RULE 24

Inspire loyalty and team spirit

If you work together, chances are you are seeing more of your team than you are of your family. And your team is seeing more of you than of their families. If this is the case you had better all get on. Now you don’t have to love each other, but you do have to be a family. And the best way to do that is to inspire loyalty and create a team spirit. You, as the manager, have to be the head of the family.

You have to be respected, looked up to, trusted and relied upon. Tall order. Strong stuff. Can you do all that? Course you can. All you have to do is:

• reward them
• praise them
• be kind to them
• trust them
• inspire them
• lead them
• motivate them
• grow them
• genuinely care about them.

These are the kinds of things that are easier to say than to do, and there’s a temptation for you to skip down the list saying ‘Yes, yes, I do that’. Now take a minute and go back and really think about each one. Do you really do that? Could you do it better? Are you absolutely sure you don’t think you do it, but perhaps not actually do it? What people think they do and what they actually do can be very different indeed. Find somebody you can ask for honest feedback. Ideally one of your team – if not, somebody who sees you with your team. What do they say you do?

I once worked in competition with another company. One of that manager’s team lived with one of my team. She told John, my team member, all her boss’s plans, figures, results, future promotions, etc., and I was able to beat him every time. Now why didn’t she pass on all my stuff to her boss, seeing as she obviously discussed work with John? Simple. She didn’t like her manager. And that was his fault entirely. He was rude to his staff, abusive, unco-operative and unkind. Was I a soft touch? No way. I was strict and businesslike but I treated my team with respect. I didn’t have to do much because my competitor was doing enough wrong to make me look good.