The Foundation of Team Building (Ep. 11)

Rising Tide Leadership Podcast

Episode 11: The Foundation of Team Building

Intro: Armageddon

• Point of the story: It wasn’t in that moment around the conference table that Harry built a team. He had already invested in the relationships with each member of his team over the years.

Leaders do two things: Build People and Build Teams

Building teams:

• If you are responsible for others, then you better believe that you are charged with building your team.
• If you have even one person who looks to you for leadership, you have a team on your hands. Time to take responsibility!

The foundation of building teams is Trust. Without it, you are dead in the water!

REFLECTION QUESTION 1: Are you the kind of leader who builds Trust for your team?

LEADERS FIRST GIVE TRUST, THEN THEY GET TRUST

If you walk on to a team and expect people to trust you, to say the least, you are probably going to be met with some kind of resistance.

How do leaders focus on first giving Trust?

• Read Maxwell's Law of Empowerment.
• Secure leaders spend their time “identifying leaders; building them up; giving them resources, authority, and responsibility; and then turning them loose to achieve”. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell.

• Leaders Give Authority To Their Team Members

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” Theodore Roosevelt

REFLECTION QUESTION 2: Leaders, is this how you run your ship? Do you have sense enough to pick good men and women to get the job done? Do you actually restrain yourself from imposing your wonderful ideas of how to get stuff done, and let them actually do their job?

Get people on your team that know what they're doing, hand over REAL authority, and actually get out of their way. Your team will be unstoppable.

REFLECTION QUESTION 3: “What would it look like for you to give away real Authority to your team?”

• Leaders Give Away Responsibility

When I say unleash your team and get out of their way, I'm not saying that you shirk your responsibilities. Instead, increase your accountability to your team by allowing them to have the responsibilities they should have.

Enlarging others makes you larger.

When we allow people to be responsible for their actions and projects, we give them the ability to both take the credit, and own up to the mistakes.

REFLECTION QUESTION 4: Do you give away responsibility to those in your care, without shirking the accountability piece?

MO’s Final Thoughts: Remember that the leadership journey isn't easy, but it really is simple. We make it more difficult that it needs to be. The most important thing that you can do for our team is begin with a culture of trust. And, my hope would be that you take a counterintuitive approach to leadership. Don’t demand trust from your people. It’s never too late to build trust. It’s never too late to build that foundation. Trust your team. Give away authority. Give away responsibility.

Amazon Book Link: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell

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