Good or Bad, Teams Rally Around This…

If we were having this conversation face to face, I’m guessing you’d reply to what I shared last time by saying something like, “Alright Wes, if everything really does rise and fall on leadership, but you’re telling me it requires more than the carrot and stick status-quo, what else can I possibly do?”

OK, fair enough… That may not have been the exact question you would have asked but I sure would have asked something like when I was trying to differentiate between managing and leading! So here’s an example I remember watching unfold as one of the first examples showing me that the supervisor isn’t always the one leading the team…

I was probably 20 years old or so, working second shift in a manufacturing facility. One of the fellows from first shift in the same department had recently completed an associate’s degree at our local community college with some sort of business or management focus and had been promoted to supervise the crew I was part of. He had worked in that department for close to two decades prior to the promotion so he had some really long standing relationships with most of the folks on every shift. The fact that he was really easy going made for an even smoother transition - or at least you would have thought so…

As a kid, I remember more than a few times when I was given a limit on what I was allowed to do or have. I’m sure this comes as a huge surprise, but I also remember pushing that limit almost every time! I’m going to assume you can either relate to that, or maybe you’ve seen someone else push the limit even if you never did… 

With that in mind, I’ll ask you this: do we ever really grow out of that completely?

I’m fairly certain we don’t, we just choose the limits we want to push and when we’re willing to push them a bit more selectively. Well, most of us do…

There was one fellow in that department who started investigating our new supervisor’s limits almost immediately. He was constantly making subtle wise cracks in department meetings, spent just as much time away from the machine he was assigned to as he did operating it, and sometimes even openly challenged the supervisor in front of the rest of the team.

Having been on that shift for the entire time he had worked there, and having trained the majority of the folks on the shift, this guy had developed something with most of the crew that our new supervisor had not: Influence… While the supervisor was a really nice guy, his interaction with most of the second shift crew - mainly because that’s where the newer employees started out - was in passing and fairly limited. He hadn’t developed any influence of his own to speak of other than what came with his new title. And his reluctance to take a firm stance with the fellow who was routinely challenging him only ate away at the little bit of influence he had.

In that scenario, even though it certainly wasn’t improving employee engagement or profitability, the negative Ned on the shift did more leading than our supervisor because he had more influence. Be it for good or for bad, teams rally around the person with the most influence! John Maxwell didn’t qualify his statement in any way when he said that “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Fortunately, I’ve seen far more examples of people who have used their influence, even without a title or position, to do really good things for the teams they’ve been a part of! But regardless of how that influence was used, it didn’t just magically appear. Real influence, the kind that builds strong teams and drives employee engagement, is earned over time. Moving forward, we’ll take a look at some things we can each do to earn influence like that and build the type of teams we’re proud to lead as we do it!