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The more senior leaders I work with, the more I’m seeing a pattern. The pattern is that the senior, they don’t operate in a senior way. What I mean by that is they’re still stuck in the weeds in the detail of getting work done. One of the things I realised is that it’s probably because, at a certain point in their careers when they moved from being an individual contributor to a team leader, they didn’t learn to let go and enable others to do the work. Just recently I coached a person on how to make the shift from individual contributor to team leader. I’m going to talk you through a framework for how to do it for yourself.
Let Go and Embrace Something New
When you move from individual contributor to team leader, it’s a big change in how you get work done. In a previous blog, I’ve talked about as you make leaders transitions, every time you make a transition from individual to team leader to leader of leader to organisation or executive leader, you need to let go of something and you need to embrace something new. The biggest challenge in this shift is the control. Down here you are measured on your own or individual output, and as a team leader, you’re measured on the team performance. If you’re unable to reconcile or let go of the need to do it all yourself, what happens is the team fundamentally feel micromanaged and constrained and they kind of won’t tell you, but they’ll just go:
He’s not a very good boss. He doesn’t empower me. He doesn’t enable me. He doesn’t teach me much stuff and then they’ll feel smothered.
So if you don’t want to smother your team, and if you want to make this transition in a way that gets the best from them and you are someone they want to work for it, this is how I would think about it. The first one is if you want to be a leader, the first thing you need to realise is that the way you need to think about success is from a collective perspective. The reason you are paid to do what you do is because of the output of everyone that you lead, not just your own output. If you’re still attached to doing the work, really seriously think about whether you want to manage a team or be a leader. Seriously, stop this video. Have a think. Because if you’re unable to make that shift when you become a senior leader, you still going to want to hang onto the work and people will find you hard to work for.
Shift That Mindset
If you are willing to make the mindset shift, then this is how to go about it. I’ve talked about a framework before, for each person of your team, you want to think about the fact that they’ve got technical skills, business knowledge, and an attitude and your job is to help each one of those people over time lift up their performance, which is these arrows. That’s the first job is that individually lift. But there’s a second job that people don’t talk about. The second job is these arrows here, which is creating an environment where the whole team lift up together and keeping the relationships and the learning between people strong. I would argue that your job is equally split between the two, but if you had to focus on one, I’d focus more on creating an environment where everyone can lift up.
Summary
If you’re unable to let go of the need to do it all yourself, it’s really going to be hard for you to become a leader. So have a think about if that’s what you want. If you are able to reconcile that shift in mindset from individual output, team output, consider that as a team leader, there’s two main focuses you’ve got.
- One is on lifting the performance of each individual through coaching, attitude, business knowledge and technical skills.
- Second is through looking at the whole environment around the connections between people and what the supports their performance in creating an environment where the whole team’s going to lift. If you’re currently an individual contributor and you want to be a team leader
Leave me a Comment or Get in Touch
After watching this video, what changes did you make and what decisions did you make and what has it meant for your future as a leader? I love to hear from you. Talk to you soon on The Reason & The Road.
