Lead By Example, Lead From the Front

 

Leadership | Anna Tarazevich | Pexels

Early in my career I had a leader that I never saw. They would have a call with us via phone and ask us for explanations of our performance and our plans and then ask us to email them that plan. They didn't often stop by or get a look at our office. They weren't physically there, that often, so they had to make business decisions based on our direction or through their own assumptions. These decisions were sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

Later in my career, with a different organization, I had a leader that was more involved. They would come to see us once or twice a week. They'd spend real time observing the team and the work they were doing. They would have in-depth conversations with the team about what they were working on and how things were going. We would sit down and talk through the businesses, what was working and what didn't and how I could best move forward.

Those experiences taught me a lot about leadership. The latter was obviously a better experience. Having a leader that leads from the front and by example is better, but why? When you have a leader or are a leader that leads from the front your teams see that. It's one thing to order a team member to do something, it's another to ask them to do it and watch while you demonstrate. You have taught the employee that you're not asking anything unreasonable and that it's possible. Leaders like this, generate loyalty and respect easily. Employees will follow them from one team or organization to another because of how much they love working for them.

Being a leader that leads from the front and by example is not terribly difficult, but it does take practice and discipline. As my career has progressed, I've worked with many more leaders. Some of them have been totally hands off while others were more invested. Seeing all of these different leaders and their impact on the teams, the quality of work and overall success has allowed me to have front row seats to lesson after lesson in what to do or not to do in leadership. Here is what I have learned about leading from the front.

Work Side by Side

This one is pretty self explanatory. The leaders need to get their hands dirty. They need to be visible. They need to work side by side with their teams on occasion. It's easy to make assumptions and infer how things are going with different team members or different parts of an organization, but it's much more valuable to physically see, hear and feel how things are going. True leaders want to make assumptions and then confirm them with real data. One of the best ways to get that data is to get down in the trenches with the team and see it for yourself. Your team not only will teach you lessons about your business, but they will see you there with them. They will appreciate getting to know you and appreciate that you are there with them. They will be more likely to say yes to hard work or challenging prospects because they trust and believe in you.

Handle With Care

Many leaders believe that your personal life stops at the door. That's nonsense. People are individuals that each have their own wants and desires. While you can't let your personal life or your people's personal lives have a negative impact on the team or organization, it doesn't mean that you should discount and ignore the fact that people have lives of which their work is just a part of. Take care of your people both professionally and personally. It's important to know who your people are, what drives them and what's going on in their lives. If you learn that an employee has a sick relative, you shouldn't ignore that, but pass along your condolences. Let them know that you're there to support them. Make sure to ask them later for an update about how their relative is doing. This small act shows that you are engaged and listening to them. It makes them feel like you care about them not only as a professional but as a person too. When you ask them to do something hard or challenging they believe that you are asking something reasonable because you care and wouldn't try to do something that would harm them. This is a powerful relationship that generates phenomenal results.

Struggle Together

Good leaders have clear expectations. They set challenging goals and strive to achieve them. Leadership, in its most basic form, is about getting other people to struggle with you towards common goals. The key there is with you. It's not about getting people to struggle for you, but with you. You are setting a big goal and working towards it and you want your team to come along with you on that journey. You are asking them to work hard, make sacrifices and achieve greatness as  a team. Set clear goals and go for them. If things don't work out or if they do work out hold everyone accountable together. You as the leader ultimately own all the results, but don't forget that you should own the failures, but give the credit to your people. 

Don't Bad Mouth People

In a previous life I had an employee that struggled. They had the ability to do the job but they were tremendously slow at how they did things. This resulted in much lower performance than their peers. I overheard the team one day, making fun of this person. Not directly but behind their back by using their name as a derogatory term for another team member taking too long to do something. For example they were saying something like "Hurry up, quit Georging it!". While this was meant as a joke and a way to encourage the team member to move more quickly it also had the potential to have a much more negative impact. As a leader I could have laughed and joined in, but I didn't. Instead I stopped everyone right there. I had a discussion with them about how inappropriate and unprofessional it was and told them that I expected to never hear that kind of talk again. The team, now embarrassed because they knew it was wrong, apologized and confirmed they understood. Had I not stepped in and allowed that to continue it could have slowly resulted in the team ganging up on the other employee. Believing they were awful and further refinancing bad behaviors. Nothing good could have come from this bullying. If I had joined in it would have only accelerated this process and taught the team that I don't respect them and that it's OK to be disrespectful to others. Don't let your teams bad mouth people and never join in yourself. 

Be Vulnerable

I'm not perfect and I make mistakes. Early in my career I wouldn't have wanted to admit this, especially in public. As I became more seasoned I realized that it was important to stop and get feedback from your team. I needed to set my ego aside so that I could get a real look at what could be better. At the end of the day, I wanted to achieve those lofty targets and understanding why performance was the way it was really mattered, even if that meant that I needed to do something differently. Instead of pretending I couldn't make mistakes I admitted I did, and asked my team how I could better help them achieve our goals. Sometimes the ideas wouldn't work but many times I got great advice on how I really could help the team be more successful. Don't let your ego get in the way of hitting your goals. Stop and listen to your team, even if it means you might not like what you hear. 

Respect the Chain of Command

In many organizations you will have multiple layers of leadership. You have your frontline folks that report to a manager, who reports to a manager of managers and sometimes there are many layers above that. It is good for leaders at the top to take time to get to know what is going on in the front lines of their business and they should spend some time at all levels of the organization understanding how things are working. It is not good for a VP or a Director or a Senior Manager to step in and do the role of their subordinate. This not only takes away power from the leader, but also teaches their teams that they should just skip a level and go to the "big boss" if they need something. This has a long term negative effect, where it can disengage a team from their leader, and slow down the overall effectiveness of a team. Is it worth having a director spend their time running their team's team? Why even have a manager if the director is going to do their jobs?  Companies have open door policies and those are great, but don't let them become a pathway for people to ignore the correct path and way of doing things.

These are some of the lessons that I've learned about being a leader, getting on the frontline with teams and leading by example. What do you think? Have you learned something different or do these line up with what you've seen in your life? Tell me about it! Post below or contact me!