Rules Of Engagement
It doesn’t take long as a leader to discover how challenging it can be to work with people. People are not projects. They have hearts. They are emotional to the core. People are the life-breath of leadership. Leaders don’t just manage people, they LEAD people. Thus, leaders must constantly develop their skills of genuine interaction. I call this the Rules of Engagement.
Rule 1 :: Connection
This is the first area of focus for a leader: to connect. Most leaders are task-oriented. Meetings consist of talking shop and attacking to-do lists. It is important to set a relational tone with your team. It helps to clear the air of preemptive stress and creates an atmosphere of mutual interaction and comradery. Plan for the first 15-minutes of every meeting to let conversations arise. Ask your team how they are doing individually. Express actual concern for each person and let them share their current situation. Display genuine interest in their happenings. Allow for appropriate humor. You should also spend time prior to meetings checking in on your team (i.e. texting, calling, stopping by their office, etc.). Don’t wait until the last-minute to act like you are concerned. People can see through insincerity. They sense ulterior motives and most likely won’t reciprocate genuine touchback. Your job is to minimize resistance. Don’t ask for someone’s hand unless you first have their heart. Next time remember this short phrase: hearts before hands. It will help you to quickly recalibrate your frame of mind.
Rule 2 :: Direction
Once you’ve set a relational tone and genuinely invested emotionally into your team prior to and at the top of your meeting, you can then begin to tackle the work at hand. Giving direction is the next item. Before entering meetings, create a written agenda for everyone to see. An agenda is the most common system used in directing workflow in a team environment. It provides a steady system of accountability to stay on task and help others predict what’s coming. It also narrows the gap between the urgent, essential, and trivial. People work well from predictability: knowing what’s next. Just like you wouldn’t make a long trip without a GPS, so also your team needs to see where they are headed. Identifying the destination builds security. People follow what they visualize. An agenda also informs your team that you know where YOU are going. Leaders are the curators of direction. They know where they are going before they ask others to follow them. An agenda communicates that you’ve made the mental journey, taken in the sights along the way, and can adequately describe the landscape.
Rule 3 :: Correction
This is perhaps the hardest thing to do as a leader. There will always be a need for course correction (which directly involves confronting people in one way or another). No matter how you slice it, correction is always awkward. Most of the time people initially feel rejected when they are corrected. It isn’t until they get past the sting of confrontation that they can receive the valuable input that comes along with it. This is why relationship is vital. If you’ve invested enough currency in connection, you can make needed withdrawals from the bank of correction. FYI… Correction isn’t rejection. In fact, correction is actually projection. It helps move your team towards a better version of themselves. Caution: before you correct, you must always show people where they shine. The best advice I can give is to build trust. You do this by keeping your word even at the cost of your own comfort. Spend more time building people up vs. breaking them down. When your team trusts you, they will receive from you, even if it means exposing a weakness in their character or a deficiency in their productivity.
Rule 4 :: Affection
After you’ve connected, directed, and corrected, you must end on a positive note. Even though your correction may have been necessary (though minimal) people aren’t always strong enough emotionally to handle it. People are fragile. Even the strongest of souls can struggle with the need for approval. It is hard to lead people when they feel you are disappointed. People tend to wrap their identity around their work. They deeply believe that what they do is who they are. Of course, this isn’t true, but their perception is their reality. Some people may have great hard skills (work, creativity, productivity) but be weak in their soft skills (emotional intelligence, relational inaptitude, personality quirks, etc.). A simple follow up to help soften the blow of confrontation such as, “Are we good… I’m thankful you are on our team… You are valuable here… Etc.” can go a long way in helping to secure someone’s self-esteem. Showing that you actually care about them reinforces their confidence in you and in themselves. One simple act of affection can help remove ongoing assumptions of rejection.
