‘Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organisational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.’
Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist
The 2004 European Cup started with a burning question: would France retain the title? Little did France know that the team would not even make it to the semi-finals.
Greece changed the balance. Returning to the championship after 24 years, the players began by beating the host team Portugal, then made their way up to the finals, defeating the defending champions in the process, then went on to beat Portugal again in the finals.
The game plan was clear and was based on a strict man-marking strategy. They played to their strengths as solid, reliable defenders with a hard-working midfield. Despite little attacking talent, they had the winning ingredient. They played as a team, observing, supporting and helping each other. No egos, no tensions, just a bunch of guys working together towards achieving the same goal.
Teambuilding is about creating a real sense of belonging and mobilising energy in one direction. Leaders recognise the importance of this when it comes to driving change and achieving results.
Before exploring the tools and techniques required to build a team, though, it is important to clarify the following three things:
The model shown in Figure 7.1 represents how teams are often formed in corporate environments.
However, this is not sufficient to entirely explain the notion of a ‘team’. In today’s world, a number of people put together simply to carry out an activity do not necessarily qualify as a team. There are other elements required, such as having a shared vision, personal relationships, co-creation and, as an emerging trend, a sense of community, collaboration and belonging.
In this chapter, the focus will be on leading a team as in dealing with relation to your direct reports – how to handle your peers and a team of leaders is analysed in Chapter 8. In this context, a team consists of two main dimensions – the building of individual relationships with each of the team members and the position of the leader in relation to the team as a whole.
The objectives of leaders for their teams may vary depending on the history of those teams. Is the leader inheriting a mature and stable team? In this case, the task for the new leader will be to establish him- or herself in an already formed group. Is the leader there to drive a change management agenda or create a new business? If so, it will be important for the leader to think in strategic terms about resources.
A definition of leadership by John Kotter1 is that, essentially, leaders have two main duties: to align people in order to ensure delivery of the vision, motivate and energise them to create value.
With the above dimensions in mind, how can an individual excel in the delicate matter of building or leading a team made up of creatures as volatile, unpredictable and mysterious as human beings?
The following three cornerstones need to be considered and will be addressed in the rest of this chapter:
Learning how to connect with your team can be summed up in two basic principles. The first is to invest time in getting to know them as people, to understand their drivers and their values. It requires you to hone your listening and observation skills and multiply one-on-one interactions. Getting to know your team members is particularly efficient if you are also prepared to let them know you. Creating a sense of reciprocity is key. The second principle is to aim to create an environment of trust, inclusiveness and respect that will be conducive to a productive team atmosphere. This can be achieved by paying attention to a set of attributes – being transparent and being supportive – and consistently demonstrating a certain set of behaviours – valuing difference, empowering people and righting wrongs. All of this needs to be underpinned by reciprocity and communication.
Human beings are highly social creatures who thrive on establishing emotional bonds. Anyone is more willing to deliver, push themselves and help someone they like, respect or trust than someone they do not.
According to Daniel Goleman,2 ‘emotional intelligence’ is what distinguishes great leaders from merely good ones. It is the ability to understand other people’s emotional make-up by means of empathy and relying on social skills to move people in the right direction.
Leaders need to heighten their ability to be inclusive, think globally and be collaborative. This is the first filter to use when building or leading a team, while the second is authenticity and being true to oneself. Everything that follows needs to be done while keeping the following two questions in mind:
Getting to know people is a two-way process. It should be rooted in a genuine desire to get inside your team members’ heads, to know them as people. It also requires the introduction of a certain level of reciprocity, letting them know you as a person, too – not only as a figure of authority – and creating a feeling of equality. The following four suggestions would make a good starting point:
This is about establishing their ‘baseline’ – discovering their main characteristics and finding the essence of who your team members are. Teams are increasingly diverse, gathered together from different backgrounds, cultures and age groups. Delivering results is highly correlated to motivation and the drivers of a 39-year-old man who is married with two children will be quite different from those of a 25-year-old woman with no children. Invest adequate time in gathering data. Using the questions and processes described in Chapters 3 and 4 can also be useful here, enabling you to understand them as individuals. Complement these with the following question, which will help you to create a list of further questions so you can answer this one:
Once the basics of an understanding and relationship have been established, a leader may decide to go one step further and enquire about the team member’s personal life. Only do this if it is culturally acceptable (avoid doing so in some Asian or Indian cultures) and, as a leader, you feel comfortable doing this. Being aware and respectful of values and boundaries will guide you appropriately here.
