Amplifying leadership through process
Excellence in leadership extends beyond your personal working style. How can you harness processes and systems to invigorate your leadership approach and cultivate a thriving organization?
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, but leadership actively feeds culture. Your approach to leading your team lays the foundation for the unspoken rules that fuel performance and engagement. A worst case scenario to avoid is finding yourself slowing down progress as a bottleneck, the team grappling with uncertainty surrounding their work and their purpose, and last minute scrambles. So, how can you reinforce your leadership by implementing effective systems and processes that foster collaboration, elevate performance, and keep your team motivated and aligned towards a common vision?
An exceptional leader goes beyond personal qualities and actions. By setting up processes and systems within your organization that align with your leadership style, you can foster an environment that guides your team towards success.
how DO you build operations around your leadership principles?
Define the qualities you find most important for your leadership vision, then build systems and processes that reinforce these
Why This Works
As your team expands, it becomes impractical to maintain the same level of direct interaction with everyone as you did in the earlier stages. The good news is, it's not imperative for you to immerse yourself in every decision or workstream, especially as your startup matures and your team size grows. Consequently, it becomes crucial to implement systems and processes that effectively convey what you deem essential for others to be aware of. Your leadership qualities should be seamlessly interwoven into these mechanisms to ensure that your team remains motivated and guided towards success.
Why Do This Now
In the pursuit of product-market fit and growth, the significance of your leadership and your company culture can sometimes feel overshadowed. It is crucial, however, to periodically assess and prioritize your leadership and your company culture while actively seeking feedback from your team members. By doing so, you will not only retain your employees but also keep them engaged, leading to enhanced productivity and overall success. A thriving culture, facilitated by strong leadership, can be the driving force behind your business's prosperity.
how We Do: Identify gaps in your leadership and company culture and experiment with new structures to guide you towards where you want to be
Developing your leadership style is intrinsically linked with the culture and processes your team works within. Common areas you may want to dig into:
Rallying your team around a vision and strategy
Galvanize your team by uniting them around a compelling vision and a well-defined strategy. Clarity in your collective objectives becomes paramount, especially in times of change, warranting additional context on the shifts and the rationale behind them. This is particularly needed during the early stages, as your strategy will likely undergo more frequent pivots. By fostering a shared understanding of the team's purpose and staying transparent about strategic adjustments, you can help your team understand the “why” behind the “what” and navigate challenges that come their way.
Process 📝
Strategy doc: Have one reference outlining the vision, strategy, and the rationale behind these. Feature your most important OKRs here so that it’s clear how these ladder up to the overall strategy and vision, and how you’ll measure success.
All-hands alignment: Hold dedicated meetings/Q&As when introducing new strategies, offering a clear breakdown of modifications and the underlying reasons.
Focus: Any task or initiative that doesn't contribute / line up to your OKRs should not be given priority.
People 🫶
Aligned OKRs: Ensure individual team member’s goals are aligned with the overarching top OKRs so that it’s obvious how each individual’s work impacts the overall strategy.
Ingrained Strategy in Onboarding: Immerse new hires in the strategy upon joining, e.g., having folks help with customer experience as part of their onboarding even if that’s not their role, instilling a strong foundation for their journey within the organization.
Knowing when to step in vs. step back
Mastering the art of knowing when to step in, step back (and delegate) is a pivotal skill for any leader. Avoid the trap of micro-management, as it rarely benefits you or your team members. Instead, demonstrate trust in your team's abilities by empowering them to excel in the roles you selected them for – we recognize this can be easier said than done. Embrace a balanced approach that allows you to provide guidance when needed, grant autonomy when appropriate, and foster an environment where each member can take ownership of their domains. Offering specific and constructive feedback is equally crucial. By providing targeted insights, you empower your team members to understand their strengths, areas for improvement, and how their efforts contribute to the overall success of the project. This fosters a culture of continuous improvement and elevates individual performance.
