4 Ways To Completely Change How Your Team Sees You
All too often we hear stories about managers being put into positions with no training, no opportunity for mentorship, no upskilling; just expectations to lead teams of upwards of 10 - 15 people solely because they were “really good at their job.” Because of this, organizations are seeing retention and employee engagement at lower rates than ever because their managers were not adequately trained or supported.
Transparently, this was me in my first time managing a team.
I had good intentions to be a great manager, but I didn’t understand that managing people is a new skill set that needs to be learned. Just because I was good at project management, community engagement, and inclusion by design DID NOT mean I was even close to being a great manager of people and leading teams to reach goals.
Kindly put: my good intentions were not enough.
In this, I think it’s important for leaders and managers alike to know they can completely revolutionize the way they approach management. You can start to build a foundation of trust, accountability, and care for your team TODAY.
I’ll share six different ways you can build a stronger and more trusting team. These are best practices for leaders - high-level ways we approach the day-to-day care for the people on our team.
1. You can't lead others if you don't know yourself FIRST
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking to leaders and managers in various organization types. A consensus across all of them was → you cannot truly manage a team without knowing yourself and the ways you approach work first. It’s kinda like jumping into an Olympic-size pool without knowing 1) how well you can swim, 2) how far you can swim, 3) how long you can hold your breath. Why would you ever do that to yourself?
So why do we believe we can jump into managing people without doing a real audit of ourselves? This includes our strengths, our weaknesses, how we show up at work, and ways that we impact others. This also includes elements we need to overcome as managers, so we don’t project issues on our team. Understanding yourself is one of the most impactful practices we do as managers to begin to build a foundation of trust. Your acknowledgment of your strengths and your flaws gives your team permission to share the exact same things about themselves.
2. Learn your team’s why (& their how)
Knowing the members of your team is CRITICAL (their why, their strengths, and their interests), and making trust deposits that build over time is what separates a great manager from a challenging one. During my first experience managing people, I shared my good intentions. I wanted to be a well-liked manager whose team felt cared for, and knew I was someone they could trust. In this, I made assumptions about what they would want in a manager, without asking them the ways they like to approach work.
… and as you can imagine, that was a train wreck.
The dynamic between myself and my team began to change ONLY when I stopped assuming I had the answers and intentionally learned about my team individually on deeper levels. There’s no way to create stronger teams without understanding your team members. Learn their why, the ways they are strong in their work, what they are passionate about, and areas they want to improve. This way, whenever you are planning a project for your team, you’re able to build those work plans based not only on the strengths of your team, but also the passions and interests of your team as well.
3. Managing people is a SKILL; get trained.
Lack of training is a consistent part of most managers’ journeys, and many are forced to learn "on the go" or "build the plane while flying." I wouldn’t be surprised if YOU are also an accidental manager. One of the most impactful things we can do to build trust within our teams is to participate in a managers’ training.
This could be a one-time training hitting the high-level best practices and skills around people management. It also could be a cohort-based model, where over a certain number of months you participate in skills training while also learning from and with other managers. No matter the modality we choose, participating in a training teaches you how to assess the members of your team, create two-way accountability from yourself to your direct reports, use a playbook to have difficult conversations, manage conflict, or manage change. Training should be a priority for you both in the immediate future and for continued learning.
4. Systems and consistency create the conditions for trust.
This is honestly my favorite practice, because it truly is the backbone of trust. Systems are not always elaborate, deeply technical things. More often, they are consistent rituals helping your team understand what to expect from the manager and every single member of the team.
The systems can include, but are not limited to:
Meeting agendas sent a minimum of 24 hours prior to stand-up calls
Pulse surveys you simply send to your team once a week to check in
One-on-one agenda templates that focus on priorities, roadblocks, and decisions to be made
Biweekly feedback sessions at the top of each one-on-one meeting
A consistent facilitator or rotation of facilitators for standing meetings
The question becomes: are you willing to put in a little extra effort to create the conditions for trust your team desperately needs?
The Takeaway
The goal isn’t to become the “perfect” manager. It’s to become a manager your team can trust because they know what to expect from you, they know you care about their growth, and they know you’re willing to keep learning alongside them.
You don’t have to overhaul everything tomorrow. Start with one thing. Get curious about your team. Build a system. Ask for feedback. Get the training you never received.
Qy’Darrius (Q) McEachern
Author
CEO, Interconnected