How you go about asking these questions is a personal choice, rooted in your brand, leadership style and comfort zone. This should be built on the findings of your own self-awareness journey.
Some leaders prefer the safety of a formal one-on-one discussion in an office, where they will first present the list of questions to the team member and then engage them in a discussion about each, one after the other. At the other end of the spectrum, you may choose a less structured approach, talking over coffee and sticking to a general informal conversation where you can touch on the list of questions mentioned above but as part of general social interaction. You may also consider using Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) profiling and 360-degree assessments with your team to get additional insights into how they perceive themselves.
Ongoing observation helps you to draw conclusions about individuals’ inherent abilities – technically, intellectually and emotionally – based on practical examples.
Here are some things to be aware of as you interact and observe:
Observing your team provides clues as to how to motivate or influence its members. It can be very helpful to work out strategies as a result for the best team mix of people for any specific project. (For more on this, see Chapter 11.)
When possible, complement observations with working one-on-one with a team member. Try positioning yourself more as a peer than as a leader in order to create a different dynamic with your team member. Although this may feel slightly uncomfortable, it can help you to build a more democratic and collaborative leadership style.
Time is an important element in teambuilding. Multiplying interactions increases the chances of you being able to get inside the heads of team members and develop stronger ties.
Time should be invested in the full range of situations – formal and informal, virtual and face-to-face, one-on-one and group – addressing both operational issues and more personal ones.
Being genuine in your interactions with team members is what matters most for fostering team spirit. Keeping a log of all the information gathered about them will help with setting objectives and knowing what will aid their motivation. These actions will be instrumental in you transforming one-on-one relationships into team relationship and, also establishing your relationship with the team as an entity.
Leadership is also about being comfortable with exposing weaknesses or fears. Good leaders make their team an inherent part of their leadership development.
It can be counter-intuitive for leaders to show vulnerability as they may fear this will be perceived as a departure from their authority and absolute wisdom. However, as shown by Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones in their book Why Should Anyone be Led by You? (Harvard Business School Press, 2006), it is important to appear human. It makes leaders much more approachable. Ultimately, it helps to establish trust.
‘My brother-in-law is a philosophy teacher and, for some unknown reason, he always wears the oddest shoes, these old walking shoes – big, heavy, completely ruined – went out of fashion about 20 years ago, and I once asked him, ‘Why on earth are you still wearing those shoes?’ He smiled softly and answered, “Because the pupils always have something to make fun of me about”. Regardless of your ambitions and perfection, make sure you know and show some of your weakness, to make yourself human, an imperfect being, and allow team members and other people to relate to you.’
Interview with Clara Gaymard,
President and CEO of General Electric France
However, it is important for leaders to be selective in what they show as their weaknesses. It is best not to expose anything that could be perceived as a fatal flaw in your leadership qualities. For example, if you were a finance director, it would be better not to reveal that you know nothing about discounted cash flow or US GAAPs. It may be safer to choose a tangential weakness instead – such as, being impatient – or one others will consider a strength – such as being persistent or driven – or think in terms of the big picture – pushing your team members to develop the ability to both use their strategic thinking to communicate with you and be able to get into the details if needed.
Beyond creating trust and solidarity, communicating a weakness also builds a collaborative atmosphere. It allows team members to feel not only needed but also able to contribute to the leader’s development. This should be complemented by communicating the importance of team feedback, so you grow to become the best you can be. Relying on others and highlighting interdependencies are also important elements in building rapport.
In a nutshell, the first step towards building rapport involves taking genuine interest in others, observing your team members and sharing and being open about yourself.
