Answering the Cry for Help
Make no mistake, knowing what our team members are looking for from us is not terribly complicated! They will make a point of telling us. That will generally (but not always) be direct and verbal early in our process of working to earn leadership with them, but it will get harder and harder to hear and see if we're not responsive. And if we allow them to go unheard long enough, we may have the opportunity to learn firsthand just how much profitability is killed by being seen as a bad leader!
In any industry, one of the most important things we can do as leaders is to ensure we're tuned into how to serve our teams best. I've shared it before, but it's worth revisiting now. I loved hearing Dave Ramsey explain the difference between servant leadership and subservient leadership during his talk at a Live2Lead event several years ago. He said that far too many supervisors and managers view servant leadership as doing things for their teams that they could and should be doing themselves, when that's actually subservient leadership. He went on to explain that the best way a leader can serve their people is by doing things they cannot do for themselves and that those things often allow the team members to be even more effective in their own roles.
Here's where that ties directly back to knowing what our team members are looking for: We must learn as much about each of our them as possible. In doing that, we can recognize their communication style, know what gives them fulfillment, and understand what they may struggle with. And when we have that foundation, we can hear what they're asking for, whether it's a direct question or shown through their behavior. In either case, it's a leader's responsibility to support their team. If those initial requests turn into cries for help, we'd better already have the process started.
Some things we'll need to do to support our team members will vary from person to person, while some will likely serve the entire team. Either way, we'll need to be just as intentional about making sure they see and understand that support as we are about just providing it. I've seen way too many scenarios where a leader thinks their team knows what they're doing to help, but the team is growing even more frustrated because they aren't aware of what is going on. The disconnect in those cases is nearly always from limited communication!
As simple as it may seem-and I know it will require more of that time we don't have enough of-we can earn more trust and influence by ensuring our team members know we've heard their requests. While we'll be able to address some right away and others over time, some things will also be out of our control. Even then, we'd better ensure our team members know we've heard them, or they may soon look for someone else who will.
Once we've developed a reputation for answering cries for help, a few other simple steps can tie it all together.
Three Ways We Can Answer...
The most vivid memory I have of someone in a leadership role answering cries for help was that of President George W. Bush at Ground Zero just days after 9/11. As he was addressing the crowd, someone yelled that they couldn't hear him, and he responded, "I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."
I'm not making a case for or against Bush being an effective leader, but that one instance exemplifies the connection we should be working to have with our teams. While I'm also not suggesting that it's our responsibility to make sure the entire world hears what our team members are asking for or that we can always provide it when they do ask, making sure they know that they're heard can't be left to chance!
From that point, our part becomes reasonably simple. But here's one more reminder to distinguish simple from easy! We need to provide the help we can, be clear about what we can't, and help the team maintain the proper focus through it all.
Sometimes a team member will have an issue or a concern that they don't have the ways or means to work through on their own. When we can help solve this for them, it can be our opportunity to shine as a leader-not in a selfish way, though, but by demonstrating the kind of servant leadership that Dave Ramsey detailed. Whether it's a simple fix or something that requires a significant amount of time and effort, taking action right away and letting the team member know where we are in the process goes a long way toward ensuring they know they've been heard.
Regardless of how hard we work to fill any void our team members have, we will run into situations where their issues or concerns are outside our control too. In those cases, we still need to take steps to help, but we'll do well to be clear about our limitations with the team member who brings us the issue. Although they may not necessarily like the response, they will generally appreciate and respect the transparency-and the fact that we've let them know we've heard them.
In either case, when we can help and when we can't, we still have one huge responsibility to fulfill as we lead our teams. We need to ensure they're focused on what they can do. In all aspects of our lives-at work, at home, in volunteer organizations, and so on-we all run into frustrations, the things that make us wanna throw in the towel. All too often, these things consume a ton of attention, usually impacting just a few individuals but gradually spilling over into the entire team. Without an effective leader in place to help the team stay focused (or get refocused), everything can go off the rails, even if the issue is relatively minor to begin with!
In all those years I worked in behavior-based safety, that may have been one of the top reasons the process in my home facility had the success it did. The group involved in that process, including me, was made up of hourly team members, with one exception. Terry Ward, whom I've mentioned quite a few times through this process, was the facility's engineering manager and the behavior-based safety process "management sponsor"; the one dedicated management team member with an active role in that primarily peer-to-peer initiative. Terry did several things to help empower us as a group to achieve great results. Still, likely, the most important thing he did was to keep us focused on controlling what we could control and not allowing us to get caught up in the things we couldn't.
As leaders, we must recognize what our team members are looking for to avoid being that bad leader who kills profitability. We need to take action to answer the cries for help as quickly as we can. But even the best leaders can't do it all on their own, so let's close our look at this last profitability killer by addressing precisely that!
We Can't Do It On Our Own!
If there's one thing I've learned with absolute certainty over the last thirty years in the workforce, having at least some leadership responsibility for the vast majority of that time, it's that none of us can accomplish all we need on our own. Whether we're the best individual contributor (and we know now that there's really no such thing) in our respective craft or we're the best leader in the entire organization, there are going to be times when we need someone else's help; sooner or later, we're going to need someone to answer our cries too.
As great as Terry was at supporting our behavior-based safety team, and even me throughout my career, he was always quick to acknowledge his limitations and just as quick to look wherever he needed to for the appropriate support necessary to achieve his goals or work through any challenges that came up along the way. As leaders, it can feel like the buck always stops with us-and in many cases, it does. That's especially true regarding the overall responsibility for our teams, but that doesn't mean we've got to be the one who knows everything and does everything!
One of my few clear memories of the sixth grade is a time in science class when another student asked a question the teacher didn't know the answer to. That student made a wisecrack about how teachers were supposed to know everything. The following seconds showed me that this usually quiet and kind teacher was not one to be messed with. After the smoke cleared, there wasn't a student in the room who was willing to make a comment like that for the remainder of the year! And while the way that teacher provided her response may not be acceptable in today's terms, it sure did make an impact-and that impact carries over to what we should all accept as a reality of leadership.
Even the best of us can only do so much. There will be times when we need to ask for help for various reasons, and a big part of leadership is being willing to do that. The primary reason Cindy and I chose to leave full-time jobs with great benefits and comfortable salaries was to be that support in the areas we could, specifically in helping teams achieve measurable results by developing those skills that are too often written off as soft and intangible. While we know that's not the only support leaders will ever need, we've seen firsthand that our approach can be incredibly effective at improving your profitability by building better leaders. To put a nice bow on this idea of addressing your profitability killers, the last thing I'll do is provide you with some context around the specific tool(s) we've developed to deal with each one!
