What’s the secret to being a great BizOps leader?

There are a lot of qualities that are key to being a great leader of any organization: Communication. Authenticity. Vision. Integrity. Courage. Influence. Empathy. Respect. The list goes on.

Leading a BizOps team presents its own unique challenges and nuances. In addition to the great leadership qualities that you need in any lead role, one of your key responsibilities is to set the tone for the team and enable the right conditions for their success.

Here are some of the key qualities you need to successfully lead a high performing BizOps team:

Empowerment & Coaching

On BizOps projects, you’ll often have a manager or senior manager level BizOps person working with a VP+ stakeholder. It can be incredibly tricky for that BizOps person to maintain influence and authority with such senior business partners, even more so if things start to get difficult or go off track.

It’s your job to make sure your team members are well equipped to deliver. If issues from your team member’s project are being escalated to you, that’s not on them — that’s on you. Your goal is to avoid those escalations altogether by providing behind-the-scenes support and coaching.

How do you do this?

• Know what your team member is capable of when you assign them the work. Be aware of blind spots and experience gaps before the project even starts.
• Check in with your team member periodically to see how they are progressing. What is their confidence level with the work? What obstacles are they encountering?
• Ask probing questions around those blind spots and experience gaps. Prompt them to identify additional actions they need to take.
• If necessary, review their deliverables before they present to stakeholders. Even if the content is great, ask them pointed questions to ensure they are prepared to explain it.

Encourage Vulnerability & Growth

The nature of BizOps is that you’re often working in ambiguous, undefined spaces. Working without a net, if you will. Team members are sometimes asked to dive into new functional areas where they have limited expertise. Getting it wrong is always a possibility, and your team cannot innovate or create needle-moving work if they are afraid to take that chance.

Build a culture where growth and experimentation are valued and rewarded. The most important element is for you to provide continual support and coaching throughout their journey. If your team knows that you believe in them and will always have their back — even when things don’t go as expected — they’ll feel more confident to make bold choices.

As a leader, your vulnerability sets the tone. Create development opportunities for your team, but also participate in them. Share your own successes and shortcomings. Create safe spaces where team members feel supported to practice new skills or test out ideas. Praise team members for taking calculated risks. Acknowledge their courage to be the first one to volunteer. Focus on the lessons learned rather than just the mistakes made.

Collaboration

Someone once described BizOps to me as “You’re trying to build a plane while flying it.” While this analogy horrifies me, I can’t think of a scenario where teamwork and collaboration are more necessary to get the job done.

When you are building a new, cutting-edge team that is expected to be constantly agile and evolving, you need all hands on deck. It’s critical that everyone believes in the mission and is eager to build the team. As I described in my post about ideal candidates for BizOps: “We’re not looking for solo artists; we’re a band.” Everyone should be committed to the team’s success.

As a leader, you need to clearly establish that this is not a zero sum game. Everyone should have an assigned role in growing the team, whether it’s creating methodology playbooks, leading an internal training, or developing your hiring process. Set the expectation that contributing to the team and upleveling your teammates is not a “nice to have” but a key component of your role.

At Zendesk we hold a weekly peer review session where team members are expected to provide feedback and insights on others’ work. We frequently ask each other about previous projects or how best to work with certain stakeholders. The BizOps brand is a singular thing, and we all work together to ensure it stays strong.