The №1 Mistake Leaders continue to make when Managing Teams.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

As a leader how many times have you found yourself frustrated with your team’s performance? Maybe they are not meeting your expectations. Perhaps they are falling short on hitting their KPIs? Maybe it’s a lack of alignment and collaboration among team members? Or perhaps it’s simply a problem that arises that is brought to your attention.

Whatever the issue, the biggest error too many leaders make is to immediately jump in and manage the problem, trying to find a solution for the team.

The first problem here is that good and great people do not want to be managed. They don’t want a manager. They want a leader. The second problem is that fixing a teams problems is not leadership.

Team First. Task Second

A manager mindset will focus on the problem. A leader will focus on the team. Leaders ask — ‘What is happening that is causing the team to not be able to resolve this, and why did problem arrive in the first place?’ Leaders operate upstream where their impact is higher and more long term. Managers live downstream, too often doing the work their team should be doing.

The legendary Bill Campbell, often referred to as The Trillion Dollar Coach due to his impact coaching some of Silicon Valley’s most iconic company leaders including Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs among many others, was famous for his insistence on the importance of the team. This guiding principle that helped so many of Silicon Valley giants to greatness was based on the core belief ´that you cannot get anything done without a team’. This means that the team is paramount, and the most important thing to look for and expected from people is always a ‘team first’ attitude.

This is critical to understand, because if the team is not functioning properly then solving an immediate problem does not improve the team, and often only serves to temporarily solve a problem until the next one comes along. In fact, in many cases, it weakens the team. Focusing on the tasks, before the relationships in the team, simply compounds problems.

Why Relationships are more important than Tasks

IF you are leader, the number one thing you can do for the long-term strength and success of your organisation, and your team, is to develop new leaders. This is Team Based Leadership. If you find you cannot do that, then you either have the wrong people on the team, or you need support in learning how to develop your team, while getting the job done.

When tasks and problems faced by the team are deemed to be more important the relationships within the team, then teams cannot be successful. In these situations, the team too often reverts to functioning way below their level of possibility.

Look around, and wherever you see a demotivated team, you will see a ‘task first, team second’ model in operation. But look at a highly successful team and you will see a radically different dynamic. You will see collaboration and open communication that leads to problems being solved, often before they become critical.

But this is nothing new. This our tribal nature in action. We are wired to work in teams when given the right circumstances. Charles Darwin in his book The Descent of Man describes it perfectly — ‘A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree, the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection’.

Work the Team. Then the Problem

As a leader, a team-first approach is often counter intuitive when confronted with problems. Leaders get satisfaction from solving problems. It´s that feel good dopamine hit that drives us to come up with an answer. But the bigger the problems, the more you need to be able to bet on and back your team.

Developing, aligning and supporting your team to operate as a team is where the real wins lie.

So, when anyone asks you next time about a problem that is confronting your team, you can say ‘Don’t worry, we have the right team in place. They are working on the problem’.

That is leadership.