Leading Teams in Challenging Times
It’s a paradox of teamwork that in stressful or challenging situations – when there’s the utmost need to collaborate – that team members will often stop behaving like a team. Instead, they start to act as a set of individuals.
If team members are clear about what they’re doing – and they’re rationally and emotionally committed to the team cause – then engagement will be high. But in difficult times, the task becomes more of a focus. The team members stop delegating, they try to take more responsibility on themselves, they over-assert their position and sometimes they confront or compete with each other to prove their value.
Needless to say, the usual result is a nosedive in performance.
Practical points for leaders
Here are ten tips that can help you ensure that your team maintains its ability to perform.
1. Monitor individuals
All teams should strive to balance team achievement (what we have to do) with team development (how we work together). Collaboration is the key. This is more than just ‘cooperation’, as it demands more personal energy and emotional commitment. Greater collaboration can help teams to retrieve a difficult situation, regain the initiative when times are tough or win when they’re not playing well.
The irony is that to achieve this high level of collaboration, you have to keep your eye on each of the individuals. If someone is worried about their job or their role in the team, their focus becomes much more internal. They may become quiet or withdrawn or may be overly assertive. They’ll certainly become less effective within the team.
As a leader, you should be noticing this and asking what you can do to help. It could just involve a quiet word, along the lines of: “You used to do x but now we’re experiencing y, what’s going on?” Or perhaps you’ll need to manage the workload of the team members.
2. Don’t try to be the ‘star player’ yourself
Your role as leader is to promote the effectiveness of the team. On occasions, in a crisis situation, there may be a need for directive behaviour. But after the crisis has been resolved, the leader should gather the team together to consider what actions were taken, how effective these were, the learning points and how a similar situation would be handled, should it ever arise again.
The important thing is to be aware that directive behaviour diminishes the sense of responsibility within the team. If you’ve taken over, your team members will be reluctant to show initiative or to take responsibility.
3. Help people to recognise what’s outside of their control
If you knew exactly what was going to happen and you were confident you could cope with anything, it’s unlikely you’d feel particularly stressed. But when you don’t know what’s around the corner or if you fear a particular outcome (or failure), you’ll feel stressed.
As a leader, you can help people to focus on reality as well as what is actually causing their stress. Ask them to make a list of what they’re worried about. There’s not much you or they can do to fix the global economy but there may be things that can be done to refocus the business or to better support customers.
Set an example by admitting that you’re finding it difficult to cope with uncertainty but you’re focusing on what you can influence. Help your team members to draw a boundary of what is inside their control. Whatever is outside of that boundary is outside of their scope of influence, so help them to acknowledge this and focus instead on where they can make a difference.
4. Check back to the vision or guiding purpose of the team
As a leader it’s always useful to consider what you’re trying to achieve and how the team is working towards that goal. It may be worth revalidating this, to ensure that the team’s purpose has some meaning.
It is difficult to get motivated if you’re working on something that has no meaning for you. People are much more engaged when they feel they are working together to really achieve something that they believe is important and for which their individual contribution is appreciated.
5. Articulate what you want the team to be known for
Ask your team to identify how they would like clients or stakeholders to describe the team and its performance. What do you want people to be saying about you? If you want to be known as the most competent team, then consider what the most competent team would feel like or look like? What behaviours would be seen?
Get the team to describe these. Then ask how well you currently stack up against those behaviours – and what needs to change to move you closer to the desired state. Articulating these behaviours and success factors is a positive step towards achieving collaboration.
6. Maintain a balance between teamwork and the task
In challenging times, team members tend to focus on the tasks they have to achieve, almost to the exclusion of how well they work together. But there has to be a balance here. A team that focuses solely on achievement might get to a point before finding that everyone’s going in different directions; whereas a team that is focused purely on ‘how well do we work together?’ may not achieve very much either.
As the leader, your role is to help the members of your team to achieve their goals whilst at the same time ensuring that they’re building the ability to collaborate.
7. Become more self aware
Remember that leadership is essentially the experience that others have of you. It’s been said that: ‘If you think you’re a leader and no one is following you, you’re just going for a walk’. Without self awareness, it’s unlikely that you’ll fully appreciate the impact you’re having on others.
It’s difficult to be too self aware. You can be oversensitive but that’s not the same. Being aware of the emotions that are produced within you, gives you the ability to ask yourself useful questions such as: Is this the emotion I want? What is causing this emotion? How can I use it?
8. Manage your emotional state
Research shows that the mood and behaviour of the leader drives the mood and behaviour of everyone else in the team. Everyone watches the boss and takes their emotional cues from them – and the domino effect ripples throughout the team.
Because you set the tone for the culture or work environment – and your mood is quite literally contagious – you have a responsibility in difficult times to project confidence, energy and a positive attitude.
9. Look for the opportunities
There’s a Chinese proverb that says: ‘When the winds of change blow, there are those who build a shelter and those who build a windmill’. In every circumstance, there are always opportunities if you can find them.
10. Consider coaching
Coaching is an effective vehicle for developing leadership skills. Executive coaching can help both the leader and the team members to: raise their awareness of the impact they have on others; to think through issues and how they can be even more effective; to gain a new perspective and to increase their desire to take action.
About Cote Consultants
Cote Consultants is a coaching, leadership and performance improvement firm based in central London. We work with any organisation that wants to drive sustainable growth in performance and capital through the personal and professional development of its most promising leaders and teams.
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Posted in: Leadership, Performance