LMA Business Club e-news issue 1 - January 2010

Behaving like a Leader

In each issue of the LMA Business Club e-newsletter, we will be bringing you an educational piece that will, we hope, help to improve you as both a leader and a manager.

In this first edition, LMA Business Club member, Leading Teams, have provided the following feature entitled, 'Behaving like a Leader'. We hope you enjoy reading this and look forward to receiving your feedback and any suggestions you might have with regards to future topics.

'Leadership is the art of getting a group of people to do something as a team because they individually believe that it is the right thing to do'

Dwight Eisenhower

How do you get a group of individuals to work together as a team when they all have different motives?

This is why the 'art of leadership' fascinates us. Everyone has a view on it. Everyone is an expert. Last year alone, there were more than 2000 books published on the topic.

So how do we, as leaders, make sense of all the information and jargon?

At Leading Teams, we believe that leadership is very simple and on the whole, over-complicated.

Leadership is about behaviour.

Over the last 15 years, Leading Teams have improved the dynamics and performance of hundreds of corporate and over 40 professional and elite sporting teams.

Our discoveries along this journey have identified that empowerment is the key.

Empowerment separates great teams from good teams.

Genuine empowerment has two critical outcomes:

1. Team members feel safe having difficult, face to face conversations, about behaviour and performance

2. There is continued support and encouragement for individuals to take risks and make decisions when the team or organisation is under real pressure

Before you can create empowerment, you must enable your staff to identify how they want the team to look. The group / organisation needs to develop a collective, clear and agreed behavioural framework. This will create a learning, rather than blame, environment, where everyone has the opportunity to make a contribution to 'how we will behave moving forwards'.

The process of creating this framework is absolutely critical to its success. The team should be broken into small groups where they answer the following simple questions:

• How would you describe your team now?
• How would you want your team described (ideal world)?
• What behaviour do you accept on the team that you should not?
• What behaviour must you demand of your team?

When answering these questions, it is important that the team establish some simple rules that will further enhance the outcomes of the session.

An example of these would be:

• There must be group consensus
• Need to approach the task seriously
• Group must own it
• Every member must have the opportunity to contribute

When the data is gathered, collated and refined from each of the small groups, the team will have established a clear identity about how they wish to be seen, what behaviour they will reward and what behaviour they will not accept from members of the team.

This framework becomes our reference for everything we do going forwards. It tells us what behaviour to reward. It gives us a 'stake in the ground' when having difficult conversations or making decisions under pressure. It guides us through conflict. It is 'owned' by the group, so no member of the team can say 'they are not my rules'.

However, it is not quite as simple as setting up a framework.

In order for genuinely difficult conversations about performance to occur, we must build strong, sustainable professional relationships. This requires creating an environment for individuals to have structured conversations to establish how they want their working relationships to look. Some of the issues that team members share with one another might be:

• The way I would like our professional relationship to look is...
• A reservation I have about our professional relationship currently is…
• A couple of things I would ask you to consider doing for me are...
• The way I think you want our relationship to work is...
• A reservation I think you have about our relationship is...
• A couple of things I think you would ask me to consider doing for you are...

These questions require people to move beyond what we call the 'superficial harmony' in working relationships and assertively state how they want their working relationships to look. Importantly, the process also requires people to empathise with their work colleague's position as well.

At Leading Teams we hold a view that communication is the response you get. So make sure you are well prepared if you are about to have a difficult conversation. A simple guide is to ask yourself the following questions before you begin the dialogue:

• Is this the right time?
• Is this the right way?
• Is this the right place?

So what are the implications for you?

As the leader of the team, you must be prepared to:

• Trust the group to construct their own framework
• Reward members of the team who are behaving well
• Challenge those who are breaching the behaviours
• Use the language of the framework

...and most importantly, you must be prepared to:

• Model the behaviours that the group has identified as imperative
• Accept feedback when you behave in a manner that is incongruent with the framework.

This will give you credibility, the most desired characteristic of a leader as identified by 'followers' (Kouzes & Posner, 2007).

How are you performing as a practitioner in 'the art of leadership':

• How would your team describe you now?
• How do you want to be described by your team?
• What behaviour do you display that is not improving the performance of the team?
• What behaviour must you display if you are to be the ideal leader?

Are you behaving like a leader?

If you would like to know more about Leading Teams, please click here to go to the Leading Teams page on the LMA website.