The David Brent caricature of leadership is outdated and irrelevant, right? Sadly, wrong. There are thousands of DBs out there, ridiculed / pitied / distrusted by their teams. Are you one of them?
Definitions of management and leadership – and the difference between them – are everywhere in business – in organisations, in the trade press, sometimes even at the coffee machine. Managers are on the one hand encouraged to measure, monitor, evaluate … and then are often implicitly criticised for being “bean-counters”, only valuing what they can measure. Leaders, on the other hand, are often characterised as go-getters, valiant visionaries, nurturing their teams while driving profits ever upwards. In fact, everyone is likely to be perceived as somewhere on the vast spectrum between these two extremes. The trick is to remember who is doing the perceiving.
In my experience, teams value someone who can combine both roles with a lightness of touch that still enables individuality to be recognised, and a corporate value system to be observed. How do I know? I asked them. I have always asked my teams, my direct reports, what they needed of me, for them to give of their best. I worked hard not to leave this to the annual performance review, but sometimes that was how it played out. I always asked, though. Always. Why? Because I lack the power of mind-reading.
One of the many ways in which the brilliant Ricky Gervais satirises the inadequacies of his character Brent, is to have him assume that he (Brent) automatically knows what his team think, feel, want. Assumption is the enemy of effective management and is a real blocker for effective leadership. Anyone in a supervisory position, who assumes without checking, is working on untested data, which masquerade as “facts” because they are believed to be true by the supervisor, and sometimes sold on up the hierarchy without any basis in truth. So how do you check your facts? You can measure your team performance according to agreed Key Performance Indicators, targets and incentive schemes. You can choose to measure the number of complaints received (always a perverse incentive in my view). You can choose to measure the hours people work (another unhealthy way to monitor people, in my view, because it breeds an unproductive long-hours culture which has more to do with testosterone than it does with bottom-line productivity). So there are a heap of ways in which you can build your wall of “metrics” – things to be measured. That is not the end of it, however. You can still measure, if that pleases you, but why stop at the tick box items? Why not measure the number of times your team exchange compliments, congratulating one another on a job well done? Why not measure the number of times you do that?! Why not measure the number of customer compliments? You may not get many … but how do you go about making that easy? Measurement doesn’t have to be about negatives. Turn your thinking around, and see how you can use measurement and monitoring to good effect. Here’s an idea – how about asking your team?
What else will your team want of their leader? They will want you to manage them – ensure they are paid, that they are kept safe, that they are insured while at work, that they are given work and are free to do that work. That should all be a set of givens, but sadly even those basics aren’t always the case (as seen recently with major high street retailers having staff give birth on the shop floor for lack of a decent break regime). So you need to assume that you do the basics and do them right, the first time, every time. Oh and always, ALWAYS do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it. If you can’t then you need to explain why that didn’t happen. Accountability and shouldering responsibility are crucial to effective management and leadership. If that makes you feel queasy, then there’s a whiff of The Office about that.
What else will your team want? They may want inspiration. No-one can raise themselves to “go the extra mile” every single day … even the most motivated of us will want someone’s encouragement along the way. Even if we don’t know we want it, we will all welcome it, if it is genuinely meant and delivered in a sincere way. How your team wants to receive that inspiration is up to them … so … (you may be spotting a theme here) … ask! Find out what helps your team go above and beyond. If it is loyalty to their employing brand, that may be because of brand recognition for a premium brand, but it may also be that they feel trusted by the employer, they feel recognised, appreciated and valued. This is worth thinking about – and thinking about deeply. What do you do, to enable your team to feel inspired? What inspires you? Remember – what inspires you may not inspire others … don’t assume.
Teams often value leaders that will fight their corner, taking their part against customers, “Management”, the world. That’s fine, so long as the leader involved maintains sufficient distance from the team that, when things go wrong and performance isn’t at its best, the leader is still able to help his team improve by reinforcing standards, expectations and targets. All too often, people in a supervisory position will fall into the “one of the lads” trap … one to watch at the upcoming Christmas Party season … and then find it very difficult to take a stance against under-performance or disciplinary matters. This is a fine line to tread, particularly for newly-promoted managers and leaders, keen to make their mark. Too chummy with the team, and you can’t be effective when disciplining “a mate”; too aloof and you lose all respect because you have become “one of them”, where “them” is anyone at all, who isn’t one of “us”. And that is a whole world of ill-defined pain.
My experiences tells me that modelling positive work behaviours (“walking the talk”) works best. There will be the obvious positives, such as inter-personal respect and courtesy, maybe remembering birthdays, certainly saying “please” when a task is allocated and “thank you” when it is done. Such things are a sign of strength. [If you have reached this far and still think they are a sign of weakness in work and elsewhere, you ARE David Brent come back to Earth. ] There are also the subtler positives, such as managing your own work/life balance so that you perform your tasks in standard work hours, or managing stress with a calm considered response, or taking the time to seek the perceived truths from both sides of a dispute. How will you know how to find out what works for your team? Yep … ask!
Your team will want someone to provide direction, support and information that help them to do their jobs well. How well do you match up? How will you improve? One of the ways a large number of the most successful executives use, is finding themselves a coach and/or a mentor, to help them learn the ropes. And that goes for the most senior and experienced executives … there is a saying that “you can’t not learn, so long as you are alive”. Double-negatives aside, this has a lot of truth in it. Even the most experienced manager/leader can always learn, hone their craft, or sharpen the saw, as Covey exhorted us all to do as his Habit #7. Asking questions is a crucial part of this. Coaching can be used as a leadership technique. It is also the premier personal development tool for aspiring leaders, particularly helping to develop your own leadership style, formed by reflection, consideration of your own value systems, and how your behaviours can and perhaps need to change, to improve the choices you could be making.
You may have found, as you have been reading this, that you want to find out more, so you can be the best leader you can be. If that is the case, please feel free to get in touch, and we can discuss how you can be the leader your team want you to be. Your team will thank you for it. So will you.
Image (c) BBC – downloadable wallpaper from The Office series