On Team Behaviours

Welcome to this weeks Leadership101. Today I want to build upon the individual behaviours I wrote about last week, and outline some team behaviours. At the end of this newsletter (or here) you can download a document which defines the behaviours, and offers a way of assessing how you’re doing in each of them. It’s a great tool which I’ve used to solve problems in my own business for 4 years now. I’d love to hear what you think of it.

When everyone in your team is showing ownership, humility, is working hard and is committed to the team, your role as a leader is to bring the individuals together as a group. Early in your career it’s unlikely you will have much say in things like organisational purpose, or targets etc, but you do have a say in how your team goes about pursuing those. Once that direction is clear (that is, once you have taken ownership of making it clear to everyone...), getting everyone pulling in the same direction is your main role.

How do you go about doing that? Well, I propose that all high performing teams have a set of behaviours that are only possible collaboratively. They are:

1.        Effective teamwork

2.        Effective communication

3.        Effective prioritisation and execution

4.        Effective decision making

Let’s look at this in turn.

Effective teamwork is about delivering more as a group than as individuals. There is no sense everyone working hard all week, but on different things. The point of effective teamwork is that everyone works together and pulls in the same direction, in pursuit of the same goals. This isn’t about a love in; it’s not a requirement that everyone is best friends and a close family knit group. It is however a requirement that everyone knows their role and works together to deliver the plan.

Effective communication is straightforward; everyone knows what they need to know at all times. General Jim Mattis is someone I admire greatly, and will write about more in future, and he summed it up nicely for me. What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them? If everyone in your group works on this framework, you should have few issues on this front.

Effective prioritisation and execution is a long way of saying that everyone knows the main thing, is capable of looking at their workload and making a decision on what tasks are important, which are urgent, and which are neither. Since we often spend time on non urgent, non important tasks, while essential activities are left for too long, progress in this area will lead to results quickly.  

Effective decision making is the final one, and may not be as clear as the others. This is the art of correctly making a decision, without waiting for input from someone else. Oftentimes we don’t act for fear of reprisals, or looking bad if we’re wrong. Usually though, we understand enough to decide and act, particularly on day to day things. I’ll offer an example from my own world.

When a client signs paperwork to proceed with new advice, that paperwork needs to go somewhere. Occasionally I’m asked if I want the paperwork sending (as if at the very final point, after all the work that goes into onboard a client, I might change my mind). I spent time understanding why this happens, why I’m asked the question and it usually comes down to a variation of ‘I didn’t want to do it wrong.’

The leader’s role is to set expectations in these areas, and to erect guardrails to keep everyone safe. If a proposal has been prepared to go to a client, and is the final draft, it might be worth the senior person reviewing a final time to make sure nothing is missed. If, however, someone is asking what font or size text you want the proposal typed in, you’ve probably got some work to do around delegating responsibility at the right times!

I also use the word effective very deliberately. Your measure of effective is simple- is it working? Are you getting more out of your team as a group than you could as individuals? Does everyone know what they need to know? Are your team focussed and working on the right thing? Are your team making decisions well, in line with their role? If the answer is no, you now know where you start work.

You will hopefully note that there is a lot in here that overlaps. You’re right. That’s why an assessment of these behaviours is where I go first if things aren’t going well for me. Since I created it 4 years ago, this system has never let me down, which is why I’m so confident in sharing it.

You can download the file by clicking here.

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