Teams change all the time. People come and go, and organisations go through re-structures. We onboard, manage, lead and let go. But what do you do when your team grows bigger? Does it require a different skill?
I got inspired by Julie Zhou, VP of Design and Facebook, who published this HBR article and it reminded me of my time as a team leader in Hong Kong.
I moved to Hong Kong in 2010 to help a serviced office start-up grow across Asia Pacific. When I started, I had a team of 6 salespeople. We met every day to talk through our prospects and sales pipelines, and I focussed my time on helping them close deals, build strong pipelines and keep them motivated.
Within a year, the team more than doubled. It became more and more difficult to spend ample quality one-on-one time with each team member. I had to change the way I led the team and adapt my leadership style.
I still made sure I knew all my team members personally and had regular update meetings and social gatherings with them, but I had moved from being directive to orchestrating. I empowered my more senior salespeople to ‘take more junior staff under their wing’ and take on more responsibility. I still had complete oversight of what we were achieving as a team; that’s the job. I was responsible for my team’s sales performance, but I did less of the ‘doing’ and more of the ‘being’.
In 2013 I was accredited as an organisational coach. I took this course as I knew that coaching would help me empower and develop my team. I didn’t even necessarily want to become a coach; I just loved the approach. Little did I know that I was adopting ‘Leader as Coach Skills’, using a coaching approach to lead and manage people. We became the fasted growing serviced offices company in Asia, and hit our sales targets year on year.
Today I teach leaders these skills. Of course, coaching is not the only skill you require as a leader, but it’s definitely the soft skills that matter when you are leading a growing team.
Like Julie Zhuo says:
‘At higher levels of management, the job starts to converge regardless of background. Success becomes more about mastering a few key skills: hiring exceptional leaders, building self-reliant teams, establishing a clear vision, and communicating well. People who master those skills will be well-equipped to lead teams of any size.’
If you want to know how I can help you and your team to adopt Leader as Coach skills, get in touch jessica@intactteams.com.
