An endless journey begins
Having spent more than 10 years in the software industry, my working location has changed from North America, to Hong Kong and finally to Taiwan. For the past 3 years in Taiwan, I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to build a new software team from ground zero. The team size, in the beginning, was estimated to be 10 people which eventually grew to 65 people. At the same time, my role has changed from a Team Lead of a team to a General Manager of a company. With hindsight, the team-building experience was very similar to that of a roller coaster, because you never know what is coming next. The only thing you can be certain of; is that unexpected events will happen along the way.
This team-building journey in Taiwan has brought me many profound experiences. While absorbing different leadership techniques and theories, I was constantly experimenting and practicing these techniques and theories in the face of different daily team situations. My objective is to explore my own unique art of leadership. I then soon discovered that this is an endless journey of exploration without ever reaching an answer. Through this article, I want to share what I believe to be the three most important cornerstones on “how to build and lead a team successfully”. I hope spreading these ideas could help everyone also on this exploring journey, and together we can all make our team’s, our company’s and our world better.
1. Leadership and Management
In most leadership training, the first lesson is to teach leaders how to differentiate between “managing” and “leading” a team because it is crucial that all leaders must understand the difference. Simon Sinek, in his book Start with Why, summarizes the difference between those two concepts comprehensively:
There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or influence. Those who lead inspire us.
However, more often than not, leaders today tend to focus their efforts on management, rather than leadership simply because management is more intuitive and simple. Management is the use of power or authority to do what’s needed to achieve objectives, it involves managing resources or assets through policies. Many of us are raised by being managed, ex. you have to finish your homework by today. It is natural for us to have an imprinted mindset of management equals how things should get done. The downside of management is that employees are disengaged as they feel like they are treated as cogs in a machine, and hence their productivity reduces.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
On the other hand, leadership offers visionary inspiration, motivation, and direction to unleash the full potential of an employee, and hence an organization. Leaders act as a supportive role coaching their team members where team members improve themselves on their own will. Leaders never have to order or force someone to do something. Unlike management, there is no way one can measure or quantify leadership because it is something you can only feel and see. If management is a science, then leadership is an art. Every leader must understand this concept inside and out.
Leadership and management are equally important. Leaders need to know how to lead and manage effectively because we are living in a world replete with complexity and change. A well-rounded leader must able to excel in both areas in the face of different situations. For example, if you are running a start-up with huge financial pressure to survive, when time is your biggest enemy, you have to focus all your efforts on management to make quick decisions and orders to get the team out of the crisis. In contrast, if you are in a large, stable cooperation with plenty of resources, you should focus your efforts on leadership to inspire and support the team to self-manage and grow steadily.
Having said that, while leadership is essential to build a long-term and healthy organization, management is also required for practical company operations to be carried out effectively. The art of leadership is that leaders can use their discretion to make appropriate balance adjustments between leadership and management based on what industries, companies, teams, and conditions they are in.
2. Focus on team direction, not problems
Is your team moving in the right direction?
Leaders set a vision for their teams, but not many of them focus on directing the team to the vision, rather they spend their time solving daily problems, dealing with emails, extinguishing fire after fire, and having countless meetings. Team vision merely becomes a printed paper on the wall.
The top priority of a leader is never to solve problems, but to seek order and maintain balance under chaos to ensure the team is stably moving towards the vision.
Vision is a destination. A leader is the person to ensure the team is moving in the right direction towards that destination. A leader should avoid getting into the vicious cycle of busily solving daily problems which is merely addressing the symptoms rather than solving the root of the problem. Leaders should pay attention to the root cause and warning message behind each problem, in order to develop a habit of constantly reviewing the direction of the team.
There’s no use running if you’re on the wrong road — Warren Buffett
If a problem signals that the team is moving in the wrong direction, a leader has the responsibility to correct the direction immediately. When all the efforts are aimed in the same direction, great things can be achieved. Conversely, if a leader cannot see around, beneath and beyond the problem itself, then the team will certainly feel lost.
How does a leader know the team is heading in the right direction?
Even though the responsibilities of a manager include exchanging feedback, organizing great meetings, and creating processes to get work done smoothly, Julie Zhuo, former Product Design VP at Facebook, argues these activities don’t define a manager’s main job. In her book, The Making of a Manager:
Your main job as a manager is to achieve great outcomes from a group of people that work together. Nothing Else.
If every action taken and the decision made, by a leader, can comply with this main job, basically that team would have a head start in this direction game. For instance, when a leader needs to solve the “employees being always late” problem, if he or she only focuses on solving the “lateness” behavior itself, the most effective way to stop it is to set policies and punishments. However, if a leader is aware of his or her main job is to achieve great outcomes from a group of people that work together, he or she will probably find better options to avoid policies and punishments, which often leads to lower morale and less productivity in long run, definitely not a direction any leader wants for the team.
When facing different problems, a leader can use different methods to resolve the problems, as long as all the methods are driving the team moving towards the same direction. Furthermore, if a leader feels lost in finding resolutions when dealing with a very complex problem, examining the direction would be an excellent starting point to derive the available resolution options. It takes a great deal of leadership experiences, discretion, and instinct to drive team direction properly.
3. Individual’s Growth Mindset is the Key
A team is formed by its team members. To build a dream team, you need brilliant team members. Unfortunately, the word “brilliant” is too subjective for us to make any kind of judgment, nonetheless, it is possible to find an objective criterion to help ourselves evaluate whether a person is suitable for our team.
Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, proposed that people’s perception of success is shaped by two mentalities: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she suggests that people with fix mindset believe their qualities are fixed traits and therefore cannot change. These people document their intelligence and talents rather than working to develop and improve them. On the contrary, people with a growth mindset have an underlying belief that their learning and intelligence can grow with time and experience.
A company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive.
A team grows and evolves as its members do. Imagine you have a team formed by a group of people with a growth mindset. Firstly, they are not afraid of embracing their own shortcomings and mistakes. They also believe that human talents can be trained through practicing. As a result, they are resilient, approach challenges with excitement and are hungry to learn. They pull together to achieve goals, because they aren’t busy trying to save face or competing with their peers. They’re able to form effective teams and accomplish something meaningful.
Under this team culture, members will naturally act as “challengers, creators, and coaches” instead of “prosecutors, victims, and rescuers.”
This team will possess a high degree of autonomy, agility, and anti-fragile characteristics. The team can self-manage and continuously heal itself, behaving like the human cell ecosystem, with no need for central command and control to give orders or pull levers. This is also called a Holacracy Organization introduced by Brian J. Robertson.
By having a leader, with strong leadership skills, focusing on team direction, leading a group of individuals with a growth mindset, amazing things will happen. Leadership is an art, and those who are effective leaders in certain contexts may be entirely ineffective in others. There is no formula, no right or wrong, and no specific path to good leadership. The connotation of leadership art is related to intuition, values , and personality, which varies from person to person. Everyone can explore their unique art of leadership. Have fun leading!
