If you don’t think your team is amazing, who will?

This is the best bang-for-buck leadership tool I know – and most people shy away from using it, because it means sticking your neck out.

It starts with a question: at work,

How do you regard the people and teams around you?

Are they good; are they smart; are they trying their best?

Or are they careless, lazy, unthinking, unfeeling?

One huge lesson I discovered really early in my leadership career was that:

You can make an intentional choice about how you regard the people around you at work; and
That choice pre-determines what you actually get!

This is one of the most important choices I know for leaders to make and as we’ll see, it matters even more for whole teams, especially the one at the top.

If you think the people around you are lazy and unthinking, well, what a surprise, that is how they will be.

If you choose to see the people around you as amazing, full of innate ability, trying to do good, that is absolutely what you will get back.

And not only that, it’s a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating dynamic, especially if you’re the kind of person who holds themselves to a high standard. Because that gives you the kind of impact that makes other people (often unconsciously) say to themselves:

‘Hey, you know what, Nick clearly thinks I am an awesome person. And if he thinks it, well, it must be partly true at least. I am going to try my best to live up to that. It makes me feel good. I’m going to raise my game with other people too, and show them how awesome I think they are.’

Okay, so I know what you’re thinking at this point (26 years of coaching does give me some Jedi powers), there’s always that one exception.

I say, ‘Hey think of people at work as awesome, and they’ll be awesome’, and you’re thinking of Bill. Bill is the guy who always seems to do less than he could, to take advantage. We all know a Bill.

The risk for you, if you start trying to think of Bill as amazing, is that he betrays that gift. This is a real risk. Do not use that as an excuse to tamp down on how you regard everyone else at work, though. Add Bill to your innate belief in the potential of others. And then if he doesn’t live up to it, decide whether there’s more work to be done with him. If you don’t do this, you will never hit your own full potential as a leader.

And there is an even bigger payoff waiting for you if you want it.

I have seen from so many coaching assignments that this mindset matters even more with teams. And the more senior the team is, the bigger the impact.

We know from Hackman and Wageman’s research that the senior team’s functioning is truly decisive. The whole organisation’s fate can hang on it.

So if you’re a member of a senior team, or even the CEO, how you regard your colleagues matters much more than you think. Whether you see them as amazing people with huge potential, or as lazy, unthinking and obstructive – it won’t just stay in that senior team. It reaches out from your boardroom to every corner of the organisation.

So you have to decide. Do you want a senior team that sees each other as less than amazing?

Or do you want to take a risk, and be the role-models for inspiring everyone’s potential?

About me

I’m Nick Robinson. I coach leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together.

My flagship programme The Shift is a development experience that helps leadership teams strengthen trust, alignment and how they function together. The result for the organisation: clearer decisions, stronger collective leadership and better performance.

If you would like to learn more about that work, please get in touch. https://www.nickrobinson.org/the-shift-leadership-team-development

LinkedIn Newsletter

Convictions: Leadership Teams is my monthly LinkedIn newsletter: longer, more personal pieces setting out what I’ve come to believe about leadership teams and the work of developing them. You’ll find it here:

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/convictions-leadership-teams-7437896226198450177/