I have been hugely lucky in my career, having worked for and with lots of inspiring leaders in business, charities and government. I have learned something from each of them. I’ve also always made a point of reflecting on my own performance each evening, and have made it my practice to make diary notes on where I could have done better.
Through a combination of all this I have concluded that leaders need to achieve three things to set the foundations for a team to be happy and successful.
How to Build a Happy Team
- Set and articulate a clear sense of direction, then let your employees take ownership of it and praise them when they deliver.
- Always explain the “why” behind the tasks you give your employees.
- Put the extra effort in to check in with your employees and show you care.
Have a Solid Sense of Direction
Leaders need to be clear about what it is that their team, department, business unit, region or country are trying to achieve.
Are they looking for the organization to double in size, be the most efficient, the best, biggest or quickest? The potential list is endless. Equally, does everyone on the team understand where they are heading? It sounds really easy, doesn’t it? Yet, strangely, so many managers and leaders fall down on clearly setting out what they are aiming for and in making sure everyone is onboard.
There are a number of reasons why a clear sense of direction is important.
Firstly, in and of itself, when everyone has a precise destination in mind, energy and effort can be coordinated into a unified plan which leads to collaborative working, building trust and respect. When there is a clearly defined goal, it is possible to measure what it is you are trying to achieve. If it can be measured, then performance can be recognized and rewarded.
It also allows this performance to be benchmarked against the competition. This creates external “enemies” which can be used to further strengthen internal bonds and build upon the common cause. The threat of that common enemy pushes performance to even greater heights. Or the enemy can be extinction itself.
When there is no clear direction, each department or division focuses on what they think is important or, equally worryingly, nothing in particular. Collaboration within departments and between divisions will be weak and in-fighting is inevitable, sapping the energy of the whole team.
Great leaders set then articulate the direction and then leave their team to get on with the job, letting them build the detail of the plan so they have ownership of it. They don’t micromanage; instead, they trust their people to deliver and, when they do, they praise them.
If they believe an individual could do something better, they use this as an opportunity to develop them. They treat all employees, whatever their background, with respect, and demand the same in return.
Give Employees a Sense of Purpose
Great leaders help everyone on their teams understand why what they are doing is important. As we have already established, everyone wants to believe they are making a difference, doing something worthwhile with their life and that it has purpose.
For a business strategy to have real impact, the message needs to be reinforced on two levels.
Firstly, each employee must know exactly why what they do as an individual is vital to the company’s success. Great managers keep their teams informed about all that is happening in their department and in the wider organization, effectively communicating the organization’s plan to help everyone feel “plugged in” with a context for their work.
The second level concerns a wider understanding of what role the organization plays in making the world a bit better. There is no better example of setting the wider context for making employees feel a sense of purpose than the story of when JF Kennedy, the then American President, visited NASA ahead of the first moon landing.
Workers were lined up to meet the President and shake his hand. When the President was introduced to the janitor, Kennedy asked him, “What do you do?” Quick as a flash, he replied, “Put a man on the moon.” Now, that is a commitment to the “why.”
Continuously Take an Interest in Your Employees
Lastly, and most importantly, leaders should be interested in their employees. They need to want to know what they are doing, how they are developing and about their well-being. As Theodore Roosevelt eloquently said,
Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
The mind of a manager is like the core of the Earth. If it were cold, rather than hot, all life on Earth would die. If a manager takes no interest in the work of their team and what they achieve, how can they praise or coach them? Similarly, if the manager isn’t interested, why should the workers bother?
Your initial response to this might be that it is obvious. Of course, leaders need to know what is going on and take an interest. I would argue, however, that this is something that frequently slips onto the backburner when there is a lot else happening, as there almost always is in most firms.
Taking a continual interest in your team requires sustained energy and commitment. It can’t be a one-off, or something you do when it occurs to you that you’ve not been too engaged elsewhere of late. It has to be part of the weekly schedule of management activities.
While at Waitrose, I kept a list of all my key managers written down on a piece of paper. The list included my fellow directors, but also other key appointments in the senior team. In addition to scheduled meetings, I made a point of trying to phone, or meet in person, for a chat with each of them weekly and would tick their names off my list when I had done so.
There were about 15 people in total. Achieving this goal each week was not easy with all the other distractions I faced, but I never allowed myself to push it aside just for that week. Those interactions were just as important as everything else in my diary.
In addition to my schedule of calls, I would also spend one hour each Saturday evening calling managers in randomly chosen Waitrose shops. It was all fairly informal. I’d get put through to the manager, who I already knew through my regular walkarounds at our various stores, and check in to see how trade had been.
Why? Because it showed I cared and that I was interested. I would also always ask them about their team, to check they were interested in the people in their care. I was leading by example to show that they, too, should be checking in with their own team.
I have worked with so many organizations that go through the motions of showing they are interested in the team. They have suggestion boxes, mental first aiders, helplines, all sorts, but still have poor well-being scores.
Why? Because managers are not genuinely interested in the people that work for them. They are entirely focused on completing the business task at all costs. Meanwhile, they are oblivious to the strain employees are under at work and perhaps at home. They perhaps think that putting the business helpline infrastructure in place mitigates the need for them to ask how people are doing, but it doesn’t.
It is just so powerful when a team of people believe you are there to support them to achieve the best results and be the best they can be, rather than them being there to support you.
This edited extract is from Happy Economics by Mark Price ©2024 and is reproduced and adapted with permission from Kogan Page Ltd.
