Are your teams allowed to make mistakes and if they do, how do you handle it?
Do they know that the team has their back, or will they be thrown to the wolves?
So many employees are so fearful of what may go wrong, or the internal politics at their company that they are not even willing to try anything new. Because they know, they aren’t a coherent team, there isn’t a Growth mindset in the company. And if they mess up-they will get the full impact on themselves. No one will have their back.
A few years ago, I was introduced to Brene Brown’s work around Vulnerability and found quite a nice synergy with her work and Patrick Lencioni’s.
Patrick Lencioni is a firm believer in Vulnerability based trust.
In his well-read book: 5 Dysfunctions of a team, he outlines one of the symptoms of a
Dysfunctional team-is where a team is guarded and not willing to be vulnerable.
What he means by this type of vulnerability is:
- Do you have a growth mindset as a leader, so are you open to admit when you’ve made mistakes?
- Are you willing to share tough lessons of work with your team, so that they can relate to you and pull together as a team?
- Can others learn from your past mistakes, so they don’t have to do the same? Can your team tap into your 10 000 hours?
- When you as a leader start sharing, start being open to feedback and input only then will your team be able to do the same.
So how do you handle it when someone has messed up?
Last year I did a keynote on: “Putting a lid on toxic relationships” at Smergos sundowners, here is a short video on how to apply Emotional Intelligence, when someone makes a mistake. This is an example of not crucifying the person, but rather focusing on the solution and moving to a positive state.
Should you share areas of your personal life with your team?
- Patrick Lencioni says yes, he has an exercise of Personal histories that I include in my high-performance teamwork where teams get to know each other, see similarities and can relate to one another.
- I recently interviewed Thomas Ramstad, CEO of Knirkefritt, an IT consulting company located in Oslo, Norway. Thomas has a strong belief in building relations that lasts. And beliefs that good relationships are the foundation in coaching both clients and employees.
- Thomas says it’s important to get to know your team, their background, hobbies, and past experiences -so you can relate to their history.
Don’t just make it about work. Thomas and I discussed:
- The importance of Emotional intelligence as a leader
- How a leader should coach their team and their clients
- How he motivates his teams
- The impact of disasters and tragedies like Skiing accidents and Chernobyl on countries and leadership
If you want to develop your leader’s Growth mindset set up a call with Y-Connect. We grow and transform leaders and teams into confident, go-getters that enjoy working at your company.
