Leading teams: 3 tips from experienced managers

Topic: Leadership

As you progress throughout your career, people management might be one of the most rewarding yet challenging aspects of your role.

Here, three women from across the everywomanNetwork share the lessons they’ve learned from common line management scenarios.

MANAGING UNDERPERFORMANCE IN A RELUCTANT EMPLOYEE

Leading a direct report through performance management is one of the toughest situations for any employer. It’s particularly difficult when the employee in question resents your authority and isn’t willing to accept accountability. Lucinda Carney, CEO of Actus™ Software and winner of the Entrepreneur Award at the 2016 FDM everywoman in Technology Awards describes how a methodical approach to goal-setting and performance review is key.

“During the first part of my career I climbed the corporate ladder quite quickly and, as a result, was often in the position of managing people older than me. I remember one individual I’d inherited who would appear sullen and resentful however hard I worked to build a relationship with him. The first lesson was to stop trying to get him to like me; instead, I had to play a straight bat and manage him as I would anyone else.

“It is such a simple concept to agree clear goals and then review progress against them, but too few managers make the time to do it well. In our 1-2-1s, I encouraged my employee to set objectives and I learned the power of asking open questions to challenge why he was consistently not delivering against them. At first I was understanding and offered my support, which he turned down. Eventually he left because he wasn’t comfortable being held accountable. He even tried to raise a grievance against me – it wasn’t upheld because I managed my whole team in the same way and had great documentation to back up everything I said.”

LEADING A VIRTUAL TEAM

With both technology-enabled flexible working options and female entrepreneurship on the rise, managing virtual teams is set to become a new requisite skill for business leaders. Business coach and podcaster, Nadia Finer, aka Little Voice Big Business, shares her insight.

“I’ve found in the past that having employees around distracts me from focussing on clients. So these days I base myself in my home office, which gives me the flexibility to work around the school run and other commitments. But that doesn’t mean my ambitions are small; I’ve been able to build a global brand, by drawing on the support of a network of freelancer resources as and when I need help.

“I have a virtual personal assistant based in India, whose time I share with her other clients, as well as a pool of experts in PR, advertising, podcast production, photography, marketing and much more besides. Not only is this much more cost-effective; it means I can reach out on a task-by-task basis, without having to worry about offering formal management, which would be a huge drain on my time.

“If there’s a downside it’s that finding new talent through online marketplaces can be a bit of an unknown – I’ve had great people just disappear on me. But when you work in this kind of setup you have to be prepared to try lots of people before you find the right ones.

“I am a bit of a control freak I guess, and sometimes I tell myself that it would take less time for me to just do something myself than go to the trouble of finding and briefing a third party, but I realise that if I want to grow my business I can’t do everything myself.”

A LESSON IN HONING YOUR INSTINCTS – AND USING THEM

“My law firm was just five years old, with a dozen members and still relatively unknown, when I won a very big case that made pre-nups work in England. Suddenly, everyone wanted to meet me and talk about it. I was contacted on LinkedIn by a young family partner at a blue chip, old world law firm, where she’d been since she was a trainee. She wanted to talk about the impact of my case.

“We met in my favourite cocktail bar. She was unfeasibly young for a partner and manifestly brilliant. We talked about everything – the law, the impact of my case, what the profession needed, how we wanted to fight the intellectual sluggishness in the industry and the sexism and general shoddiness, and get things moving in the justice system in a dynamic, creative way. We laughed like drains; we wanted to change the world; it was a real meeting of minds. I decided to take what some would think a wildly rash decision – I made her an offer of partnership and asked her if she’d think about it. She paused for a moment and then said, to my complete astonishment, “Can I just accept it?”

“Five years later, that brilliant lawyer is the Managing Director and co-owner of my firm, we have a partnership of extraordinary strength and power and we’ve had nary a cross word in all that time, through all the trials and tribulations of growing a young firm in a highly competitive market. We’ve marched side-by-side, exchanging our ideas through the most challenging cases and business situations. We’ve torn our hair out with the stress when things got scary, and drunk champagne and danced like banshees in the moonlight over our victories. We have remained 100% straight and supportive with each other.

“So many people thought we were both mad to take that leap in the dark. I made an expensive partner-hire of an unknown lawyer when mine was a small and cash-strapped company; she left behind a very solid, traditional position in a highly respected firm to jump off into a career adventure with a total stranger. The key was that we both trusted our instincts, which were really strong. I think often that’s one of the strengths women gloss over. We focus on being rational, brushing aside that strong, rich, driving intuition, when in fact it’s one of the greatest gifts we can tap into. Sometimes it goes awry, but generally, in human relationships, as in business, fortune favours the brave.”