Let’s be honest: even if you love being a leader the majority of the time, there’ll be tricky weeks, days or moments. That’s the nature of leadership, right?
My background is in education, and over seventeen years, I went from class teacher to head teacher - quite the journey, I can tell you!
As a new head, I had to oversee a £7m rebuild, manage an expansion programme which saw our pupil numbers double in size, and, four weeks in - and with impeccable timing - Ofsted called!
Alongside this, I realised that my days were now filled with activities around budgeting, safeguarding, recruitment and retention, improvement planning and health and safety - before and after school car parking is the bane of many heads’ lives!
All of this needed a completely different skill set to the one I had as a teacher and was far removed from why I went into the profession in the first place.
Perhaps you’re feeling something similar?
Develop your essential skills
At Laughology, we’re often asked to work with people who are brilliant at their day job. They are experts in their fields, such as engineering, law, finance or IT. And because of this, someone assumed they would make great middle or senior leaders too.
As we know, leading, managing and developing others can’t be done through a spreadsheet or a bit of mathematical wizardry. You need what used to be called ‘soft skills,’ but organisations now recognise these aren’t ‘soft,’ they are essential.
They include:
- Great communication skills. Understanding your own and others' personalities and communication styles.
- The ability to motivate yourself and your team.
- Flexible, solution-focused thinking, a desire to learn and an ability to adapt to change.
- Organisational skills and the art of delegation.
The excellent news is that all of these can be developed. But where to start?
It might be helpful to ask for a 360° appraisal (or similar). This compares how you think you’re doing with the thoughts of your team, your peers and your line manager. It identifies things that you are doing well and should continue. Yay! As well as things that you should start or stop doing.
You need to ask people who will be open and honest – otherwise, it’s a waste of time and money. You also need to be prepared to receive the feedback positively. This can sometimes be difficult, but asking for and receiving feedback well is another essential leadership skill.
Once you’ve identified your areas for improvement (‘the what’), it’s time to chat with your boss to make an action plan (‘the how’). Options include:
- Engaging a leadership coach.
- If your organisation already has action learning sets, join one of these. If your organisation doesn’t, why not suggest them – you won’t be the only one who benefits.
- Researching training opportunities. For example, workshops on positive communication or programmes such as Being a People Manager. If you ask around, there are bound to be others in your organisation who would love the chance to upskill themselves, and that can only be good for the business.
Develop your team’s essential skills
People turn to you for answers once you’re in a leadership role. Sometimes, that’s okay; the quickest and best option. However, this leads to a learned helplessness and a lack of diverse thinking in the long run.
So:
- Don’t be a brittle know-all – even if you do, in fact, think you know it all! Instead, model being a fallible finder-outer. It’s okay to say that you don’t know at the moment.
- Show your own vulnerabilities, share your areas to improve and encourage others to do the same so that you can support each other.
- Be aware that there are often many solutions to a problem. Before you dive in with yours, open up the floor to other ideas by embedding a FLIP It Thinking approach.
- Rethink your recruitment processes. We’re drawn to people who think like us, act like us and solve problems in the same way as us. Aim to develop a team who think differently from each other, who can have fun, lively and motivational debates, and who embrace change as an exciting next chapter.
Of course, for all of the above, other essential leadership skills are needed. In particular, the ability to create a psychologically safe environment with an awareness of your unconscious bias.
Develop everyone’s organisational skills
Most people struggle with a lack of time and a heavy workload. Sometimes, spending time that you don’t think you have chatting to people about these things can feel counter-intuitive. But, by investing in these conversations, you will help others… and yourself.
- Find out what each member of your team struggles with:
- Are they a procrastinator who needs to take the bull by the horns and JFDI?
- Do they need to be better at prioritising?
- Are they a perfectionist who needs to understand that often good is good enough? Especially if the risk to the business is low and the action is reversible.
- Understand where your team are in terms of their skills, knowledge and understanding:
- Do they need close support from a work buddy who gets them started on something new and then has regular check-ins? As well as getting the job done, this can help to increase capacity and with succession planning.
- Are they okay to fly solo on most things? Maybe they just need regular coaching catch-ups with you to check they’re on track.
- Are they someone that you can delegate to? Here is another leadership skill in terms of letting things go. Firstly, being confident to physically hand over work and secondly, accepting that it won’t always be done as you would like/would have done. Unless there are major flaws, not being tempted to tamper or tweak, but remembering that good is good enough and giving appropriate reward and recognition.
One of the best things I learned as a head was how to delegate. And if you can find someone who is prepared, and even happy, to don a high viz jacket and deal with shouty parents in the car park (or whatever your equivalent is), then you’re one step closer to loving being a leader again.
Hurrah!
When Sarah Creegan chose to leave school at 16, she was told by three separate teachers that ‘she wouldn’t amount to much’. That didn’t put her off, though. Luckily for us, she’s one of our leading facilitators and consultants who designs and delivers learning and change programmes in the private, public and education sectors.