Aparajita Dhar explores the trap of high performance and shares an important lesson on how leaders keep people at the core.
During my two-decade long career I have amassed lot of lessons around “what to do” as a leader.
I’ve learned even more about “what not to do.”
As leaders we must be aware of our styles and its impact on our teams. For all the talk on the benefits of different leadership styles, we must also take care to prevent harm that our style of work can inflict on our teams and organizational culture.
Here I share a lesson which was like a reemphasis for me, from a recent experience I had. I think it is worth sharing, an important lesson every aspiring leader must keep in mind.
The Trap of High Performance.
While being ambitious is often a sought-after characteristic of a leader, it can be quite debilitating for the team and the organisation if it is not well measured.
In our ambitious journey of moving higher up, we are often one of the high performers in the team, single-focused and heavily task oriented. While this is a great stepping stone to move up the career ladder, we cannot afford to forget our people.
Remember as a leader that your biggest asset is your team. What you do, you must do with your team.
As an ambitious achiever, in the race to complete tasks, we start undermining the team. Instead of tapping the team’s potential which is often diverse and a great value add, we begin to treat them as a machine, giving no space for cerebral thinking, only giving instructions from top to complete the task.
To Keep “People at the Core”, Know Your Team First.
To a certain extent this is ok if the team is predominantly young with a lot of career starters. In such cases, you may need to give instructions, help them plan and prioritise, might also have to handhold a few to complete the tasks to a certain level. This will vary with teams, but a more hands-on approach is often appropriate for newer or younger teams.
However, giving instructions for task completion can be disastrous for a team which has senior people with significant expertise and long years of experience. We also risk that such a team fails to see the big picture because it is focussed on task completion. They may end up not reflecting or feeling engaged with the work they do. Very soon they will lose enthusiasm with the monotony and start to feel under-utilised.
This will also break the team spirit, people will get into silos, develop trust issues and lack empathy. It will break the team morale. Staff will develop insecurity and lack confidence leading to a toxic work culture that will impact the quality of work. Most importantly, it is extremely harmful for the organisational culture. Beware!
Leaders Keep our “People at the Core”.
We must have full faith and confidence on our team, believe in their worth, inspire, encourage and help them see their worth as they work and grow professionally.
Allow them the space to do the task, make mistakes and learn from those. Ensure a culture of empowerment rather than one of spoon feeding.
The task of the leader is to invest in people and allow the people to do the tasks.
Show them the big picture so they can see their roles, understand their values and responsibility – their significant part in the big puzzle. Provide them with timely support and supervision, show appreciation for the work they do, and give timely, critical feedback to help instead of reprimands.
With this, you will see is an environment of trust where people are collaborative, show empathy for others and are high performers.
You will also find a happy team who will inspire you to do more.