Tools 🛠️
Defining frameworks: When projects are more cross-functional or complex in nature, use frameworks like RACI and RAPID to define clear roles and responsibilities.
Digital user manuals: Using personal user manuals like Lluna allows you to understand how best to deliver feedback to each member so that it lands most effectively.
Process 📝
Templatization: Create templated standards where possible, such as for brand voice or common client deliverables, to eliminate the need for reinventing the wheel or facing bottlenecked approvals.
People 🫶
Feedback: Provide actionable feedback with specific examples that guides team members toward improvement and growth.
Performance reviews: Implement at least two 360° reviews a year for everyone, including yourself (and any other co-founders), so that people are receiving expected, documented feedback on their performance and trajectory at the company.
Delegation: Delegate tasks and remove yourself from being the approver of too many things to foster smoother processes.
Foster psychological safety
Nurturing psychological safety, the cornerstone of effective teams, is paramount in your leadership approach. Embrace an environment where mistakes are seen as valuable learning opportunities that facilitate growth. Encourage a culture of experimentation and innovation, enabling your team to explore new ideas without fear of repercussions. By fostering such an atmosphere, your team is more likely to embrace challenges and be less afraid of pushing boundaries.
Process 📝
Hackathons: Infuse a culture of experimentation by integrating dedicated hackathons, providing a platform for creative exploration. While these are commonly engineering-focused, they can also extend to non-engineering functions (e.g., process hacks).
Retros: Facilitate retrospectives on missteps, even integrating them as a focal point in company-wide meetings. Emphasize the valuable takeaways, stressing how these experiences can catalyze improvements for the future.
People 🫶
Diverse Perspectives: Encourage decision-making and input from voices beyond your own to avoid creating an echo chamber or top-down culture.
Drive accountability
Exemplify accountability through your actions and inspire others to follow suit.
For example, as a leader, you can demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction / customer-first values by engaging with and addressing customer feedback.
Likewise, if you expect your team to meet deadlines diligently, ensure you lead the way by consistently adhering to deadlines yourself. In leading by example, you can create a ripple effect of accountability dedication within your organization.
Establishing central documentation ensures that everyone is well-informed about expectations, task assignments, and ongoing developments. By providing a clear roadmap, individuals can channel their cognitive energies towards the task(s) at hand, rather than diverting their focus towards wondering about what’s going on around them in tandem or uncertain dependencies.
Tools 🛠️
Source of Truth: Create centralized repositories, accessible to all stakeholders, to champion transparency and amplify visibility, especially on cross-functional endeavors. Consider implementing an effective project management system, including a dedicated platform that everyone can use.
Process 📝
Business Reviews: Instate regular weekly business reviews as a dedicated space to assess progress towards OKRs, aligning efforts with goals.
Meeting norms: Establish meeting norms e.g., creating the expectation that every meeting should have a documented purpose and deciding when an advance agenda and action items are warranted.
Messaging norms: Establish messaging norms e.g., when to encourage Slack vs. email, or expected response times for each channel, both internally and externally with clients.
People 🫶
Weekly updates: Elicit written updates for Progress, Plans, and Problems (3Ps) from each team member. This will not only save some meeting time and grants you, as the leader, a comprehensive overview but also cultivates an environment of shared knowledge among peers.
Purpose-Driven Meetings: Eschew mundane status meetings in favor of purpose-driven interactions that encourage collaboration and meaningful discussions and problem-solving.
Celebrating wins
Instill a culture that celebrates team and individual achievements. Embrace the practice of acknowledging wins, big or small, and use these moments to motivate and uplift your team. By fostering an environment where success is recognized and appreciated, you can inspire a sense of accomplishment and pride amongst your team members. Embrace the power of celebration as a catalyst for continuous growth and enthusiasm.
Tools 🛠️
Shoutouts channel: Create a designated #kudos channel, e.g., on Slack, as an avenue for everyone to collectively celebrate individual and team achievements.
