Leadership & Teamwork
A primary function of good leadership is to influence, inspire, engage and to motivate employees. Productive leaders have passion, charisma, empathy and influence that allows others to motivate to optimum levels of performance. Within the framework of team performance, strong leadership is often required to achieve consistent results and create group synergy. It can be very difficult to get teams to perform without great leadership.
While leadership is more about motivation, teamwork is about collaboration. Good teamwork requires open communication, sharing ideas and giving feedback. Solid teams will utilize the potential from everyone. Employees will tend to gravitate where they are most comfortable. Good leaders will develop teams that bring out the strengths of everyone. However, all employees are not geared towards collaboration and teamwork. Leaders need to create an environment where employees are encouraged to participate, give feedback and follow through with their responsibilties.
The VISION sets the direction of the company.
TEAMWORK sets the potential of the company.
LEADERSHIP impacts the success of the company.
Leadership Comes From All Directions
In business, everyone is important, but everyone is not equal. The difference between two equal companies is often the leadership. All employees are not equal, but neither are leaders. Leaders at the top can inspire and captivate their employees with an insightful vision or look at the future. Poor leadership at the top often leads to middle of the road companies. I would make the claim that it is impossible to have a great company with poor leadership. While leadership at the top focuses on the company vision and direction of the company, it is the leadership in the middle of the company that has the largest impact daily. Having go-to players in the middle of the company that can lead in all directions can provide vision that leaders at the top cannot. These important team members have more direct contact with clients and other employees than leaders at the top. Investment in these go-to players in crucial.
A Quick Leadership Assessment
As the owner, founder or upper-level manager of a company, this is a quick evaluation to see if your leadership abilities are on par. If this doesn't sound like you, leadership is probably not your role:
Good leaders will:
Be well respected from employees
Add value to the company beyond their role
Provide continual source of ideas to improve
Provide and take advantage of opportunities to grow or improve
Influence, inspire and engage employees
Actions are always creating change and improvements
The Essence of Teamwork
Any good team should be assembled to enhance the strengths of the company leader and minimize weaknesses. The essence of a great team is collaboration. Teams require good leadership, but each member of the team must be accountable for their contribution and role. Strong teams will work together with a single purpose to achieve results. Weak teams will flounder struggling over purpose, control and lack of collaboration. The weakness of most teams falls into one of these three categories:
Attitude
The easiest employee to remove from a company will consistently underperform or exhibit poor behavior. Tougher employees to judge are ones that “hide in the middle” not rocking the boat either way. These “coasting” employees are often the biggest drain on team momentum because they do not like change and are fine with the status quo. In my book, complacency IS a poor attitude.
Agenda
Many employees have a personal agenda that is far more important than the companies. A good leader or manager needs to figure out how to align both agendas into a positive plan.
Ability
Most employees either currently have ability, could potentially have ability or will never have ability. The difference between “could potentially have” and “will never have” is a major factor. All companies should invest in employees with potential, but it better be real potential. Too much effort is spent on investing in employees that have no or minimal potential. Leaders and managers HOPE things will improve because the talent pool is shallow, but avoiding the reality is the easy move. I have interviewed, trained and developed several dozens of employees over 27 years and it is rare that potential talent is missed. Potential in employees can be seen within days to weeks. If you cannot assess employees and their potential future value, you might be in the wrong position. Find someone that can.
In many companies this equation for employees generally applies:
10% make things happen.
80% go along for the ride.
10% slow company momentum.
The BIG Oak’s Formula for Success
Overly INVEST in the top 10 % Performers.
FIRE the bottom 10% Momentum Breakers. (Let them slow down your competition)
SQUEEZE the middle 80% of employees. (10% will bump up and 10% will bump down)
The Biggest Challege for Employees and Teamwork
Generally, employees buy into the premise that they want things to improve. They want a safer, productive and more rewarding position. Employees want to grow and develop to help themselves and the company. However, the nature of people dictates that most employees prefer peace, safety, stability and less disruption in their work lives. It is nearly impossible to grow without change and change brings fear and anxiety. So how should a leader handle this situation?
The BIG Oak’s answer to this question is the create a company culture where the status quo IS change. Every employee should know that all procedures, policies and operations will continually be assessed, updated and improved for the better. This is the only situation in which the status quo is acceptable. Growth brings change. Change brings improvement. Improvement keeps the company going.