Are You a Great Leader? Look to Your Team — They’ll Tell You
By: Melissa Zehner
Tags: Leadership, Leadership Development, Leading Teams, Mindfulness At Work, Servant Leadership

The answers you need are right in front of you…

I believe great leaders are never fully convinced they’re great. Part of what makes them great is that little bit of doubt — the realization that there’s always learning to be done, always a new way to grow and improve.

There are countless books and articles out there that will try to tell you if you’re on the right track. But the best proof of your aptitude as a leader is right in front of you — it’s your team. Their morale and performance are the most direct reflections of your ability to lead.

To determine if you’re a great leader, look for these three indicators in your team.

1. You have a team of leaders, not followers.

The greatest metric of success for any leader is your ability to cultivate more leaders. It doesn’t require much substance to recruit followers (the Kardashians, anyone?). Inspiring, empowering, and aligning a group of leaders is much more difficult.

Having a team of leaders doesn’t mean all the work is done for you. In many ways, it becomes more challenging. Leaders bring more ideas but also more opinions, and they bring more motivation but also more impatience. They ask to be treated like partners rather than subordinates. They’re willing to be held accountable, but they’re damn sure going to hold you accountable, too. In short, they will expect just as much of you as you expect of them.

This eager, idealistic team of yours pushes you to be better. If they’re anything like my team, they’re quick to speak up when something doesn’t make sense. They’ll press for more direction and clarification or simply less bullshit if you’re hedging about a particular topic.

Yes, this makes your job harder — but it also yields more impressive results. It creates an environment of high performance, innovation, accountability, and continuous growth — which is where leaders thrive.

Here’s what you can do to cultivate and support leaders on your team:

Instill confidence in their abilities while also encouraging them to take on new challenges

Grant them the trust and autonomy to do their jobs with minimal interference from you

Thoughtfully hear them out when they voice ideas, opinions, or frustrations

Give them room to solve problems on their own but make yourself available to step in if needed

Offer guidance, praise, encouragement, feedback, and assistance (yes, all of these)

Leaders aren’t made overnight — as you well know, it takes time to develop all the skills necessary to strategize, implement plans and processes, and manage a team. But you can fast-track the process by refining your hiring practices to find team members who fit the mold.

When I hire, I don’t look for order takers. I look for people who are passionate about their craft, intrinsically motivated and curious, and committed to excellence. This means I hire just as much for character as I do for skills. Most skills can be easily taught to a willing party, whereas many facets of character are innate and thus obstinate to extensive change. Selecting team members who possess natural leadership traits makes the job much easier.

2. Your team keeps working when you’re not around.

We’ve all had a boss who’s convinced no one is working unless he’s looking over their shoulder. And none of us enjoyed working for that boss because it’s impossible to thrive and grow in an environment that lacks trust and hinges on micro-management. If you’re leading your team effectively, you shouldn’t need to be that over-the-shoulder boss.

The cross-channel functionality of my job means I spend about 70% of my workweek in meetings. While I don’t get a thrill from being in strings of meetings, I’d be significantly more stressed about the confines of my calendar if I thought my team kicked back and took breaks every chance they got.

Much to my delight, my team works their Type-A tails off while I’m not around. I typically return from meetings to find a slew of reports, status updates, and finalized projects ready for my approval. And also a few memes for entertainment’s sake.

My team members don’t need me on standby all day because they have the resources, autonomy, and clarity they need to do their jobs. I don’t view this independence as a threat to my leadership but rather as a testament to it — and, more importantly, as a testament to their leadership.

There isn’t a single person on my team who hesitates to take the lead. If I’m not available, they will rally together, figure out a path forward, and divvy up the work. There is a shared commitment to being proactive and producing excellent results I’ve rarely seen in my career.

This kind of diligence doesn’t happen by accident. It’s crucial to ask your team members what they need to get their jobs done well and then ensure you’re providing those things. Taking the time to understand their needs is often the difference between lackluster performance and those up-and-to-the-right charts we all love to see.

If your team doesn’t work in your absence, something is wrong. Very wrong. And this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad employees. Sure, they could be slackers, but it’s more likely that:

You haven’t given them the resources or autonomy they need to do their jobs well in your absence

You haven’t clarified team priorities or their individual responsibilities

They are frustrated, burned out, or otherwise stressed to the point of diminished capacity

So before you scold someone, ask yourself whether you’ve played a part in their poor performance. Ask yourself what you could do better as a leader. Then — and only then — ask your team member how you can help solve the problem.

3. Your team members work well with each other — and with you.

Working well together doesn’t mean everyone gets along all the time. There are bound to be a few differences of opinion amongst team members. But your team should absolutely be able to engage in spirited debate and disagree with each other while still maintaining trust and respect.

I’ve often found that team members who trust each other disagree more, not less. When the stakes are low in terms of interpersonal consequences, people are more willing to advocate for an idea they believe in — because they can walk away whether they win or lose, knowing the relationship hasn’t been jeopardized by them voicing an opinion. If your team doesn’t trust each other, there’s something toxic brewing.

Camaraderie is also a key component of working well together. No, team members don’t need to be best friends. But it’s estimated that we spend 1/3 of our lives at work, so being able to do so in the presence of people we enjoy is a big boost to job satisfaction.

The best way to promote camaraderie: Don’t be all business all the time. Ask team members how their weekend was. Stop to chat when you have a few moments. Let people pass around memes or share funny articles. Hell, let them band together and tease you a bit (you are the boss, after all).

If you read some of the hijinks on my team’s Slack feed, you’d have no idea that we are such consistent outperformers. But I don’t have a problem with their repartee — because as long as the work is being done, there’s no reason to discourage fun. We may be employees and leaders, but we’re also human beings with an innate need to connect and belong.

Which brings me to my next point: Are you part of the team or just a figurehead? You want your team members to feel comfortable working alongside you and approaching you when they run into problems. You set the tone for making the team setting feel like a safe, inclusive, constructive environment. Even your highest performers will eventually start to disengage if you don’t maintain a connection with them.

This is even more important now that so many of us are working remotely. Many workers are feeling more isolated than they ever have. So take the time to check in, offer your support, and schedule virtual activities or group lunches.

It’s really not about whether you’re great; it’s about whether you show up.

As leaders, we spend so much of our time thinking about the success of the business. It’s good to take a moment here and there to remember that the business is nothing more than a by-product of our most precious resource: our people.

If you’re not showing up for your people, you’re not a great leader, pure and simple. Because what really shapes you as a leader isn’t the moments of accolade. What shapes you is carrying the brunt of a bad day, picking up the pieces of a failed project, lighting a path forward, and telling your team that you’ll try again. What shapes you is the capacity to inspire, guide, support, and develop all these people who have been entrusted to you. The more you serve your team, the greater you become.