The purpose of this exercise is to establish a proper data-gathering mechanism to find out as much as possible about each of your team members. Gather as much of the information suggested as you can. The process should be an iterative one of mining various resources, from the human resource department to team members’ previous managers and of course the obvious one of simply talking to them.
What would ‘good’ look like? As these people’s leader, you would be able to list for each of them, accurately, what five of their attributes, qualities and pet peeves are and they could do the same for you. The following are the kinds of information you should know about your team members:
This is not an exhaustive list and can be enriched as you see fit. Creating a file per direct report to keep all this information handy is a good leadership discipline.
The following questions provide you with a comprehensive way to establish rapport with your team members. They are very useful when you are beginning to do so, and convey that you have a genuine interest in them as people.
You may also choose to use some of these questions when you are performing an evaluation or giving them feedback, to ensure that you keep in tune with how they are developing and growing as a result of experience and with your help:
As mentioned above, it is important to store the answers to these questions and refer to them on a regular basis or when you want to either give feedback or embark on performance reviews or a career discussion.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, values do matter when it comes to your credibility. They matter even more when you are building and leading a team. Trust, inclusiveness and respect are intertwined; they build on and feed from each other. With trust comes respect, with inclusiveness comes trust and respect, and with respect come results. As a team leader, building this virtuous circle is critical.
According to Stephen R. Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, trust is a rare commodity in our current environment and appears significantly less prevalent than a generation ago. In an article in Leadership Now, Covey states that only 49 per cent of employees trust senior management and only 28 per cent believe CEOs are credible sources of information.
How can anyone lead a team, if they can’t foster trust and respect? As Warren Bennis put it, ‘Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms.’
There are six basic principles to be observed if you are to establish the team you want and for it to yield the results you want or need:
You want them to trust you. Start by trusting them.
Reciprocity creates a loyal and interdependent environment where all succeed or fail as a team.
Say what you do, do what you say. Be open and transparent about your objectives, expectations, what makes you tick – even your emotional state, if you think it is important in order for your team members to understand your behaviours. For example, if you have had a pretty tough day and you know you could have a strong negative reaction to events, be ready to share this with your team if one of them comes to you with bad news or notification of a crisis. Showing your emotions will make them comfortable about doing the same.
Be there for them and support them, once objectives and accountability have been established. For instance, if an external party puts them on the spot in a meeting, step in and protect them, but make sure you address the issue less formally afterwards, too. Ask them to be there for you as well and stress the importance of their feedback for your journey.
Creating trust and team spirit implies supporting each other and presenting a united face to the rest of the organisation. Having this makes it possible to gain loyalty, too. As a leader you have an impact on your team. Set the tone and make them want to emulate your behaviours.
Talk straight, stick to your word, keep your commitments, be reliable. In other words, live and breathe your leadership brand in terms of how you relate to and interact with your team (see Chapter 5) and be consistent in how you demonstrate your behaviours.
It has been established that inclusiveness is, more and more, an important way to accelerate progress up the ladder. Valuing difference is the first step towards inclusiveness. Purposefully build a team with members who are different from you and, if at all possible, different from each other. The team dynamics created as a result will produce enough disruptive opinions and tensions for you to steer towards and demonstrate inclusiveness.
In order to maximise the benefits of a diverse team, establish the following operating principles:
Be aware of your own personal biases, likes and dislikes. Naturally, you will have more chemistry with some of your team members than with others, but pay attention to your behaviour as it could have an impact on others in the team. Specifically, be aware of how your behaviour can unintentionally trigger fear.
A team needs space. In her book, Judy Brown3 has a poem called ‘Fire’ that is particularly appropriate:
‘What makes fires burn is space between the logs, a breathing space. Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames.’
Team members can indeed feel suffocated when they are supervised too closely. Equally destructive is a leadership style that floats on the surface of things and is not grounded in a real understanding of the issues.
Achieving the right balance between empowerment and supervision is possible:
The very fact that your team knows you can and will go deeply into things will help your credibility and create respect.
