The role of leader goes beyond good management practices. As a tech leader, it’s important to leverage your capacity to significantly impact your team’s outcomes by crafting a vision, setting clear goals, and fostering a culture where collaboration and support thrive.
Let’s delve into eight vital ways you can lead others well to impact on your team’s performance and stand out from your competition:
1 Setting the Vision
A visionary leader sets the course for the team, providing a clear and compelling vision that acts as a guiding light when shared with the team. This vision not only aligns everyone towards a common purpose but also fuels inspiration and innovation. It’s the foundation upon which goals and objectives are built.
According to a recent Glassdoor survey, 90% of employees who work for companies with a strong sense of purpose and clear vision say they’re more inspired, motivated, and loyal.
If you don’t set a compelling vision for your team you’re likely to see ambivalence, a lack of commitment and low levels of energy and drive.
2 Driving Focus and Attention
Goals and objectives are the milestones on the path to realizing the vision. They bring clarity and focus, channelling the collective energy of the team towards tangible outcomes. Clearly defined goals serve as a roadmap, ensuring that every effort contributes meaningfully to the overarching vision.
Regular communication with your team members to break down their goals into meaningful work activity helps to keep their focus and attention on the important work activity.
Failure to drive focus and attention across your team puts achieving your vision at risk, feeling like being stuck in a rudder-less boat going nowhere.
3 Balancing Accountability with Support
Effective leadership requires you to strike a delicate balance between holding individuals accountable for their responsibilities and providing unwavering support. If there’s too little accountability and support, it leads to avoidance and a feeling of neglect; whilst high accountability and support create the opportunity for driving high performance.
Conversely focusing solely on responsibilities and driving action will feel like you’re being quite dictatorial with a “tell, tell, tell” approach providing no empathy or understanding about the challenges, problems or barriers your team member may be facing. An inclination towards being too supportive is likely to lead to nothing being done.
Developing emotional intelligence will help you to fine-tune your balancing of these two important leadership responsibilities.
4 Regular Conversations and Engagement
Leadership that combines accountability and support involves regular conversations, engagement, feedback, and review.
These are the habits of a leader demonstrating high accountability and high support.
Clearly articulating desired outcomes, regularly reviewing actions and assessing impact become integral to fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
It’s critical that feedback and reviews are timely, direct and focused on learning to move forward – celebrating what’s working well as well as highlighting what specific changes are required for improvement.
“Goodbye” to annual performance appraisals, say “hello” to regular performance-related conversations. Not sure what to say? Try some of these conversation openers:
- how can I help you?
- what do you need from me?
- tell me what’s on your mind …
and then listen carefully to the response.
5 Understanding your impact as a Leader
Recognize that it is you, in your capacity of being the leader, who can personally make the difference in what gets achieved.
The way you communicate, engage, and interact with your team members, both as individuals and as a collective entity has a significant impact. Actively involve yourself, seek feedback, and attune your approach to the evolving dynamics rather than leaving it all to chance.
Your energy, mindset, body language, tone of voice, what you say (and what you don’t say) combine to give a perception of your ability as a leader. Do team members feel safe, supported and inspired to give their best work?
Poor self-awareness, shutting yourself away or being closed to receiving or responding to feedback are likely to cause tensions between yourself and your team and create a low trust environment where it’s difficult for the team to thrive.
6 Fostering a Culture of Collaboration
The best leaders recognize that success is a team effort.
They establish clear roles and responsibilities while nurturing a culture of mutual assistance and support.
Collaboration thrives in an environment where team members feel empowered to help one another, creating a synergy that propels the entire team forward.
Collaboration fosters innovation, enables team members to get to know each other, builds trust and develops a more inclusive culture.
7 Being Flexible
In the ever-evolving tech landscape, adaptability is a prized quality.
Leaders that are good listeners, demonstrate flexibility, encourage innovative thinking and adapt their strategies adjusting to changing circumstances are more likely to flourish.
Collaboration becomes a powerful force, enabling teams to pool diverse skills and perspectives for comprehensive problem-solving.
Inflexibility and lack of open-mindedness is a sign of being stuck and obstinate. Surround yourself with people you trust who can provide challenge, different perspectives and feedback.
8 Providing Structure and Nurture
A nurturing leader blends the strength of structure — establishing boundaries, rules, and expectations — with warm interpersonal relationships focussed on the needs of the team. This duality creates an environment where individuals can flourish, developing skills, embracing independence, and creating the conditions for both personal and professional well-being.
In the fast-paced world of technology, leadership becomes a nuanced dance between structure and nurture. As you guide your team toward success, remember that a well-defined vision, clear goals, and a culture of collaboration are the cornerstones for effective leadership.
Embrace the dynamic nature of your role, and lead with a blend of strength and compassion, setting the stage for unprecedented achievements and sustained growth.
Adopting these 8 ways you can make a difference to the performance of your team will enable you to be on the way to leading your team well.
At Nudge Forward, we’re experts in developing and supporting leadership talent. We provide the safe space and resources to work on your leadership capability, one leader at a time.
Discover more about our services here.