Today’s businesses must be dynamic and adaptive in ever-changing markets and evolving consumer demands. To maintain their competitive edge, organizations must ensure their teams function at their peak potential and have the resources, skills, and opportunities to succeed. However, teams often need more communication, collaboration, and leadership to achieve their goals.
According to a study, team-based projects fail 50% to 70% of the time. (1) Team failure can lead to unintended consequences that can have a long-term impact on the organization. Problems that can arise from team failure include:
- Low employee morale, engagement, and productivity
- High employee turnover
- Missed opportunities for innovation
- Lower profitability and/or bottom-line growth
- Unhappy and disconnected customers
- Damage to the organization’s reputation
Team failure can be mitigated when team members are provided with clear direction and support from the leader. This is why leaders must create a culture of advocacy. Great leaders understand the value of a culture that encourages collaboration, innovation, and risk-taking among teams, leading to better business outcomes.
To achieve a culture of advocacy, leaders must understand the individual needs of their people. Additionally, effective leaders ensure that the organization delivers on its promises to all stakeholders and that strategies are effective and agile to navigate today’s changing landscape. Leaders must possess the right skills to lead their teams, assure workers that what they do matters, cultivate a culture of collaboration and advocacy, and encourage healthy conflict to challenge the status quo.
FIND THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN AUTONOMY AND SUPPORT
Good leadership is more than just about directing and managing a team. It’s also about advocating for people, understanding their roles in the team dynamic, and balancing autonomy and support. While leaders need to set boundaries and expectations, it’s essential to empower team members to do their best work. Capacity and capability are two factors that leaders should evaluate when looking at individual performance as well as overall team performance.
Autonomy means something other than a lack of support. On the contrary, a leader must be able to provide guidance or advice that can help take both individual and team performances to the next level. Leaders should foster an environment of trust and respect so that their teams are comfortable coming to them with questions and ideas. In addition, leaders should frequently check in with their teams on how they are doing and provide constructive feedback when necessary. Doing so can help ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards a collective goal.
Ultimately, more is needed for a leader to direct their team. Leaders must also be able to advocate for them. This means ensuring that teams have the right tools, training, resources, and people to do their jobs well. Balancing workloads, job duties, and other responsibilities across the team is also important. However, leadership advocacy is imperative when there are conflicts in performance measures, success quantifiers, target goals, etc., that directly compete against that of another department.
By balancing autonomy and support effectively, leaders can create stronger relationships within their teams while equipping them with the tools they need to take ownership of their work – setting them up for success in any endeavor they tackle together.
EXAMINE THE ORGANIZATION
Post-pandemic, employee expectations of the workplace have changed dramatically. The pandemic and other global factors changed how workers think of their jobs and the priority they place on the workplace. One such change is the shift to remote work and the focus on digitization. Virtual workers are building stronger relationships with customers than they do with leaders, managers, peers, and co-workers within their organization. (2)
As a result, employees have a much clearer idea of what their jobs, responsibilities, and work culture should look like. Therefore, as leaders build successful teams, they must consider whether they are fulfilling their part of the bargain with their employees. Are they just looking for more work or expecting higher expectations from their people without offering anything in return to help them succeed? Or are they providing more customized options to enhance worker experiences within the company and strengthen organization loyalty?
The organization’s approach to team building must ensure that it is upholding its part of the bargain by helping its people reach their goals within a healthy work culture. From examining processes and procedures for outdated protocols to providing adequate feedback on performance, leaders must champion their people if they want them to achieve team success.
EVALUATE PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES TO STREAMLINE PERFORMANCE
Advocacy is a crucial part of a business leader’s job. Not only do they need to develop and foster relationships between departments and teams, but they also need to evaluate processes and procedures to ensure their organization is running at peak potential.
An outdated process or unclear procedure can affect the effectiveness of an entire organization. Leaders must take the time to assess their current processes and procedures to help streamline performance.
There are several steps leaders should take when evaluating processes and procedures:
- Define objectives – Leaders must consider their goals for implementing new procedures and processes.
- Document existing processes – This will help leaders determine any discrepancies between how a process or procedure is defined by the organization versus how a worker actually does things in the real world. PRO TIP: Clarity on processes and procedures is necessary for consistency across the organization. However, there may be adaptations that streamline existing processes and procedures without impact on the quality or overall performance. Additionally, some may need to be updated altogether. Leaders should look for opportunities that lie in the need to modify existing practices.
- Test existing processes – Leaders should test existing processes by having team members simulate how the job is done daily and identifying inefficiencies or opportunities for improvement along the way.
