do you feel that your leadership model is not working well at all? Do you think your team deserves a better leader? Do you want to be a better leader for your team? If your answer to any of the above questions is YES, this article will help you.

We live in an era of knowledge and innovation. Every day, new companies and new products emerge, disrupting the market and changing our lives.

Remember 1998 when the vast majority of us didn’t have a cell phone? And now, how many of us go back if we detect that we have left our cell phone at home?

All these world-changing creations are carried out by teams, teams of people who have a leader or manager in their organizations.

This is why it is very important to adapt the leadership style to the current times, to understand and adopt Agile leadership.

1- Develop Leaders

Typically, companies were managed from the top down, and this worked very well. Today this type of organization is too slow. Other management models are needed.

Being the one who knows the most is a stick!

Imagine that your team members are frequently asking you for the answers they need to get on with their work, at first it might make you feel good: How lucky you are to be able to help them! But over time, this model can become unsustainable, because as a leader or manager we have other tasks besides answering our team’s questions, right?

Have you ever gone on vacation and had to take your computer with you? Oh! and the cell phone on. This is normal, you have accustomed your team that for 11 months you were there to answer their questions, now?

We are used to the fact that when someone is assigned to a position, this person has to attract followers. We could say it is the “silverback” model: “I am the leader, follow me”. The Agile approach is about supporting the team to become leaders.

“don’t look for followers, create leaders”.

Some ideas that allow us to move towards this new leadership model are:

• It must be ensured that they have the necessary competencies for the assigned task.
• Clearly express the objective to be achieved.
• Provide them with a safe environment where failure is not penalized.

Developing leaders does not mean that they will take away your workplace. On the contrary. Tomorrow when we need someone to lead a new team or department other than your own, we will have a pool of very good candidates who will be trained in problem solving and leadership development in the same way you are. We empower the organization and it empowers us as leaders!

2- Change the culture from Winner-Loser to Winner-Winner

In many of our organizations we still live according to the winner-loser philosophy: for there to be winners in a group, there must be losers. Managers have people on their team to whom they give more options (winners) and other people to whom they offer fewer options (losers). This situation is difficult to avoid since there are people in the team that we can trust more than others and we are likely to offer more opportunities. But this topic will be dealt with in more depth in later posts.

In fact, most of us have grown up living in a school model with this win-lose mentality. At school in a spelling test, the teacher does not let the students use the dictionary during the test. Because if I did that all the students would all get good grades… what’s the problem with everyone getting good grades? We need losers to have winners!

In our organizations and teams, we want people who know how to use all the resources at hand to get the best result, but instead we have not been educated to do so.

As I comment in the Productivid-UP ebook: our brain has limited resources so we have to use all the tools we have at our disposal.

3- Know what motivates people

“

Motivated teams are capable of extraordinary results

”
Over the years and in numerous companies I have observed that at work you can find motivated people and unmotivated people. Outside of work, however, everyone is motivated.

One of our tasks as a manager is to keep the teams motivated, a task that is said so quickly is very complex. We cannot force people to be motivated, nor can we devote all our time to individual motivation programs.

“Our job as leaders is to modify the system so that there are in motivating elements.”

Science has shown that human beings have 4 intrinsic motivators:

• feeling part of the group or recognition
• autonomy
• master’s degree
• purpose

4- Listen to the team

Although it may seem trivial, it is not, and it responds to one of the basic desires of human beings: people need to feel that they are part of a tribe, a group or collective. If we want our people to feel that they are part of us, we must let them know that we really care about them.

A very powerful tool for this is active listening. Active listening consists (broadly speaking) of letting our interlocutor speak, that is, not monopolizing the conversation, letting the other party express himself freely and without judgment.

Focus all our attention on what they are telling us WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT THE ANSWER.

But active listening not only allows for more information. It also has a wonderful healing power on the person being listened to. In addition, people will possibly start to find the solution to their problems.

But active listening should help us to approach solutions to problems, never to focus on complaints.

Complaint vs problem

If you can’t say what you would like to happen in a given situation, then it’s not a problem, it ‘s simply a complaint.

A problem only exists when there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you want to happen. And this connects directly to another of the tasks of a manager: the achievement of objectives.

5- Set clear objectives

Focus on the team bringing value to the customer or user, not on everyone being busy!

A manager who only cares about people is no good for business. The manager who cares about people and results. The more you care about people and results; the more motivated people will be to achieve them.

If we only focus on people, he will be a very participative manager, but without ensuring the future of the company. If we only focus on objectives, people will not be involved or committed.

The people on the team work with the manager, not for the manager. Team members are collaborators and should be treated as such. Each employee works for himself, contributing to a common team result. This common result must be understood as more important than your own, thus promoting growth as a team.

The objectives should be (they do not have to meet all the points, but are good practice):

• Consensual, to make it easier for the team to “make them their own”.
• Realistic, so as not to discourage the team
• Relevant and useful, so that the team understands how it benefits them.
• Concrete and easy to understand
• Stimulating and ambitious, to motivate the team to do its best

You can also find more information on goals and OKRs in the article “Make no more New Year’s resolutions or use OKRs!”

Summarizing

Being a good leader is a long-distance race, it is not achieved from one day to the next, many times it generates frustration to see that your efforts do not generate an immediate result. However, if you persist and insist consistently and truly, the results come.

Here are five tools that can help you along the way:

• Develops leaders
• Change the culture to win-win
• Know what motivates people
• Listen to the team
• Set clear objectives