The last point to be mindful of – to complete the journey from trust to inclusiveness to respect – is that you need to right any wrongs.
As a leader, never be afraid to recognise when you are wrong or say you are genuinely sorry. You will gain respect, on a personal level, and increase loyalty.
Finally Figure 7.24 summarises the building blocks of, and journey to achieving, trust, inclusiveness and, ultimately, respect.
Trust, inclusiveness and respect should not be confused with softness. Being intelligently trustful, inclusive and respectful means that you are also conveying a strong level of expectation and sense of accountability. Delivery is the name of the game and the purpose of the team’s existence.
Trust, inclusiveness and respect will contribute to fostering a safe environment in which all collaborate, contribute and yield better results.
Stretching your team members to deliver and helping them gain credibility is an important part of building rapport and motivating them.
A safe environment is one in which people feel able to show their true colours, one in which they feel valued and respected.
All of the above information is particularly useful for new leaders. Indeed, implementing it in the first 90 days of your tenure is an elegant way to create impact, establish your personal brand and build momentum towards achieving delivery.
It will also allow you to quickly grasp the overall mix of strengths and weaknesses in your team and give you an opportunity to reflect on any changes that might need to be made.
Trust and respect matter tremendously when establishing rapport. As noted earlier, you never have a second chance to make a first impression.
Individuals can have different views on trust and respect. Some will tread water carefully at first and, when they feel secure or safe, will give their respect and trust. Others will give trust and respect by default, until proven wrong. Each type will look for different behaviours and will judge you in different ways.
In order to know very early on which types you are dealing with – whether team members or you as leader boss – and adjust your style accordingly, the quickest way is to ask the following questions during your first meeting or even during an interview:
While these may seem unusual questions, they will help you to frame what it is you have to do, or avoid doing, and lay the right foundations to establish rapport. Equally, you will give them some important keys to your behaviours. The results can then be translated into tangible actions:
If you are a team member and addressing the above with your boss or someone higher up than your position with whom you will have to work on a regular basis, the answers can be interpreted as follows.
If you are a leader, when it comes to your team members – and how to most effectively deal with them – their answers can be interpreted as follows:
Make sure that you add the data resulting from this exercise to your team member’s file.
‘The next day the little prince came back.
“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you … One must observe the proper rites …”
“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.
“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox.’
This extract, from Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince, perfectly illustrates the importance of rituals in establishing and then maintaining relationships with your team.
Establishing the rituals of regularly communicating and engaging with your team will enable you to keep your finger on the pulse of your team members’ motivations, desires and needs. It will also allow for proactive corrective actions to be taken if needs be. For instance, it can allow you to sense the dissatisfaction of some at a crucial moment for the business or prevent the loss of your star performer.
There are various ways in which you can do this.
The purpose of these meetings is to tackle operational issues and track the development and performance of the team members.
Most of the time, these meetings will be virtual or over the phone. However, consider using Skype or video conferencing so you can create a connection by means of facial expressions and body language. Give your full and undivided attention during these meetings, shutting down your e-mail, phone and any other devices.
For face-to-face meetings, avoid checking the time and control your body language. Taking notes is a good way to stay in the moment.
These can be very powerful and telling. Regular calls to team members, when there are no pressing issues to discuss, to check in with them about what is going on, will make them feel valued as people.
Informal chats are useful when you sense that something is not right, as a result of previous interactions or feedback from others in the same office or region, for example. Connecting at the human level is critical to building loyalty. At times, a friendly and unexpected phone call is all it takes to reassure, motivate or simply avoid losing a team member. A chat may make someone feel special and glad to be part of your team.
These remain the best way to truly connect with others.
It is advisable to meet face-to-face two to three times a year with direct reports – individually and as a team. This helps break down distance and create a fair environment. Factor in proper periods of time for both business and quality time with team members (over dinner or a long lunch, for example). Engage them with social or cultural topics to show that you are genuinely interested in them.
