“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right” (Henry Ford)
People are capable of doing great things. Whether they do great things is up to you, the Leader.
As leader, you must believe that the team can achieve great results. In fact, believe more than the team itself is willing to believe. You can’t fake it though. It must be genuine because people can always tell.
From the coaching file (in a seminar I gave):
“Norm, this is all fine and good, but how do you use your methods when some engineers can’t even be trusted to get a can of soda from the corner store?”
What is the likelihood that these engineers will actually go the extra mile for this manager?
I am not saying that all you need is to believe that a person will do great things and it will happen. There is actually work involved. However, if you believe that a person will NOT do great things, then it will be almost impossible for them to do great things.
The Leader is the enabler. Enabler of success, or enabler of failure.
Here’s how it works. We “unconsciously” act to get what we believe will happen.
Picture a Leader who believes that a certain team member can do even less then the Leader asks for. Not much trust there is it? Leaders who don’t trust their team members try to “fix” them. They check on them. They second guess them. They tell them what to do and correct them often. And they always show their disappointment – even when they try to hide it.
How does that make the team member feel? Getting great results is hard work – for anybody. If you were treated this way, would you want to work hard – for that Leader? Lack of hard work leads to poor results. The Leader gets what the leader believed.
Now, picture yourself as a Leader who believes in a team member’s ability to succeed. You want it to be true. So you look for clues of it happening. As you check with the team member, you focus on what is done well – and you notice that. You congratulate the team member. You encourage. You remove obstacles. You are motivating the team member to get the results you believe will occur.
Form the coaching file:
The team was discussing a complicated task. The meeting was turning sour. The Team leader’s questions felt more like an inquisition than a discussion.The Team leader asked me to run the meeting for a while. I redirected the discussion: people started contributing ideas, and even cracked jokes. An objective and a plan were agreed to.
After the meeting the Team leader and I discussed this turn-around. I said: “I started with the belief that each person was capable of overachieving the task. Then I asked questions that were aimed at proving this to be true. I did not judge their answers – but encouraged what was good.”
He did not believe me.
“It’s not that simple”, he said, “it’s obvious you don’t know these people. If you had, you would never have been able to get that much out of them!”
I’m not kidding.
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If you feel like commenting, please share examples of when somebody really believed in you – or you in somebody else. Let us know how it made you feel and what you achieved.
Hi Norm. I don’t know where are we in the discussion, but I will try to add my comments. What makes a team? What makes a team to be successful? What is driving the team to do what they do? What motivates the team? Why do I do this at this moment? Why China does not have a Boeing or Airbus company? … Finally I will quote Mark Twain: ” The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds. ” ( Following the Equator ) and ” Character is the architect of achievements ” ( Lecture – Defense of General Funston )
Jean-Pierre, these are great questions. I think I will treat some of them with a separate post. That said, the question “What makes a team” is very interesting to me – because I have worked with a number of “team leads” who in fact are responsible for a team made up of 5-10 people, and yet they are not a team. The leader meets with the team members individually and assigns work individually. Perhaps from the team leader point view – there is a team (helping the leader out) – but from the team members perspective – they are not really in a team. So I think that at a minimum, what makes a team is a shared goal.
From there, I can expand to what makes a team successful: although it is difficult to list all factors that impacts success, I would venture to say that a necessary condition is to ensure that the team be “on the same page” with regards to the goal. As a result, I often check team members when I start work with a team to see what they understand their goal to be. I don’t always get the same answer from members of the same team. Amazingly, the Leader thought that everybody was on the same page…
Motivation in my book starts with a key element: team members must feel that they contribute to the goal. Team members who are made to feel that their work is not important with regards to the final goal will be very hard to motivate indeed. It helps when the Leader takes time to recognize the contribution.
As for the rest of your comment, I must think…