Let your team do the work by h2h Lead Consultant, Jerry Scott

Long overdue, I finally got round to doing the new bathroom. My heart sank when I saw that my wife had selected very beautiful marble mosaic tiles. This was by no means my first rodeo but I knew cutting and working with these was going to be tough. I tend to go at jobs like this full on and I have a tendency to force things to work, fighting with tools and materials over long days to arrive at a good result but I am often left feeling a wreck. Anticipating the ensuing battle, I was reminded of some tiling advice I had heard many years before – ‘let the blade do the work’. I decided to make this my mantra. This time, when cutting the tiles, instead of pushing against the blades, I gently guided each one and used plenty of fluid to prepare the tiles for cutting. Although it took longer than I wanted, it soon became apparent that I was consistently getting the quality I wanted, with far less wastage and much longer tool life. In reality, the total job was much faster, I had finally discovered the truth of the phrase ‘slow down to speed up’.

I observe a lot of teams in action, and often I see the leader wrestling with the very same dilemma. They need the team to be faster and drive through on key priorities so, they apply pressure to make sure it happens. These ‘pace-setting’ leaders tend to bring superhuman energy, passion and focus to a project that can initially feel like a shot in the arm. They get close to the action and put an unremitting focus on business performance and the actions to deliver improvements, often bringing much needed short-term gains. They drive for more data and engage in its analysis to gain better insights. And as a result, team members work harder and harder to keep up with the leader’s scrutiny and requests. From a distance the team can appear to be dynamic game changers and yet more often than not business results are not sustained and the longer-term strategy suffers as the focus is dominated by shortfalls in the short to medium term. As progress lags behind the leader’s desire, they see no option but to apply more pressure and get into more detail, while feeling that their people aren’t up to the job. Team members in this environment often comment that they have no time to do their job and that they spend vast amounts of time ‘feeding the monster’. They feel micromanaged, undervalued and ultimately disengaged.

Leaders in this situation often approach me with comments, such as:

• ‘I need my team to step up and take responsibility.’
• ‘I want to see more passion and drive – I’m worried they wouldn’t move as fast if I wasn’t pulling them.’
• ‘I need to raise the capability of my team as they don’t know the answers to the questions I’m asking.’
• ‘I need to spend more time on strategy, but I can’t do this as the basics aren’t in place.’

If any of these resonate for you, it may be a good time to consider whether you may benefit from slowing down to speed up. In my tile cutting scenario, I achieved this by resisting the urge to push harder and instead focussing on 2 things – guidance and lubrication.  In a leadership context this will include:

Providing ‘guidance’

• Ensure clear understanding of what our stakeholders and customers expect from us
• Ensure clear accountabilities and matched expectations
• Ensure clear strategic direction that translates into priorities and milestones
• Monitor progress and course-correct, subject to the internal/external landscape
• Call out blockers, encouraging experimentation and risk taking within agreed boundaries

Providing ‘lubrication’

• Observe closely and provide high-frequency feedback to every team member
• Coach each team member to drive their performance and effectiveness, being careful to not solutionise for them
• Establish high challenge, high support team interactions, where all lead as required
• Ensure the team focus is on priorities and what is in the team’s control, deblocking and managing stakeholders as required
• Raise heads and encourage the heart by calling out the good and celebrating successes.

Putting our focus on ‘guidance and lubrication’ doesn’t mean that we are being softer. It means that we expect more from our team, holding them to account for doing the work. As with most things, this starts with us looking at how we need to change ourselves before we can enact changes in our team.

Changing leadership styles to suit the needs of your team can feel risky  so if you would like a sounding board on how to develop your approach and the performance of your team contact us at enquiries@h2h.uk.com .