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We shape the teams that we deserve… and very few leaders do it well

Freddie Guilmard.

Is how you are working, working? asks Freddie Guilmard, chief executive of business culture and leadership consultancy RTP. The answer: Probably not…

…OR PERHAPS I should say “Not as well as you would like”.

This is not surprising to me because, over the last 20 years of working with hundreds of leaders and managers in culture, leadership and change, I have seen very few leaders doing it well.

Despite our ever-increasing knowledge of the importance of creating great cultures to achieve higher levels of performance, most businesses today remain too inhuman in the way that they treat their colleagues and teams. Businesses continue to promote people without any investment in their management development skills and are surprised when these “great people” suddenly underperform following promotion to team leader or managerial positions.

The truth is, many of these people should not have been promoted to management roles in the first place (I know… I was one of these people), at least certainly not before proving that they have the skills, the mindset, the temperament and the ability.

But what do you do when most structures in a business are hierarchical and not designed to recognise people’s potential, rather around promotion and power? Let’s be honest, in order to climb the career ladder, the traditional way to be recognised and earn more is to become a manager.

How many businesses truly recognise the importance of building relationships, prioritising and encouraging their employees to “just chat”? Get rid of the tired meeting rooms where nothing ever gets done anyway and replace these spaces with convivial and welcoming areas where colleagues can chat, build deeper, trusted relationships and work together to solve both simple and complex problems.

In one company I worked with a few years ago, we transformed the performance and the culture of the business by changing the way in which we engaged with our teams. We carried out monthly wellbeing chats without an agenda and we built trust simply by talking with our colleagues about anything we considered relevant.

Every quarter, we arranged a more formal get-together at which we encouraged our colleagues to think about their own development and to consider what support they needed to do their job better. Finally, we set an annual celebration review purely focused on the year ahead and how to jointly define success.

This business not only grew from less than £1 million of revenue per annum to more than £5 million in less than five years but also went on to win many great business accolades.

Now just imagine if you got rid of your annual appraisals and replaced these with monthly one-to-ones and team get-togethers where you simply ask:

“Is how we are working, working?”

“Are you getting what you need from me to enable you to succeed in your role?”

“Are we clear about what is expected of each other and if not, what do we need to change?”

“How can we create an environment of trust, where we can both have the best conversations and issues?”

So here are some thoughts for you to reflect upon:

  • Are appraisal systems a hindrance rather than a helpful way to motivate colleagues?
  • When have you experienced the most effective working environment, where you felt trusted and given the opportunity to develop and grow your managerial skills?
  • Is organisational leadership failure based on poor recruitment practices?
  • Should anyone aspiring to be a leader have to go through extensive managerial training and assessment before being considered for promotion?
  • Should we completely rethink the way we reward and recognise colleagues in business?

At the end of the day, you will shape the team that you deserve. So is it time we had a proper rethink?

Freddie Guilmard is the chief executive and a high-performance coach of RTP, a boutique consultancy that supports leaders to deal with their big issues by building human organisations.

freddie@the-redthread.co.uk

the-readthread.co.uk

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