You can record all your data as shown in Table 7.1 and add it to your team member’s file.
Table 7.1 Example format to record data from meetings
Date | Team member’s name |
Topic 1 | Problems and discussion |
Topic 2 | xxxxx |
Topic 3 | xxxx |
Summary of last time | xxxxx |
Actions to be taken | Xxxx by xxxx |
Follow-up needed? | |
Help needed? |
Being able to get the best out of your people and run a team that achieves a high standard of performance should be the goal and pride of any leader. In order to take your team’s performance to the next level, two elements need to be considered. First, how to motivate your team by involving them in setting goals for the organisation, ensuring that these goals also address some of their most important needs and desires. Second, by crafting a reward and recognition system that is genuine, and addresses not only the ‘what to do’ but also the ‘what to be’.
Before diving into the heart of the first of these, it is important to understand the documents used to monitor individual performance in any organisation.
In most companies there are two distinct sets of documents used to drive motivation and set objectives. They will be put together on a yearly basis and reviewed once or twice during the year. Though the names given to those will of course vary from company to company, they usually include the following:
Examples of both these documents can be found in Appendix 1.
In most cases, these two documents are never looked at in conjunction with each other or in a compare and contrast fashion. Neither do they tend to address or factor in interdependencies or team elements. On the contrary, companies usually link team performance to company goals and promotions to individual achievements by looking solely at the goals and objectives (G&Os) document.
Leaders focus first on what is needed by the organisation and then cascade this down to their team members. This then becomes the basis for any evaluations of their performance. What may result is an averagely or even poorly motivated workforce and sometimes the sacrifice of quality work for quantity of work.
The truth? Organisations actually have limited powers to motivate employees. As human beings, most individuals are driven by intrinsic rewards, such as challenging work and the opportunity to grow. These needs are usually addressed in the individual development plan (IDP).
To build a strongly motivated team performing at the highest level, you need to enable your team members to activate their own internal motivation and deliver on the company’s goals, thus aligning G&Os and IDPs while recognising interdependencies.
The following three elements need to be addressed:
One of a leader’s duties is to define a vision and set a strategy for the organisation or a particular business unit or the team they are in charge of (vision and strategy are analysed in Chapters 9 and 10). Regardless of your position in the organisation, whether you are the CEO of a company or lower down, you will always have the delicate task of bringing your team on the journey to achieving these with you. This is where co-creation can help.
Co-creation is one way to use the results of all the work you have put into establishing your one-on-one relationships and truly become the leader of your team. It is the way to create buy in and increase loyalty. It also serves to concentrate and direct efforts towards achieving a common goal. In other words, it will enable you to achieve an important part of your leadership role – aligning resources.
In the co-creation process, you may use the insights you have gained about your individual team members and their strengths and what motivates them to create positive tension and discussion.
The ideal setting for this exercise is in a one- to two-day, face-to-face meeting with all your direct reports. This allows for proper discussion, sharing and agreement.
To co-create, the following are needed:
The team leader is in the driving seat and communicates to the team the vision, goals and objectives that have been agreed on at a higher level, including the rationales for them. These may include the following benefits:
The leader then takes a back seat and lets the chemistry of the team play out. Some of the following questions may be used as ice-breakers or prompts:
These questions:
Leaders will always have a personal vision to factor in and their role is also to steer the discussion towards related goals. It is important to remain open and inclusive. All inputs can result in determining goals or objectives that will yield better results than the original ones. This is therefore an important phase of the process that leaders need to facilitate and steer by:
It is important to allow enough time for this to happen. Some of the techniques and tools described in Chapters 9 and 10, such as the entrepreneurial game and the Merlin exercise can be used in these sessions to help achieve this.
The leader takes back control. When everyone has been heard and the appropriate amount of discussion and reflection has taken place, the leader should:
This approach achieves a good balance between democratic engagement (the leader is inclusive and respectful) and vertical, hierarchical decision making (the leader is the figure of authority). It also creates a strong sense of motivation and accountability.
