Getting the best out of the team - II

Here’s second installment of “Getting the best out of the team”.

This speaks more about a manager’s traits than her business skills or domain expertise. I emphasize on the character of the manager or opposed to her personality. (My favorite on character v/s personality debate is Stephen Covey’s legendary The 7 habits of highly effective people. Character ethic – in Covey’s words, things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule – are foundations of truly sustainable long term success. Covey does discuss this topic at great detail in the book, however I will briefly touch upon few things in me that were created or influenced by the discussion. These are the things that I call character traits in here.

Ego
A manager should be most careful about her ego. Not having ego is not the objective, but not being egoistic is. Egoistic is a person who allows her ego to take over her rationality. A manager who wants a team to do something just because she wants it that way can never motivate the team to do their best. One should understand that an intelligent person is motivated to do something that he has chosen to do, not something that has been forced to him. “Because I am saying so” is never – in normal situations - a reasonable answer to any question. In fact, it is recipe of disaster. Democracy is the way any team consisting of knowledge workers should be operating. In democracy, everyone is valuable and has an opinion. Although there’s one person who is responsible to carry out the decisions – e.g. manager – the decision is always made together, by everyone.

Of course, there are situations when a certain scenario demands that a task is carried out exactly as asked for, without asking any questions – perhaps because there’s no time for discussion. The manager has to become ruthless in such situations and command the team to do “because she is saying so”. Will the team not be annoyed with such antagonistic behavior? It would not if the manager a) has been making the decisions democratically in all normal times, and b) after the situation is over and the outcome is concluded explains the gravity of the issue and the reason she forced to carry the task out in a predetermined model. These situations have to be rare, if that. Or else…

Humility – being down-to-earth
One of the meanings of the word “down-to-earth” in dictionary is “with both feet on the ground”. How true! This comes from the thorough belief in the fact that a manager is not special just because of the position. This means outside of every situation where decision making is required, the criteria to define importance of a manager is exactly same as that for a team member, in terms of power, status, and seniority. This is easier explained with examples.

Most managers need an office with closed doors. I don’t. In fact, I am convinced that managers want offices with closed doors; they don’t need it. Some tasks truly require such confidentiality that the manager cannot sit out in the open, but such tasks are less than 20% of the total time spent by the manager in office premises. Why not sit with the team and become part of the same dynamics that they are! Why not sit next to them so that they have you when needed! Some see this as disgrace; I feel it’s a necessity ingredient for a cohesively bound team.

Respectfulness – valuing contribution
This is flip side of the humility coin. Humility is thinking right of self – i.e. not having any kind of superiority complex. Respectfulness is being able to genuinely value the contribution that each person is making to the team. Most certainly, everyone on team is not equal. However, if motivated in right direction, every person does the best he can for the team. Do you salute back the security personnel at the gate? Do you at least smile at him when he salutes? Can we not respect the fact that he is doing his job and needs to be appreciated that he is doing is responsibly? Think!

Another example I have is about phones. I have seen managers talking over speaker phone even when not necessary. Every time I have seen this, I have sensed the fact that it was just being careless. The manager did not intend to prove to the other person that he was superior and busy and therefore did not even have the time to pick up the handset. It’s only that the manager was not thinking about how the other person feels.

A manager should always be thinking about the reactions to her action, before she acts. And all her actions should only show respect to the team members.

Genuine interest in long-term success
This is very important. As a manager I have always been thinking about long-term success of my people as opposed to using them as replaceable components the extracting most out of them as long as they are around. Manager’s job is to motivate every single individual to attain his/her potential. It’s the realization of that potential that motivates the individual even further, resulting into added knowledge and in turn added productivity. “Extracting most” approach does exactly opposite of what it wants to achieve. However being genuinely interested makes a phenomenal difference in the team members’ attitude towards manager.

After all, a good manager takes efforts on his team members with full understanding that sooner or later most of them are going to quit the team. However, for whatever duration they work together, the manager does the best he can to help his team members get better.

Politics!!!
This is the “F” word in team dynamics. Simple definition of politics is an act where things other than the intrinsic merit influence a decision. Most common examples of politics if favoritism. If there’s one thing that can kill a team, it’s favoritism. As soon as a manager starts making decisions based on who she likes more than others, the team will be motivated not to deliver but to provide lip-service and to become favorite. Is anything else needed for such as team to face complete disaster?

It does not mean by any chance however that a manager cannot like some people more than the others. She can. However, all of her decisions should be based on the intrinsic merit of the parties involved thereby treating everyone equally. A manager should always be able to explain her decisions to the team in most logical manner. In fact the better is when such a situation where a manager has to explain motives behind a decision never arises.

Thinking about this, all of these are truly personal characteristics and have nothing whatsoever to do with management. And that’s the point of character ethics. Have them embedded in you in such a way that you as a manager are nothing different than you as a person. Is that not simple enough?