Ep. 206 How to lead a team

[00:00:00] So we have a question this week and the question is how do you lead your team? I'm Tommy Danger. This is The Thinking Effect, where we help you do your daily best. Thank you so much for tuning in, please like, subscribe and share.

[00:00:16] Yeah, I just appreciate you guys. I figured that, you know, I've been on the path about creativity and such for a couple of weeks now in the five minute gyms. So I figured this week we could dig a little deeper and talk about my past experience as

[00:00:32] a team leader, direct to supervisor manager, whatever you want to call it. But I was a leader of a team of five and the question is how do you lead a team?

[00:00:46] So I always have a story, right? So I'm going to start this with a story. I remember when I worked my first job and I'm not going to name names because I don't want to, um, I'm not here to belittle anybody's experience

[00:01:03] or their management styles is just the reality of what I've seen. And when I started working my first job, which was in the house of theity industry, I had a few different managers. Now, the very,

[00:01:20] very first manager that I work with as an intern, very meticulous gentleman from the UK, Indian and such. You know, I coming out of college wanted to mirror everything this guy did. I mean,

[00:01:34] the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he interacted with the staff, the way he interacted with the customers. You know, me coming from Harlem and just seeing stuff on the block and now I'm in this,

[00:01:48] um, Hyian Hotel, it was just, it was, it was mesmerizing to me to see it. So I soaked it all in, you know, I remember only had two suits and I had to be there, you know, five days out of the week,

[00:02:03] but I would, you know, rest my mom sold. She taught me how to match different shirts and ties, under the suits so that each time you would see it, it wouldn't look as if I had on the same suit

[00:02:15] over and over. So I would always come in on time, I would take a lot of notes and I would just soak up everything that he would do. And one of the best traits that I learned from him was

[00:02:34] how to mirror the customers, right? In example, so if you're coming in for breakfast and you're upbeat and you know, you like have a lot of energy in the morning. And you're, hey, how are you doing?

[00:02:48] I'm going to greet you right back. Hey, morning, great. Everything's fine. All of you table one. You know, I'm going to mirror that energy back. There was some people who came in and they're like,

[00:02:57] good morning, table one. And I was like, right this way please, right? It is because in learning that it puts people at ease. It's almost like you're speaking their language.

[00:03:14] So that's a really good trait that I had learned from him. Now, what I also learned from him was how to be direct. You know, as a leader, you can't not be clear with your instructions. And if you do,

[00:03:35] you're pretty much setting yourself up for conflict or just misunderstanding, you know. If you're supposed to be here at a particular time, you hear it at a particular time. If that was the message for the team, there was no exceptions because you have personal issues or whatever,

[00:03:53] this is the time for the team. And if you need something other than that, then the discussion needs to be had, but it's not just like something that you could, like free willingly just change.

[00:04:06] And he was very, very stern and fair about that. So I picked that up from him. Really great guy. On a flip side, as a leader, sometimes he had an issue with taking constructive criticism,

[00:04:23] because he thought that everything he did was great. You know, in his eyes, he was great. Great in the sense of while the operation did not do well financially, he did prove to the owners at the time that he was putting things in place

[00:04:48] to show that he was making effort. And sometimes with certain operations, that's all you can do. It's literally, it's an experiment while you may have a baseline and goal, setting in play. Unless you have some documentation of what has worked and what hasn't,

[00:05:07] you got to try a bunch of different things to get it right, to figure it out. And that's what he was really good at. He was really good at trying things out.

[00:05:16] If it failed, try something else, not going back to it. But, you know, if you challenged him and say, like, look, you're doing a bad job. He really took that personal. So I would say,

[00:05:28] you know, in leading a team, you have to be open to feedback. The people who are on the floor, the people who are doing the actual work, the people who are interacting with the customers,

[00:05:44] this sort of like the front line. As a manager, and one thing I don't like about menge, as a manager, like, and as a leader, stay out of the way. Stay out of the way. When this

[00:05:56] went, it's just daily operations. What we call, like, front office operations, like, stay out of the way. Only if you were called on to intervene in a situation to where your skill set is needed. Maybe you were really good with conflict. And a person is being

[00:06:16] extremely confrontational. Now, you're needed to come in and defuse the situation. But don't be the type of manager to where you or leader to where you feel as if to stay busy like you have

[00:06:28] to be mixed in with everybody else. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you feel like you want to be mixed in, ask the team, hey, do you guys need help? Where can I help you? Now also, just because you're a

[00:06:42] good leader doesn't mean it's a good in hands on an operation. And I think one that traits of a good leader and leading a team is knowing that it's knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are, so to turn that over stepping your boundaries and getting the people way

[00:07:00] and making it frustrated. Shout out to my son. My son would always say, you know, like certain managers, they just, they get into a way to operation. Just tell me what you need done and let

[00:07:13] me do it. Because sometimes a manager can get into a way and you just totally out of train wreck the operation or you slow things down or you start to ask questions and that's not

[00:07:25] that's not a good thing. So it's always looking for the feedback from the team and asking them what tools do they need to do their jobs effectively. Now the tools can be operational things,