This is the critical and final element. In his book, Conscious Business: How to build value through values, Fred Kofman (Sounds True, 2006) states ‘a culture of impeccability in commitments fosters a sense of achievement, dignity and self-worth in its members’.
Setting objectives does not mean much without securing commitment to achieving them. Such commitment comes from clarity and understanding, which are what the first three steps in the co-creation process are designed to achieve. It also results from ensuring that what is agreed aligns with people’s values.
Language is important in this process – use words such as ‘personally’, ‘engage’, ‘commit’, ‘accountable’. You could consider mirroring some of the language used in the oath a new president makes in taking office, as it crystallises the leader’s accountability and responsibility when representing values and commitment. Expressing commitment in front of others also gives some solemnity to the exercise and can be a powerful way to create a positive sort of discomfort.
Once the objectives have been set, ask for team members to state their personal commitment to act to deliver the co-created agenda.
For the most efficient outcome to co-creation and goals and objectives, two simple rules are helpful:
Figure 7.3 summarises a co-creation process.
Building rapport is the first step in motivating people. It shows a will to connect at the personal level and a commitment to investing time in them.
Setting team objectives in the process of co-creation is the second step – albeit an important one. Co-creation is a powerful way to recognise the intrinsic value of each and every one of your subordinates. Additionally, it builds positive team dynamics and contributes to creating a trusting and safe environment.
To truly motivate team members to deliver for you, merge the following:
In doing this, leaders demonstrate that they are taking into account individuals’ needs and wants. This gives team members a sense of empowerment and control over their own destiny and yet, at the same time, the company’s goals are also being worked towards. Essentially, this meshes individual and organisational needs.
To ensure that this is the outcome leaders should invest the necessary time in setting adequate objectives with individual team members. Consider doing the following:
For a fully comprehensive, individual, co-creation goal-setting exercise, follow these three steps:
The above can be complemented by also systematically ensuring that team members enjoy job enrichment. In his Harvard Business Review article ‘One more time: How do you motivate your employees’, Frederick Herzberg (January 2003) presents job enrichment as a sophisticated way of factoring employees’ desires and needs into the crafting of meaningful goals and objectives. He states that if you:
Herzberg also states that it is desirable for leaders to be self-confident and master their fear of not being needed. Leaders need to embrace what they are really there to do – develop people.
While engaging with your employees, make sure that you also address the ways in which you will be working – that is, how you will interact with them. Keep the concept of job enrichment in mind and express your commitment to them as well. Over the course of the year, or when you are reflecting on your own behaviour, ensure that you are delivering on or behaving in a way that complies with this commitment.
This creates a virtuous circle and enhances the company’s performance, too.
Although it is not an intuitive or common practice, crafting team and individual objectives by means of the co-creation process is a highly efficient way to ensure that there is alignment of goals and motivation, as the objectives come out of dialogue and respect. This helps to generate a greater sense of commitment and accountability as a result of the feeling of community and shared success generated.
Figure 7.5 summarises these new ways to create high-performance teams, meshing all the critical dimensions – the company’s objectives, leader’s vision, individual members’ needs and team interdependencies.
Motivating a team is an on-going process and one of the key parts of what a leader does. It is achieved by being constantly aware of the levels of motivation of your team, providing regular feedback and developing mechanisms to reward and recognise people’s efforts.
The rhythm of communication presented in the section ‘Maintaining the relationship’, earlier in this chapter, gives three practical and effective ways to keep your finger on the pulse of your team. For instance, make one of your weekly or bi-weekly meetings with them, about them. This is beneficial for your personal brand and increases trust and respect. More generally, setting up a quarterly meeting to discuss each team member’s motivation, needs and progress is highly recommended.
Giving feedback is not easy – leaders need to show empathy, yet also be able, at times, to convey difficult messages. Feedback can be given via a mix of structured sessions and ad hoc.
