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For Love of Team™ is THE podcast where Leaders Simplify Teamwork, helping you: SURROUND yourself with others doing work they LOVE. Business mentor and strategist, Winston Faircloth believes that it is your love of TEAM, and not just your love of products and customers that sets you apart in the marketplace.
Welcome to season three of the For Love of Team podcast. This season, we are taking you behind the curtain as Winston Faircloth writes his new book, Team Love, 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work. Each week, we will share excerpts from a new chapter, including key concepts and takeaways to help you support your team as a visionary leader. In this episode, host Winston Faircloth introduces chapter three, team owns the how. Now here is your host, Winston Faircloth.
Winston Faircloth:Chapter three, the team owns the how. After an exhaustive nationwide search, you finally hired your dream candidate. Considered the foremost expert in organizational effectiveness, she's going to bring a new perspective and increased capability to your team. It's the first six weeks in the office, and after all the startup and onboarding activities, you schedule a check-in meeting to assess how her new program's going. She begins, Well, overall, our team has made a great first impression, intensely committed to the mission, willing to pitch in whenever needed, deeply caring for each other.
Winston Faircloth:Yet something is clearly bothering your new executive team member. Remember our interview a few weeks ago? We brainstormed several ways to help jumpstart our cultural transformation. Our why was crystal clear, she says, strengthening our executive and leadership delegation skills so you could be more externally focused. During our first meeting, she says, you even defined what success looked like.
Winston Faircloth:It was well defined. You wanted to be out of the office creating opportunities most of your time, be well informed about internal obstacles, and ultimately have direct reports. And you gave me everything I needed to be successful, a compelling why and even what success looks like. Well, this is sounding pretty good to the visionary leader. This sounds like a really encouraging report.
Winston Faircloth:She continues. But then during the executive sessions, you kept bringing up so many helpful solutions, telling us how you would handle things. And normally, that'd be amazing. But you may not realize this. But when you're in one of those toss ideas against the wall and see what sticks moments, many of us take these as marching orders.
Winston Faircloth:We leave our quarterly planning session with a clear focus and not more than just a couple weeks later, it feels like we're changing directions again. When you get into the weeds like that, it feels like you don't trust us to get our jobs done. What started out as a promising discussion really took a dark turn there, right? So at times like these, it's important to remember that you assembled your team for very specific reasons. You understand their background, their skills and talents comprised just the right mix, just the right combination to help you achieve your big vision.
Winston Faircloth:And yet, when often casting a vision or making project assignments, we can get too deep into the details of sharing exactly how we want things done. And when we do so, it could be perceived as micromanaging the very talent that we're so proud of bringing onto our team. We forget that our most important role as a leader is to provide the key context, the why, and describe clearly what success looks like. And when we do this, we unleash greater creativity and innovation from the people closest to the action, especially when we leave how to reach success squarely in their hands. Now, you might just be surprised.
Winston Faircloth:Your way just might be the more complex or costly way. And by leveraging the expertise of your team, you could unlock greater improvements and innovations than even what you had dreamed of or considered. Now, so for further action, let's talk about how we do this. Often, we bring specific how to experience that can be helpful to our team members, especially when we're promoted from within. Yet our words, especially in position of leadership, carry extra weight.
Winston Faircloth:So when you're having a meeting, make sure to clarify the purpose of the discussion, especially when you're introducing potential changes or innovations and sharing those with your team. When you're in the pure ideation mode, explicitly say, hey, we're just generating ideas, and you want their participation and involvement as well. Nothing I contribute, nothing you contribute as a leader is necessarily a directive or mandate to action. That's important to share. Be clear also on how the ultimate decision is going to be made.
Winston Faircloth:Sometimes team members perceive their involvement in a group decision, perhaps settling on a final resolution could be by vote or the most persuasive, passionate voice in the room. You may decide that you are just gathering information and you will make the decision and get back or other times you're looking for team consensus. Finally, avoid the trap of outlining step by step processes of how to meet our goals, especially in dealing with seasoned or promising leaders. Leave the how to them as long as our why is compelling and our mutual success measures are clear.
Judith:Thanks, Winston. We invite you to share your feedback and biggest takeaways on our website at 4loveofteam.com/blog and look for today's chapter episode. Thanks for listening. Remember that by loving our people who love our customers, your visionary leadership comes to life. We hope to see you next time on the For Love of Team podcast.