Giving your team some space will change their life. And yours.

Efficient team management takes empowering and building a 'lead' culture instead of a 'do' culture. Have you tried?

TL;DR:

1. There's efficiency and efficiency

2. Teams that are “paid to do” don't operate like teams that are “empowered to lead”

3. Improving efficiency takes a decision to give them the space and leeway they need.

4. Need results? Discipline is (still) nowhere near mindset.

5. Interested in tips, technics and actionable mindset hacks that boost your potential and give you your life back? Stay tuned!

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Having efficient teams is the dream of pretty much every entrepreneur and top executive out there. Yet, the reality is rarely that obvious.

Things are usually complex to set up because dealing with people takes effort. Hence, things can go wrong rapidly, or stagnate indefinitely.

In the end, though, results largely depend on how you approach the efficiency discussion, and on how you decide to get things done.

Define what you mean by efficiency.

Efficiency is a little bit like perfection, if you think about it. In the same way that perfection is the enemy of good, efficiency can be the enemy of smart.

The debate on why macro is better than micro-management is an old one, I won't go into this.

What I see from field experience and from the businesses and entrepreneurs I mentor, however, is that there are two ways to formulate what people expect when they talk about efficient teams.

First approach - some will assess their team’s abiliy to implement pre-established processes and best practices without their intervention.

The method can deliver sharp results and has the merit of reducing risks by limiting initiatives from the staff as much as possible.

But… that leaves no room for personality or adaptation, and can creates significant efficiency drawbacks.

Especially in terms of initiative, problem-solving, and internal culture - not always smart.

Second approach, others will assess whether the team is able to work in autonomy to define objectives, strategies, tactics and anything related to implementing.

That's a lot more ambitious, because it implies taking a major leap of faith, while trusting that people will have the skills to keep flotting the boat on their own.

When they do that, however, efficiency can rocket exponentially because people take power and use it to get things to move on, from their own operational perspective - smart!

Teams that are “paid to do” don't operate like teams that are “empowered to lead”.

That leads to a recurring topic of discussion with the entrepreneurs and leaders I coach: how can you help your managers gain in efficiency when their head is under the water, or when there isn’t anything in place to put an empowering culture into place?

Here's a big idea to consider.

Those who are “paid to do stuff” don't operate nor deliver like those that are “empowered to lead”.

Those who merely get paid to ‘do stuff’ have a 9-5 mindset: get to work, be reactive (try to, at least), leave work, repeat.

Very little initiative, no real ambition, complaints that the workload is heavy, staff turn-over, you see the idea.

In contrast, those who are trusted to lead and empowered to make decisions take things into their own hands.

They build superpowers and leverage them to obtain results.

They focus on making a difference, not on making sure that the clock hasn't left the wall.

And they provide you, the top manager, with proactivity, anticipation, long-term thinking and planning.

That's a major difference, uh?

That's precisely why the biggest stake is to give your teams some well identified leaders capable of making things happen, rather than 'doers' who aren't capable of making things move.

Efficiency takes a decision (to give them the space and leeway they need)

Okay, but how do we do that?

Long story short: decide what culture you want, decide how you want people to feel at work, decide to trust them, decide to give them space they need to be proactive, and give them the support they need to build things seriously.

Decide to empower people.

Empowering people takes a strong decision in the first place.

You must decide to build a strong management team.

You must decide to trust their reasoning and choices, even if that's not exactly how you'd do things.

You must decide to step back and let them.

Let them define their perimeter

Giving them a way to name their scope of work and personal perimeter is also an important thing to do.

It only takes a few hours to get someone to come up with a job description - for their own role - that makes sense for the team as a whole.

It only takes a few more hours to show them how to set measurable targets that allow assessing progress (especially when you haven't set those targets yourself).

And it only takes a few hours to get people to trust that they have the skills to take power.

The impact on team efficiency is huge - you'd be silly not to leverage that, right?

Trust their ability to come up with team momentum.

Last idea for today, it's also super important to trust the fact that teams can come up with momentum and business-changing Aha! Moments, without you.

Provided of course that you give them the means to make the magic happen.

A few sticky notes and a set of markers is what's needed to get insane results, in reality.

And doing that exercise three, four, five times a year is one of the most efficient A-bso-f***ing-lutely efficient ways to involve team members into progress development and measurement on a durable basis.

Need results? Discipline is (still) nowhere near mindset.

To wrap up? I'll just recycle the topic of my previous post but there's no other way to say this: pushing for discipline delivers far less results than developing and nurturing a mindset, because the former constraints people while the latter empowers them.

Upgrading your mindset to give the people around you a lot more space is a great way to empower them (by upgrading their mindset!) and boost their productivity.

So…

👉 Imagine the type of impact your team would have if they shifted from a 'be reactive' mindset to a 'be proactive and lead' mindset?

👉 Imagine what your life could look like if your team improved their autonomy drastically?

👉 Could your personal leadership be inproved by that type of change? (Hint: of course…)

The good news is that all it takes to make this happen is a decision to provoke positive change. And that's Up To You.

Shout if you need!

Until next time,

A.