High-performing teams typically have one thing in common: The team members feel like they can take risks and decisions to actively move topics forward.
Lack of empowerment and a fear-inducing culture are the biggest detractors of performance.
As a leader, you play the biggest part in creating a good environment. Remember the team always comes before you. Being a leader of men and of course women means that you will have to sacrifice some things(like your ego) for the greater good of the group.
In order to achieve a good culture that supports taking risks, there are a few powerful things that you can do.
In short, those are:
- Empower the team
- Blame free culture / Accept mistakes
- Give credit to the team
- Take the blame if something goes wrong
- Praise in public
- Address issues in private
This sounds simple, however, those principles are not easily implemented.
Empowerment
Team members will only take decisions if they feel they have a feeling of empowerment to do so. Meaning they need to feel that they have the authority and your backing to make decisions in your name.
This is the first thing you should instill, to do so the most important thing is that you make it very clear to your team what your leader’s intent is. What do you try to achieve as a team, what are important boundary conditions, in which scenarios should they double-check with you.
Regular 1:1’s with you will help them to understand you and your risk appetite as well as how you would take decisions.
This is a big topic in itself and I will cover it in a dedicated article but high level this is what you should focus on.
Blame free culture / Accept mistakes
In german, there is a saying “wo gehobelt wird fallen spähne” which translates in english to “where wood is chopped, splinters must fall”. Meaning if your team is trying to push the needle and takes on projects and tasks some things will go wrong. It is ok, it is a part of life and no one should be afraid of making mistakes or potentially running into failure. It is your job to ensure a blame-free culture in your team. Of course, as with all things in leadership, there is a dichotomy here. You should ensure mistakes are not repeated. Some behaviors or actions cannot be accepted in general such as misconduct and illegal behavior. I usually follow one or the other option below.
- Calm down your team or the members that encountered failure or made a mistake and coach them how to prevent it in the future
- Harmful or illegal behavior needs immediate and consequent intervention. Always – be consistent here.
Give credit to the team
When the team comes up with an idea, completes a project or a team member did a good job, recognize it and praise the team and its members. I try to make sure to do this in bigger public rounds (for example in front of my peers and other teams). Be clear that the achievement is done by the team or an individual in the team. Don’t be a credit hogger and try to say you did it!
Take the blame & responsibility
One of the most important steps to create an environment to make your team members feel they can take risks is by protecting them from blame or reprisals from other teams or from top-down the leadership ladder. If something goes wrong, consider it your fault. Own it and step in front of the team. Of course, just protecting the team and then not doing anything about issues is not really an option. Owning it means you also take action to resolve the problems and prevent them in the future. Do so in a blame-free way.
Ask yourself: What could you have done better to ensure the team/person is successful?
Think about what went wrong and why. Talk to the team or team members affected and try to understand and come up with an action plan on how to fix the problems or improve in the future.
This should always be done in an open and constructive way. Handling conflict is difficult, what served me quite well is remembering that everyone usually wants to do a good job. With this, I try to keep an open mind and stay calm.
What I learned over time is that often it is a matter of lacking communication, different opinion, or missing skill and not bad intent. All of those topics can be mitigated with proper training, communication, and coaching. Work hard to get your team members where you need them to be.
Praise in public
Giving praise in public is a powerful tool to motivate people. Praising someone in private is good of course, but if someone did a good job mention it in a public forum like a team meeting or newsletter or whatever form fits the situation. This also encourages others to step up. Everyone likes praise 😉
Reprimand in private
Contrary to praise, issues with an individual should ALWAYS be addressed in a private forum. Discuss it face to face or at least in a 1:1. Talking is always to be preferred over email!
Remember you want to create a good culture. How would you feel if you are criticized in front of people? Will you take again a risk and go out of your way?
When you address an issue try to avoid blaming. Explain it calm and neutrally what the issue was and what behavior or problem needs to be adapted.
In general, it is ok to show emotions, especially if something is important to you. However, remember that you do not want to have a culture of fear. So modulate your emotion to the situation. Also, remember that when you come in strong it is likely that your opposite party already has their defenses up and will not necessarily accept the feedback you have.
In many cases, the person already has an idea about why there were problems. My approach is to ask questions in the direction of: What could you have done better to get information distributed? What could have been improved with the tone of this email? What do you think was the critical piece that led to the problem?
Every proposal on how to improve is now the idea of your discussion partner and therefore easier to nurture. These are just some tools sometimes you simply need to be very direct.
As I mentioned earlier, those principles are sometimes difficult to adhere to or implement. Especially since we are all human and have emotions and egos. Executing on this requires effort and practice, so don’t give up 😉
Those principles worked quite well for me in the past. Do you have some good ideas and concepts that worked for you to build a high-performing culture? Let me know about it in the comments!