In a formal feedback process, the purpose is to reassess goals and objectives, the individual development plan or a co-created hybrid document resulting from the goal-setting exercise described in the previous section. It helps to measure progress and potentially recalibrate behaviours. Refer again to the exercise above, ‘How to handle co-creation of personal objectives with team members’. The same principles may be applied here, as well as factoring in the following:
Complement formal feedback sessions with regular on-the-spot feedback. This might involve debriefing team members on their performance after a meeting or a presentation. It helps them relate their behaviours to real-life events.
Feedback plays an important part in any individual’s motivation, showing that you care about their growth and development. Negative feedback, if delivered in a constructive way, is also beneficial. Leaders are role models for the individual’s development.
When uncertain as to which approach to take or behaviours to demonstrate, holding up a mirror to yourself and thinking about the following might help:
Giving negative feedback is definitely something that most leaders or managers dread and, at times, shy away from. Some will argue that there is a strong correlation between tolerance of conflict and the ability to give negative feedback. Others correlate the sense of accountability (or lack of) in any corporate culture with the ability to give negative feedback and handle consequence management.
There is no doubt, giving negative feedback is difficult. As a leader, you need to find the right balance between getting your message across and preserving your employees’ motivation.
It can trigger and/or resonate with your own insecurities. It can even send you into a spiral of self-doubt – the ‘Is this person really that bad or is it me?’ moment. Also, it can have an emotional impact on you, facing and handling others’ reactions – especially if the person is in denial.
The following techniques have proved particularly helpful when it comes to giving negative feedback – even more so in the extreme cases of firing someone or making them redundant.
Negative feedback cannot come out of the blue – it is important to provide enough signs of your discontent previously to prepare your team member for what is to come and alleviate the risks of an emotional reaction.
When, say, the performance of one of your team members is below par, make a point of addressing it in ad hoc comments or even by having a friendly warning conversation. You can frame it in an ‘I am concerned about your performance lately – is everything OK? Do you want to talk about it?’ way. Showing concern and enquiring about the person’s well-being will defuse aggressive behaviour. It will also provide a chance for him or her to turn things around.
If things do not improve, it is highly recommended that you log specific situations when performance or behaviours were not up to standard (poor-quality work, not meeting deadlines, for example) before moving to the next step. Then arrange a formal meeting with a telling title – feedback session or performance discussion – so there is no misconception as to what the meeting will be about.5
Negative feedback can only be valid if it is well documented and presented with as much objectivity as possible. Also, as mentioned above, it is critical that you are able to substantiate the whys of your negative feedback with concrete examples and situations – dates and details of situations, indicating who did what, are very helpful.
Additionally, quietly enquiring about the person when you are talking with peers and other major stakeholders is also recommended. This will be useful in terms of presenting not only a documented but also a balanced view of the negative feedback and alleviate the risk of claims seeming to be purely personal.
Being well prepared is critical when giving negative feedback.
It will help to clearly articulate what you have to say and find the right rhythm.
It is also wise to enable yourself to create some mental space while in the meeting and be able to stay in tune with the other party – by means of body language and so on – so you can gauge if you have to stop the meeting or reconvene.
It will help, too, if you create a certain emotional distance from the situation, as this will help you to keep calm.
Consider investing some time preparing with someone from your feedback group, perhaps role-playing the scenario. That way you can test your flow, vocabulary and rhythm. Try it both as you and then as the recipient of the feedback to get an idea of how it can sound and feel, and adjust what you do accordingly.
Given that negative feedback sessions can become emotional events, it is preferable to schedule them in the morning, when you are likely to be in a good mental space and able to handle any reaction.
If this is not logistically possible, make sure you have enough time to regroup after completing your previous meeting, quieten and focus before starting the session.
Equally important, is to gauge the emotional state of the person receiving the feedback (or being fired). If you sense that he or she is too stressed or tense (perhaps fidgeting, avoiding eye contact and so on) feel free to reschedule the meeting.
The most important thing is to make sure you tune into the other person.
If you feel that he or she is not receptive any more – perhaps crying, agitated or in a state of shock – it is highly recommended you stop. You can, for instance, say, ‘I can see you are in a state of shock’ or ‘I believe it is better you digest the information before we continue.’