Process 📝
Recognition Awards: Foster a culture of recognition through peer-led nominations or votes. For instance, spotlight one employee every month who epitomizes a core value.
Peer-to-Peer Credits: Empower each team member with a set number of credits (e.g., gift cards every quarter) that they can give to any other peer to acknowledge their peer’s contributions and foster appreciation and camaraderie.
People 🫶
Milestone Celebrations: It’s easy to lose sight of the small milestones when you’re playing the long game. Organize gatherings to commemorate significant team milestones, instilling a sense of unity and achievement. You can find some lower budget ideas like cocktail/mocktail making and trivia showdowns here.
Lead by example: While encouraging your team members to actively engage in #kudos or awards processes above, your participation in this practice, whether in meetings or in messaging channels, remains pivotal in the spirit of leading by example.
Actually Actionable
Nice article. Now what?
Determine the key leadership qualities you want to amplify that are linked with the culture and processes your team works within
Pinpoint the most significant opportunities for refining your leadership (start here if there’s a particular founder habit you index highly on). What type of leader are you growing towards?
Conduct a survey to get a pulse on employee engagement (simple Google form or leverage a people management platform like Lattice).
Conduct a 360° review to solicit feedback from your team members and co-founders.
Example areas to dig into further
Clarity of vision, strategy, and goals
Do people understand the vision and high-level strategy for the company? Do people understand the “why” behind certain strategic decisions? Do people feel like things change constantly without context?
Process efficiency
Efficiency through Investigation: Thoroughly assess various processes and workstreams, shedding light on those that tend to experience more frequent delays or challenges. Which parts take the longest? Which are most complex? Which decisions take the team or you the longest?
Identify areas where you tend to be more in the weeds - do you need to be? Where can you delegate more?
Process Evaluation: Assess the effectiveness of processes in place for reviewing plans, setting goals, measuring progress, and achieving alignment.
Meeting efficiency
Purpose-Driven Meetings: Scrutinize the purpose behind your meetings, evaluating their balance in contributing to discussion, problem-solving, business reviews, and status updates e.g., refrain from excessive emphasis on status updates.
Psychological safety
Do people feel safe to take a risk or ask for help? Are mistakes held against folks? Are people bringing up problems or challenges?
Tool usage
Tool Utilization Audit: Conduct a comprehensive review of your toolset to assess their efficacy in establishing a source of truth, ensuring transparency, and facilitating efficient communication, while being wary of tool fatigue.
Seamless Project Tracking: Analyze how different teams track project progress, ensuring coherence and clarity. Where can you standardize and how do you obtain an effective bird’s eye view?
Mindful Communication: Be clear about when you’re using messaging platforms vs. email vs. in-person to communicate with the team, seeking to identify potential communication breakdowns.
Dashboard-Driven OKR Tracking: Evaluate the utility of systems in tracking and communicating key OKRs
Performance reviews
Holistic Performance Assessment: Evaluate team performance, identifying areas where greater attention and support are required. Are there gaps in expertise or skills?
Effective Feedback Delivery: Examine the efficacy of your feedback delivery, ensuring they align with best practices for constructive and meaningful communication. How often are you giving or receiving feedback? How often is feedback given formally as part of performance reviews? Are people incorporating your feedback?
Establish continuous feedback loops
Regularly solicit feedback from your team (engagement surveys, 360° feedback, etc.) so that you can monitor trends and feedback over time.
Leadership extends beyond what you say and what you do. It requires you to think about the unspoken rules that exist outside of your personal reach; expectations that you can create by implementing systems and processes that will set people up for success. The way you build your culture ties directly to the way you lead your team. How do you envision your leadership extending its influence beyond the confines of the (virtual) meeting room? In your absence, what guiding principles do you want your team to operate by?
Writer: Emily
Interested in working with Emily through of All Trades to transform your leadership operations? Email founder@weofalltrades.com for more on how to bring her in as an embedded operator in your startup.