to do the things they commit to.
  • Give the credit to your team and open doors for them to demonstrate their capability in more senior circles.
  • Leave room for creativity and innovation, and give them the opportunity to do it their way.
  • Monitor their progress, coach and develop them and give them feedback.
  • Nurture and reward talent, and involve them in selecting and growing new talent.
  • Build mutual trust through supportive actions.
  • Be open and honest.
  • Look for opportunities to praise.
  • Try to be one of the lads, but neither should you distance yourself.
  • Do their jobs for them, micro-manage them or abdicate responsibility.
  • Shut them out or overtly take credit for their successes.
  • Expect your staff to read your mind.
  • Be too prescriptive about how to achieve a certain task.
  • Blame your team when things go wrong – you can delegate authority, but not accountability.
  • Say one thing, but do another.
  • Lie to them – you will be found out and it will destroy trust.
  • Play one team member off against another.
  • Look for opportunities to criticise.

THINGS FOR YOU TO WORK ON NOW

Below are some questions to help you diagnose where you are now and what aspects of your professional persona as a team leader are most in need of development. Think carefully about these questions and regularly build in time to reflect honestly upon how you are performing against these criteria.

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KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF

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How do my staff view my role as their leader? What do they think I spend my time doing? Do they feel I justify my salary?

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What do my team think of me personally? What do they say about me when I am not in earshot? Do they feel they can talk to me about their problems or ask for help when they need to?

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Do I genuinely care about my team? What do I do to encourage and develop them?

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What behaviours earn me respect? What more could I do?

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What behaviours earn me trust? What more could I do?

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Do I show favouritism or do I treat everyone equally?

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Do I unconsciously recruit in my own likeness or do I genuinely value diversity in all its forms?

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Does every member of my team feel that they have grown in the past year? If so, what can they do now that they could not do a year ago, and what specific action of mine was the key enabler of that growth?

Reflect on your answers and build yourself a prioritised action plan to make progress on your top three areas of concern. Give yourself tangible and measurable goals.

Below are some simple practical steps that you can start to build into your routine. If some of this is alien to your natural character and demeanour you may want to build up slowly. Just be sincere and be consistent.

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MINI EXERCISES YOU CAN TRY IMMEDIATELY

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Do the rounds every morning for a month and see the difference. Ask how your team is getting on; take an interest in their work and them as individuals. Take a note of key people and events in their lives. Ask questions like ‘How did Andrea get on with her A levels?’, and so on.

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Listen twice as much as you speak. Show that you value what you have heard. Look for opportunities to build upon ideas that come from your team and then make sure that you publicly attribute the source of the idea if it proves successful.

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Engage privately and thoughtfully with each member of your team and ask them what more you could do to help them deliver in their roles. Take simple actions that liberate their talent and develop their skills.

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Make it very clear that mistakes are ok, indeed valuable when you are trying something new or innovative. Mistakes are not ok when you are doing routine tasks that are not complex and which you have done many times before.

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Be open about your own failings and say and do things that demonstrate your own commitment to learning new things from any source.

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Keep them informed – provide messages from on high, insights about the company, your industry sector and the market you operate in.

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Tell the truth and nothing but the truth, recognising, however, that you will sometimes need to be economical with the truth. If you can’t tell them, be honest and tell them that you can’t tell them.

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Always speak well of others in front of your team – that way they will think you will speak well of them (rather than badly) when they are not within earshot.

If you are inspired to find out more about any of the themes covered in this chapter we suggest that you start by reviewing the resources listed below.

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FURTHER FOOD FOR THE CURIOUS

Chatham R. (2015) The Art of IT Management: Practical tools, techniques and people skills. Swindon: BCS:

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Combining simple models and powerful examples, this book is a must read for new and more seasoned IT managers alike.

Collins J. (2005) Level 5 Leadership: The triumph of humility and fierce resolve. Harvard Business Review, July-August. Available from https://hbr.org/2005/07/level-5-leadership-the-triumph-of-humility-and-fierce-resolve [21 March 2017]:

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An excellent insight into what makes a leader truly great – a paradoxical mixture of personal humility and professional will.

Prime J. and Salib E. (2014) The Best Leaders are Humble Leaders. Harvard Business Review, 12 May. Available from https://hbr.org/2014/05/the-best-leaders-are-humble-leaders [21 March 2017]:

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An interesting report of the findings of a wide-ranging international study that points to ways in which leaders can increase feelings of involvement and belonging in their teams.

Valcour M. (2016) How to Know Whether You’re Giving Your Team Needless Work. Harvard Business Review, 26 August. Available from https://hbr.org/2016/08/how-to-know-whether-youre-giving-your-team-needless-work [21 March 2017]:

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This identifies the concept of illegitimate tasks’ and shows how they arise and proliferate. Some good practical tips for how to keep these illegitimate tasks in proportion.

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