- Identify areas for improvement – This step involves reviewing where gaps exist between current performance levels and desired outcomes and analyzing which areas would benefit from new procedures or process changes. PRO TIP: Involve workers in the process of any change plans before the change is initiated. This will minimize resistance to change and aid in clarity for rolling out new concepts, processes, and procedures.
- Implement changes – After identifying areas for improvement, it’s time to make those changes happen. Leaders should ensure that new procedures or process changes are communicated clearly to all team members so everyone is on board with the transformation initiatives underway at their company.
- Monitor progress – It’s critical that leaders monitor progress on any implementation plans put in place. Tracking the effectiveness of interventions over time allows for adjustments as necessary.
ASSESS STRATEGY: AGILITY AND SOUNDNESS
A culture of advocacy starts from the top when leaders scrutinize the business strategy to ensure it is sound and agile. A good plan considers changing market conditions, customer needs, and the company’s long-term vision, while the agility of a strategy speaks to its flexibility in responding to external and internal forces in real time. (3) In agile organizations, executives prioritize adaptability and flexibility over stability by making clear system-wide decisions, as they believe that the capacity to change and adapt is crucial for long-term success for both leaders and employees. Leaders must adapt quickly and recognize areas that need improvement for their organization to remain competitive.
To determine if the strategy is agile or sound, leaders SHOULD ASK questions such as:
- Is the strategy embedded in all organizational levels?
- Are there transparent systems in place for tracking progress against key objectives?
- How engaged are stakeholders with this strategy?
- Is there sufficient information from customer surveys or market data that help inform customer preferences?
PRO TIP: By assessing current strategies for agility and soundness, leaders can make changes quickly and ensure that their organization is well-positioned for success.
LEADERSHIP MATTERS
For teams to be successful, leaders must have the right skills to drive the strategy and use those skills correctly. American psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman suggests that possessing emotional intelligence is a critical factor that sets outstanding leaders apart from average ones. (4) Emotional intelligence entails having competencies such as self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Leaders also play a vital role in creating a culture of advocacy by encouraging innovation and new ideas, as well as advocating for their people. This requires leaders to be introspective and self-reflective to be effective in leadership. Great leaders improve team performance through the following:
- An ability to effectively communicate the vision and set clear expectations
- A clear understanding of the business strategy
- A willingness to be flexible and open to change
- The capacity to build relationships with team members
- A commitment to developing team members
PRO TIP: A team will reach its full potential with solid leadership that is ready and willing to champion its people. Leaders adept at deploying these skills can help build a cohesive team focused on achieving success through collaboration and advocacy.
UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF LEADER ADVOCACY ON EMPLOYEES
When team leaders are advocates for their people, employees feel more positive about their work and the organization. With an empowering leader willing to stick up for them, they have better morale and confidence that can help them thrive in the workplace.
This increased motivation manifests itself in a few ways:
- A leader’s advocacy increases employee engagement, which leads to higher job performance and better results.
- A leader’s advocacy creates an environment of trust and respect so employees don’t fear repercussions for speaking up or sharing ideas.
- A leader’s advocacy nurtures employees’ development and growth within the organization, creating a more diverse workplace with more varied skill sets and perspectives than ever before.
PRO TIP: By understanding how advocacy impacts their people daily, leaders can help foster a positive environment of appreciation and collaboration between team members.
TRUE LEADERS RALLY BEHIND THEIR PEOPLE
Ultimately, creating a culture of advocacy is essential to driving success within an organization. Leaders must be encouraged to champion their team and prioritize innovation and collaboration while ensuring outdated processes are addressed and procedures are clearly defined. Leaders should combine effective business strategy with a culture that fosters trust and respect and recognizes those who consistently go above and beyond. When leadership and employees actively champion each other and are dedicated to the success of each other, success will follow.
By learning the true motivations and needs of their team members, leaders can better tap into their team’s potential and generate better outcomes for the organization. Advocacy is the cornerstone of effective team building and an excellent way for leaders to become champions for their people.
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SOURCES:
- Greenberg, J., and Robert A. Baron, Behavior in Organizations, 9th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2008), 315–16.
- https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/covid-homeworking-symptom-of-changing-face-of-workforce-management/
- https://www.strategy-business.com/article/00188
- https://ewfinternational.com/5-components-emotional-intelligence-effective-leadership/#:~:text=Goleman’s%20EQ%20theory%20comprises%20five,skills%20that%20make%20up%20EQ.
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