How to Lead as a Member of a Team
Each of you in your roles at the office are a leader whether you have people reporting to you or not. Every action, good or bad, is recognized in the office, and reflects not only your work ethic, but also your reputation. Reputation for reputation sake does not matter much. Many people go into work each day a phony version of themselves, trying to get liked by everyone. Generally when that happens, it has the opposite effect and makes you look like a suck up. That is why the number one virtue in any work location is honesty.
Honesty
In order to be a good leader, even if you are on a team, the bare minimum requirement that you must meet is being honest. If you do something wrong, own up to it. If you believe something to be a good idea, speak up about it and stand by your convictions until proven incorrect. It is more important to be respected in a workplace than to be liked, but if you are honest, you have a better shot of being liked as well. If you shoot for being liked, but are also dishonest, you usually are not liked and lack respect.
The truth is that being honest is one of the most difficult things to do, especially if it appears to go against your best interests. Sometimes lying is easier. Blaming someone else for your mistake or trying to make it seem like you’re working harder than you are will always be found out. Every lie always comes to the light in time, and by not owning up to it, you are building your reputation as a liar. No one wants to work with a liar. The way to see this in your own workplace is simple. You know them by their fruits. Those who lie, often don’t produce the best results.
As a leader on your team, officially or unofficially, it’s important to be direct with your team members. If you need something from any of them like a report or an article, it’s best to be up front with them about things like deadlines, laying it all out on the table at the outset. If you fail to do this, it’s on you, and you may risk not getting the product you want.
Ownership
Leading requires ownership of every action that you perform. This directly comes after being honest since you can’t take ownership of something unless you are honest about how it went. Another large part of ownership is service. It’s key that leaders know how to serve as Christ served. You must die to your own desires at times for the greater good of the team. If you are leading a project as an individual contributor, you must be clear about expectations. This includes your expectations, your deadlines, and the format of the final product, but it also needs to be clear how you communicate with each other and measure success. Every single one of those actions is your responsibility at the end of the day. I didn’t come up with this idea, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin did in their book Extreme Ownership, but I use it every day.
Communication
Communication is key to getting projects to work. A weekly meeting and the ability to make yourself available at a moment’s notice go a long way in successfully managing a project. If someone delivers the incorrect end product, or misses a deadline without letting you know, you did not properly communicate the task or deadline. Sometimes people will blow you off, but that informs you for the next time you put a project team together. Going back to the discussion about honesty, evaluate your team members. Look at who delivers on time and good work, and isn’t dishonest about it, and put them on your team, avoiding the dishonest ones at all costs.
Sometimes, you won’t have a choice, but to put someone on your team that you don’t want on your team. Your boss may like them, they may have knowledge that no one else has, or your team is small and you’re limited in your choices. Give them tasks that are not too challenging, not critical, and not time sensitive. Include them in the team, but limit their actions. This way they’ve participated in the project, but are not responsible for the success or failure of the overall project. If you treat everything that you do in this way, even outside of a project, you’ll start to make sure you are well organized and prepared before starting any project.
The Role of the Leader – Challenges
As an individual contributor, you often need to enlist help from other team members or members of other departments. As a manager and beyond, you’ll be leading others towards a common goal. Both of these are similar in that you need someone to successfully do their job, so you get a task accomplished.
There are two primary schools of thought regarding leadership. The first school of thought is the top down approach of just telling someone to get something done, and then reprimanding them where it goes wrong. In that approach the onus is on the team, and not directly on you…or so you think. The problem with this approach to leadership is that the onus is on you, but you are directing blame to your employees or teammates.
Over time, this builds resentment or frustration. While your highest performing team members, either permanent or temporary, will still deliver, their overall outlook will be diminished either on the project or the team. In the long run, this could potentially lead to a net loss in productivity, and could even alienate those higher performers to the point of exiting the team or even the company.
The other extreme of this is the idea that your team should run each project. This mindset is equally flawed since even though the onus is still on you, you are now not giving your teammates any of their own responsibility. This could also lead to a decrease in productivity over time, since instead of your high performers having too much responsibility, they now get bored and as a result look for a role that is more challenging.