It is important to ensure that you do not give in to anger and emotion. Also, try as much as you can to stick to the script.
In the case of firing an employee, you do not have to conduct the meeting alone and can choose to ask for support from someone from the human resources department or have that person on standby.
If the meeting goes badly, it is important to ensure that the person gets home safely. A member of your team could look after him or her and enquire how he or she is the next day. If the person does come in to work, make sure you liaise with the human resources department.
Finally, be familiar with the five-step process that individuals go through when confronted with traumatic situations:
This is also known as the Kübler Ross model and it can help you make sense of and/or reframe the situation.
Giving negative feedback is part and parcel of being a leader and, unfortunately, firing or managing out employees is part of the bank of experience that you need to become a credible leader.
Reward and recognition are critical constituents of motivation and should not be overlooked. Rewards have a financial impact while recognition has more of an emotional one. Both are equally important for sustaining a team’s motivation and both can be used at the individual or team levels to maintain healthy competition and foster collaboration. Both are also usually discretionary and decided by leaders.
There are seven key principles for establishing an efficient reward and recognition programme:
A comprehensive reward and recognition programme might look something like that set out in Table 7.2.
One powerful exercise to consider doing with your team is to co-create a reward and recognition programme for the entire business unit/function you are responsible for – this has the potential to add a lot of value to the company’s performance. As a leader, you have less and less direct control over delivery. Investing time at the beginning in building solid relationships, co-creating solid objectives and reflecting on how people will be rewarded will translate into increased performance.
Aligning, inspiring and motivating is what leaders do. Being collaborative, inclusive and empathic is what excellent leaders of the future are.
The following questions can be used as pointers for a feedback session with team members. They can be answered and analysed in advance of the session:
These questions act as a performance self-assessment for team members and give pointers to the things that motivate them and the things that derail them. They help to locate and calibrate perception gaps and establish how best to handle the session.
In the session itself, it is important to keep the following in mind:
Building a team is as much about building the different members of the team as it is about focusing on the team itself. It takes time and requires passion and investment. Successfully built and led teams are like ecosystems where members feed off each other’s energy, build on each other’s strengths and, to some extent, counterbalance each other’s weaknesses. However, it is important to recognise that teams are fluid and people change and evolve.
For a leader, it is critical to keep track and take stock. It is also important to renew and replenish energy with celebration and recognition, as successful teams perform at a high level and deliver.
‘If a leader is a person who inspires and motivates his/her team to do things proactively and to think by themselves, then I do not find many around me. I would like to see leaders mobilising their workforce around a purpose, an objective, and stop giving too much direct guidance or actually trying to consistently micromanage.
I would like to see a leader drawing from a wide array of experience in the team, not imposing a view. I would like to see leaders taking chances with people to help them grow and develop. I have also observed that inspiring and motivating is not seen as a must have in some corporations, whereas to me it is at the essence of leadership, a natural ability to unleash people’s potential.’
Interview with Sherene Metwally, Downstream LNG Finance
Manager Europe and Global Support for Royal Dutch Shell
A good analogy for great teambuilding and leading is that of an orchestra conductor. The conductor’s primary duties are to unify performers (build rapport and know teams), set the tempo (be a role model and use co-creation), execute clear preparations (set objectives and deliver) and listen critically (give feedback).
This is what all should aim to become on their road to leadership.
Here’s a reminder of some of the key points from this chapter:
1 John Kotter (1990) ‘What leaders really do’, Harvard Business Review.
2 Daniel Coleman (2006) Emotional Intelligence, Bantam, with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee (2002) Primal Leadership: Realizing the power of emotional intelligence, Harvard Business School Press.
3 Judy Brown (2006) A Leader’s Guide to Reflective Practice, Trafford Publishing.
4 Based on Howard Jackson’s respect model.
5 It goes without saying that you would not use a title such as ‘Firing meeting’ or ‘Redundancy meeting’ but something more subtle: ‘Feedback’ or ‘Career discussion’ would be good.