How Well Are You Leading And Managing Your Team?

For most companies, this question doesn’t have an easy answer, but it’s usually something like this: “I guess pretty good? My team seems to like me.” Over the years, I have heard versions of this answer many times – but only from companies not running on EOS^®! It’s scary how many things are wrong with that answer, not least of which is the belief that being liked is an indication of strong leadership and management skills. These leaders and managers clearly don’t have a way to measure how they are doing.

With a company running on EOS, the answer is completely different.

Do you know how many people are directly affected by the work you do? I ask leadership teams this question and they usually answer with the number of people they employ – 75 or 100 or 120.

“How about your vendors, employees’ families, and all your customers?” I ask. Some light bulbs start turning on, and they’ll guess a couple thousand.

Even a couple thousand is a low number. Your work and your team make a huge difference. A number of years ago, my team crunched some numbers and determined that the average company of 100 employees directly affects 10,000 people. This includes all of your staff, your families, your vendors and partners, your customers and their teams, and then all the work you do in the community.

“But Jim, I completely disagree with the decision. How can you expect me to support John’s decision and commit to it when I think it’s wrong?”

“Tom”, I replied, “I’m not asking you to agree with John. I’m asking you to do the greater good – to be unified as a leadership team in all the decisions that are communicated to others. Especially the ones we don’t all agree on.”

I hadn’t quite won Tom over. Julia noticed, and jumped in.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who was struggling with managing a millennial. She asked me for thoughts on how to best manage her younger staff. As we talked, I realized that millennials take a bad rap for being needy for things that we as leaders and managers should be doing anyway.

I had an epiphany when my friend asked, “What have you seen or heard is the best way to motivate millennials?” Here’s what I told her.

Most people would say that consensus is a wonderful thing. When everyone agrees, there will be no battles and the project will go on without a hitch, right? Unfortunately, no.

In his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni says, “Consensus is horrible. I mean, if everyone really agrees on something and consensus comes about quickly and naturally, well that’s terrific. But that isn’t how it usually works, and so consensus becomes an attempt to please everyone.”