The Role of the Leader – Solutions
Treat them with the respect , clearly articulate the goals of the project/task/team, and create clear benchmarks. If other priotiries arise, have a conversation and move the benchmarks. This ensures that they understand exactly what they are responsible for, and it clearly puts the onus on you as the leader. The onus will always be on you for the final product, it’s better to articulate that from the beginning than leave your team guessing.
If something goes wrong the first go-around, it’s probably your mistake. Either you didn’t articulate something clearly enough, or you gave the wrong task to the wrong person. You just re-evaluate, fix the problem, and move on. Owning up to the mistake and fixing it will garner more respect. Next time, you won’t make that same mistake, and your output will be more efficient and higher quality.
Getting the Best Out of Each Team Member (even if you don’t manage them)
One of the most difficult parts of leading in a project or a team is that you are getting a mix of high and low performers. Low performers are on every team and it’s important to help them feel included. You could have someone on your team who your manager placed there because they wanted to give them more of a challenge, or they needed to participate in more projects. Regardless, your job is to motitvate this team member to go about and beyond.
This can definitely be frustrating, especially if you have no control or say in the structure or tasks of the team, but there are techniques you can try to help the situation. For example maybe you need to proofread something they wrote, but they just haven’t written it yet. It’s due in a couple of days, and you are on the hook since you’re the senior of the two of you. Set up a call.
Make it a half hour meeting and keep the conversation brief (like 5 minutes), and just call it a catch up where you check in and offer them any help. Tell them in order to edit it, you absolutely need it by the end of the day. More often than not, you’ll have it the next day. At that point, you can proofread it, send it back, and if you really don’t think they’ll get around to it, schedule another call. Rinse, repeat.
If they are still having trouble and you are on good terms, ask them if there is something going on at work that is making them feel overwhlemed. A lot of the time, people are just looking for someone to talk to. You could even direct them to this article on finding peace.
Showing Thanks
Once the project is complete or even if you are the leader of a consistent team, it’s important to thank your teammates often. What tends to work best in my experiences, is something as simple as taking them out to lunch or buying them a coffee or tea. It’s sometimes nice to do an activity together as a team such as bowling or skeet shooting (yes, I’ve heard of teams doing this) after work one day. Most people take a lunch break, and it goes a long way to either single people out and buy them lunch, or even get the whole team together for lunch.
These moments of gratitude are also useful during projects, since sometimes the conversations will flow into the project. Ideas that are harder to discuss in the office, become much easier over food. Dinners once in a while are good as well with team members, especially when the whole team is in town, but be careful to not overdo dinners and activities outside of the office. It’s important that if you ask someone to leave their families to spend time with the team to make it worthwhile.
Team Building Done Right
As a team member, or a team leader, I’m sure you’ve run or participated in team building exercises. Without an end goal, team building exercises are a waste of time. If done correctly, they can be just what the team needs for more productivity. An example of team building done correctly could be something like a problem solving game, where the team needs to work together to solve a particular problem in a set period of time. It’s always best if the problem is related to the project on which you are working because ideas can spring up from the wells of inspiration in a way that may not have happened otherwise.
Personality tests are great as well, but not as team building exercises. They are a perfect example of something that does work for personal growth and development, and may be worth doing with each of your individual team members, but doesn’t hold too much value in the overall team. The downside to all team building or individual building exercises is that they take time, and an important question to ask is whether or not that time is valuable.
Is it Worth the Time?
For the individual, that time is definitely valuable since by taking the time to learn about themselves and their pitfalls and strengths, they may actually bring more to the table in the future. This not only has the potential to increase productivity, but also to increase personal development and overall retention.
For the team, it’s a little trickier to ascertain when it is worth the time and monetary investment of team building. If the company has a lot of money and time to spare, then it’s definitely worth getting the team in a room during the work day, and helping them to work better together. If time and budget are more constrained however; it might be more worth going bowling after work or heading out to happy hour.
Conclusion
Being an individual contributor doesn’t mean you can’t be a leader. Everyone has the potential to lead a team in a positive or negative direction. The overall leader of the team may say one thing, but it’s okay to speak your mind if you disagree with something (politely of course). Being an honest team member, who has integrity and takes ownership of all that you do will go a long way. You never know, you may be a natural.