[00:07:43] but the tools could be something as simple as making the work environment decent like making it feel comfortable. You know, a lot of jobs are just shitty jobs. I'm not going to sit here and

[00:07:57] sugarcoat it, you know. But if you make the team feel as if we're together like we're sort of fighting the villain, right? The job is the villain and we're coming together like super heroes and we're taking care of these customers and we're creating these products and we're producing

[00:08:18] these services together as a team. And as a leader you'll be in human, something as simple as saying get more into the team. I've worked with managers to wear for days, weeks, sometimes even months,

[00:08:33] they walk right past you like you don't exist. They never ask you how's your day going, how's the project coming along? They just come to you with demands. They just come,

[00:08:45] hey I need to stand right now. Where is this? That's not the trait of a good team leader. We are human first. You, you are a human first. Get to not saying get personal with people,

[00:08:59] but you can be personalable. Common courtesy. Get more in. Get out of the noon. Good evening. You ain't got to know a person's backstory, but as a leader, you want to have that baseline. I've

[00:09:18] worked for certain managers to wear their fear is inflicted into the team. So when I talk about setting the environment, if as a leader you have these fears in your mind and you have a fear

[00:09:32] you not being able to handle something that's going trickle down to the team. Everybody else is on edge now you're making the air uncomfortable. You have to set the tone as the leader

[00:09:46] wanted to number one things that I stand on is good or bad on your decision. Take that hit. Don't be one of the suckleaders that if something goes wrong you point to the team and say,

[00:09:59] well you know such and such drop the ball I'll speak to them. No you take the hit for the team. That's the way it goes. Because you should have the open communication with the a team that says

[00:10:13] if something goes wrong come and talk to me about it. You don't have the hide and try to figure it out in sweet things under the rug because if you don't have open communication they could be a whole

[00:10:25] bunch of things going on and you never know anything about it and you don't have the opportunity to address it but you haven't even set the tone to where people can come and talk to you.

[00:10:39] So don't be one of those fearful type of people and as a leader if you'd notice you're not good at something because a lot of times some of us are placed in management roles. Not because

[00:10:52] we're not because we clearly have leadership capabilities but because we or because you actually possess consistency and doing a job by showing up. You ever see those people like you promote it just

[00:11:06] because they're there and then when they're promoted if a person is promoted to being a leader and they have the potential it is your job as a leader to give them the training to bring out that skill set.

[00:11:21] Not everybody is meant to be a leader. Some people are made to be strong support staff in their really good at it but when you put a person that's in a strong support staff role into a

[00:11:33] leadership position they're not good with confrontation, they're not great with making decisions quickly, they're not that good with the big vision. That's your job, that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to take in all the information, process it, think about the big vision and then

[00:11:54] figure out what tools that the team need to get it done or when things begin to derail how can you put things back on track and a lot of times some people merely don't want to be a leader because

[00:12:07] they don't want to take responsibility for other people. But as a good leader when you're building a team you should be able to surround yourself with the people who basically have your weaknesses.

[00:12:18] There's no need for you to have somebody on the team with the skill set that is just to strong as yours because the only thing you're going to do is fill threaten and bump heads

[00:12:29] which is why you want to diversify your team and I'm going to get on the coaching thing for minute which is why the flight assessment is so dope because or the disc assessment let's keep it

[00:12:41] a book because now you can see the type of personalities that you have on a team and how they can fit in each role or what adjustments you need to make on a team so that you can have

[00:12:53] basically that super team those four dominant personality types one person that can solve problems one person that can interact with people one person like a set the pace and one person like a set

[00:13:03] the procedures so as you at the head and then you have the super team right under you you just building your own chart and you have to find ways not to let your personal views interfere with

[00:13:17] the team it's always about the team as the leader it's always about the team how can you set them up best for success not yourself it's not about you stop being self as you get in these roles

[00:13:31] and you start making six and seven figures and you ego get big and you think it's about you it ain't about you what can you do for the team from the time that anybody came on my team within a month

[00:13:48] my question is what do you want to do next I want to see you grow I don't want somebody that's going to sit on the team for 20 years and one role even if that's your personality type take that

[00:14:02] somewhere else because I want to see that you're learning something else maybe that's my fault like I want to see better for other people and then I'm looked at like I'm crazy but that's cool too

[00:14:15] if me wanting to see it good for other people on a team makes me crazy call me crazy I'm starting to go off on a rent so I'm just going to recap here if you are looking

[00:14:27] to lead a team one of the first things you need to do is identify what the team needs okay second thing you need to do is establish an environment where you have open communication and that's for a positive and constructive criticism okay

[00:14:54] thirdly you want to make sure that you have some sort of training and support in place for the team and to parallel that if you as a manager don't have a particular skill set to where you are

[00:15:13] maximizing your leadership abilities then you have to manage up talk to the people above you about getting you to training so that you can be a more effective leader so that you can

[00:15:25] possibly learn how to deal with conflict maybe you're putting to the role and the certain things you're not good with maybe you have a temper issue because you like things moving very fast yeah you can get your coach work through that consulting whatever you want to call it

[00:15:43] and then lastly make sure that you're all working together old school saying there is no Iain team this is the thinking effect where we help you do you daily best