S3 E105 – Team Owns the How

S3 E105: Your Team Owns the How  

In this episode of the For Love of Team podcast, Winston Faircloth delves into Chapter Three of his upcoming book 'Team Love: 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work.' The focus is on empowering teams by letting them own the 'how.' After hiring top talent, leaders should provide the 'why' and success metrics but avoid micromanaging. Insights include the importance of not dictating detailed processes to experienced team members, fostering innovation through trust, and ensuring clarity in communications. Faircloth emphasizes the role of leaders in enabling creativity and collaboration, asking for feedback from listeners engaged in leadership transformation. 

00:00 Introduction to Season Three 

00:23 Chapter Three: The Team Owns the How 

00:59 The New Executive's Feedback 

02:10 The Importance of Trust and Delegation 

02:59 Empowering Your Team 

04:20 Practical Tips for Leaders 

05:59 Conclusion and Listener Engagement 

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Transcript

Judith: Welcome to season three of the For Love of Team podcast. 

This season, we are taking you behind the curtain as Winston Faircloth writes his new book, Team Love, 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work. Each week, we will share excerpts from a new chapter, including key concepts and takeaways to help you support your team as a visionary leader. 

In this episode, host Winston Faircloth introduces Chapter Three: Team Owns the How. 

Now here is your host, Winston Faircloth.  

Winston Faircloth: Chapter three, the team owns the how. After an exhaustive nationwide search, you've finally hired your dream candidate. Considered the foremost expert in organizational effectiveness, she's going to bring a new perspective, and increased capability to your team. It's the [00:01:00] first six weeks in the office. And after all the startup and onboarding activities, you schedule a check in meeting to assess how her new program's going. 

She begins, well, overall, our team has made a great first impression, intensely committed to the mission, willing to pitch in whenever needed. deeply caring for each other. Yet something is clearly bothering your new executive team member. Remember our few, our interview a few weeks ago? We brainstormed several ways to help jumpstart our cultural transformation. 

Our why was crystal clear, she says. Strengthening our executive and leadership delegation skills so you could be more externally focused. During our first meeting, she says; you even just defined what success looked like. It was well defined. You wanted to be [00:02:00] out of the office creating opportunities. most of your time, be well informed about internal obstacles, and ultimately have direct reports. 

And you gave me everything I needed to be successful, a compelling why, and even what success looks like. Well, this is sounding pretty good to the visionary leader. This sounds like a really encouraging report. She continues, but then During the executive sessions, you kept bringing up so many helpful solutions, telling us how you would handle things. 

And normally that'd be amazing, but you may not realize this. When, but when you're in one of those toss ideas against the wall and see what sticks moments, many of the, many of us take these as marching orders. We leave our quarterly planning session with a clear focus, [00:03:00] and not more than just a couple of weeks later. 

It feels like we're changing directions. Again, when you get into the weeds, like that feels that you don't trust us to get our jobs done. Well, what started out as a promising discussion really took a dark turn there. Right? So, at times like these. It's important to remember that you assembled your team for very specific reasons. 

You understand their background, their skills, and talents comprise just the right mix, just the right combination to help you achieve your big vision. And yet, when often casting a vision or making project assignments, we can get too deep into the details of sharing exactly how we want things done. And when we do so, it can be perceived as micromanaging the very talent that we're so [00:04:00] proud of bringing on to our team. 

We forget that our most important role as a leader is to provide the key context, the why, and describe clearly what success looks like. And when we do this, We unleash greater creativity and innovation from the people closest to the action, especially when we leave how to reach success squarely in their hands. 

Now you might just be surprised. Your way just might be the more complex or costly way. And by leveraging the expertise of your team, you could unlock greater improvements and innovations than even what you had dreamed of or considered. Now, so for further action, let's talk about how we do this. Often, we bring [00:05:00] specific how to experience that can be helpful to our team members, especially when we're promoted from within. 

Yet our words, especially in position of leadership, carry extra weight. So, when you're having a meeting, make sure to clarify the purpose of the discussion, especially when you're introducing potential changes or innovations and sharing those with your team. When you're in the pure ideation mode, Explicitly say, Hey, we're just generating ideas and you want their participation and involvement as well. 

Nothing I contribute, nothing you contribute as a leader is necessarily a directive or mandate to action. That's important to share. Be clear also on how the ultimate decision is going to be made. Sometimes team members perceive their involvement in a group decision, perhaps settling on a final resolution, [00:06:00] could be by vote or the most persuasive, passionate voice in the room. 

You may decide that you are just gathering information and you, you will make the decision and get back or other times you're looking for team consensus. Finally, Avoid the trap of outlining step by step processes of how to meet our goals, especially in dealing with seasoned or promising leaders. Leave the how to them, as long as our why is compelling and our mutual success measures are clear. 

Judith: Thanks, Winston!  

We invite you to share your feedback and biggest takeaways on our website at for love of team dot com slash blog and look for today’s chapter episode. 

Thanks for listening.  

Remember that by loving our people who love our customers, your visionary leadership comes to life.  

We hope to see you next time on the For Love of Team podcast.