This week, “stay interviews” are trending on LinkedIn as ways for combatting the ever-rising turnover rates employers are facing these days. These are quite simply discussions between employers and employees to see what can be improved to ensure the employee is happy and will stay long-term at the organization. Sometimes, these interviews involve discussing shorter working weeks or the freedom to work anywhere even part-time. But no matter what the employee brings up, these interviews are more or less about making compromises between the employer and employee to make the team more effective and satisfied. And while these often have to do more with worker freedom than anything else, it also all comes down to making management feel more balanced rather than a one-sided power dynamic. And practicing a more team-oriented leadership can help better balance this power dynamic, as well as distribute responsibilities fairly amongst workers.
So, how can you start practicing a team-oriented, rather than hierarchically-based, leadership structure?
What Is a Team-Oriented Leader?
Team-oriented leadership is that which emphasizes a team’s abilities by focusing on supporting the team’s communication and management needs. This kind of leadership practice focuses on re-centering the team as a whole as a driving force in the organization, rather than only those in the C-suite roles.
And this is a critical business practice for many reasons.
For one, as Sales and Business Coach Belinda Aramide offers in her article on business growth, leaders often have the tendency to overwork themselves out of a desire for maintaining control and doing things exactly as they want things to be done. But this, of course, closes off team collaboration and stunts growth, as your processes and ideas become narrow and do not allow room for feedback and improvement.
As well, this also means you as a leader are working beyond burnout and are not making the most of the talent you hired.
Crucially, team-oriented leaders also do not simply distribute tasks amongst team members and maintain full control over their actions—this is no different from doing all the tasks yourself.
Instead, team-oriented leadership means supporting and guiding workers to showcase their strength and encourage them to take initiative and responsibility for their tasks and communication. The risks may be higher, but the rewards are truly worth it once the team finds its flow.
The 5 Key Traits for Team-Oriented Leadership
Basing your leadership on your team’s strengths and encouraging healthy collaboration and communication sounds great, right? So, how do you start shifting your leadership style from one of complete control to one with a more collaborative focus? Here are five key traits you’ll want to focus on to do so.
1. Open-mindedness
A tell-tale sign of leadership that does not utilize its team members adequately often looks like rules and processes being implemented without the say of other staff members.
As Marquis Murray offers in his article on simplifying work processes, “What a lot of leaders overlook is to actually talk to their people. Talk to the people who are actually following these processes every single day and get their input. Ask them what they want this to look like. Because a mistake a lot of leaders will make is they’ll […] make this change and not consult anyone.”
And asking for feedback, of course, means actually being open to making changes and implementing your staff’s ideas. So, use your staff’s ideas and put them into practice. Remember, you hired them for a reason! They probably have lots of insights that will help you and your organization grow.
2. Authenticity
I think I speak for at least the vast majority of workers when I say nobody likes leaders who put on a persona to control and demand respect from their employees. We value authenticity. We want a down-to-earth leader who knows what they’re doing but does not let their role (or their ego) get in the way of their leadership.
And crucially, when you’re genuine to your employees, they’ll be genuine back.
3. Transparency
Transparency is another trait that all the very best leaders have. It largely means being honest and open with matters that might seem taboo or unfamiliar territory.
This might look like practicing wage transparency or even asking about and being open about how processes are put in place. If team members feel like they have equal access to information as you do, they will see that you as a leader are honest, fair, and can trust them as employees.
4. Trust
Speaking of trust: as every single leader we’ve interviewed for advice has suggested, if you can’t trust your employees, your organization can never truly run as efficiently and productively as possible.
As well, never relinquishing control can be exhausting for both you and your employees. If they are never trusted with their work, they may never really feel responsible for and thus engaged with their projects.
Trusting your employees means providing them with the space and time they need to work the way they need to. It also means trusting them with tasks you know they’re capable of handling, even if doing those tasks yourself seems tempting.
5. Patience
It’s important to remember that doing the above will not work overnight. You’ll need to work with your team to make sure communication is smooth, tasks are fairly delegated, and new ideas are implemented. And this takes time!
In addition to practicing patience yourself, encourage your team members to have the same mindset. That way, everyone remains optimistic and motivated, even when work processes take longer than expected to work themselves out.
Sometimes this means waiting for newer team members to catch up to the abilities of other team members. Sometimes it just means working out the kinks in a new program or workflow. Whatever it may be, remain patient with both your team and yourself while guiding the team.
Tools for Making Your Leadership More Team-Oriented
Communication channels like Slack/Discord
In our honest opinion, “This email could have been a Slack message” is the new “this meeting could have been an email.”
For many, email is a point of pain at work—usually because of the sheer volume of emails coming in and that therefore remain unopened and/or unanswered regularly. Instead, consider using Slack or Discord channels to directly and more immediately chat with team members.
Tip: Make sure to always use multiple channels so your conversations don’t get lost amidst other chats. Dedicate one Slack/Discord channel to each topic of on-going discussion. For example, you can make separate discussion threads for coffee/lunch orders, certain project tasks, and IT help. This way, work-related tasks don’t get overlooked, but also, work is not the only thing that is ever being communicated amongst your coworkers—both remote-sync and remote-async!
Crucially, communication channels like these make reaching out to fellow team members and you as a leader easier and more approachable. These messages can be quick, informal, and straight-to-the-point, so there is less miscommunication or fear of asking questions or offering ideas.
And eventually, the organization’s communication will become so smooth it will naturally also become less frequent when it comes to getting tasks done as a team.
Collaborative platforms, like Google Docs and Microsoft Word for the web
In addition to making team-wide communication more accessible to all workers, collaborative platforms can further allow your leadership style to become more team-oriented. That is, through platforms like Google Docs and Microsoft Word for the web, you and your team members can easily collaborate live on a shared document.
That way, everyone can work on a task together, even when working remote and asynchronously without having to worry about whether or not the document is the most updated version across all team members.
In these word document platforms, you can also assign certain tasks or parts of a document to an individual to delegate work evenly or direct it towards those with the most expertise. And it’s not just word documents that are collaborative! Creative platforms like Canva also facilitate collaboration. So, wherever you can, find ways to make all projects a team effort.
Do you have any tips for practicing team-oriented leadership practices that we missed? Leave a comment on our LinkedIn post to share your ideas with us and our audiences!
