Being A Better Leader Part 2: Building and Getting The Best From Your Team
In Part 1 of this series of articles, I wrote about the importance of starting the process of being a better leader by looking firstly at yourself.
In Part 2 I want to focus on the importance of building and get the best from your team.
It doesn’t matter how great you are individually you can only achieve so much on your own. You might well be highly intelligent, knowledgeable and self aware.
The thing is you have a constraint that everyone has whether a leader or not.
That constraint is a maximum number of hours you have available each day, week, month and year.
With a computer or piece of equipment you can generally purchase some sort of upgrade.
There is however no upgrade available to the amount of time you have each day.
You can’t roll over time from one day to the next.
When you build a team of people you create a bigger pool of time.
Of course within that pool of time you want different areas of skills, experience, knowledge and attributes.
You want to avoid having a team of people who are all the same. Instead you want to aim for breadth and diversity.
Breadth and diversity comes from different experiences.
As a leader you want to aim to bring out the best in others. To help them to perform to their potential.
You can only do that when you really get to know the people on your team. Like you they have hopes and aspirations for their careers. Like you they have their preferences about how they operate. Like you they have specific ideas about how they want to be recognised.
Most leaders at best have a surface level understanding of their team.
With a little bit of focus and effort you can easily achieve significant gains when it comes to getting the best from your team and achieving more as a leader.
So take time to reflect and consider how you and your team can collectively achieve even better results.
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.