IT Leadership

I had the opportunity to speak with a leader the other day. He leads a team of around 200 people, and he and his team are responsible for the delivery of extremely critical services for many thousands of customers across the globe. He has been in his role for over 6 years, and prior to that, he was a senior leader in the Army.

His team is going through a lot of change at the moment, and the organisation is setting itself up for more change and disruption in the next few years as it reacts to a rapidly changing business environment. Change affecting the entire organisation, change affecting teams, and change affecting individuals.

This leader, let’s call him Andy, was talking about his team, and the conversations he was having with his own manager, and how he was feeling overwhelmed by everything he had to do.

He was feeling overwhelmed because he felt he needed to have all the answers to all the questions, and because he felt he needed to cascade information and instructions to his team so they knew what was happening and what they needed to do.

But he didn’t feel he had all the answers, and he didn’t feel his team were responding how he would like them to amidst the change.

This is not an uncommon feeling for any leader, and especially in times of change, when the unknown can feel scary and intimidating.

I explained to Andy that in my experience, the first place to start in these situations is to lead yourself, to be courageous, and to create a map (of sorts) for yourself, that will help you navigate the situation and guide your team through it too.

I explained to Andy that this is how I try to approach these situations, and it helps me to be more confident, even when I don’t have all the answers.

So in this article, I want to share the 3 courageous steps I suggested to Andy, and hopefully, they will help you too if you find yourself in a similar situation.

1. Creating A Map

Imagine you are in a boat with your team, and you are all heading out to sea on a voyage together. You have never been on this journey before, and you don’t know exactly where you are going, or what you will face along the way, or even if you will reach your destination successfully.

This is how a lot of leaders feel when they are leading their teams through change.

But the one thing you can do is create a map for your journey. You won’t know everything that is going to happen, but you can start by drawing the coastline you know is ahead, and the major landmarks you know about, and that will help you to get started and make some progress.

For example, with Andy, we talked about the things he did know, and the things he had control over, and we created a simple list together like this:

What Are The Things You Know Right Now?

What You Know About The Destination (the vision, the goals, the outcomes)

What You Know About The Journey (the steps, the phases, the activities)

What You Know About The People (their concerns, their fears, their hopes)

What You Know About The Risks (the things that could go wrong, the things you can control to mitigate those risks)

Just creating this list helped Andy realise that actually, he knew quite a lot about the journey ahead, and it helped him clarify his own thinking, and also the thinking of his team, and it gave him a framework for conversations he could have with his team, and things he could say, such as:

“Here is the destination we are working towards, and these are the milestones we need to reach along the way. We don’t know everything about the journey, but we are going to take it step by step, and we have a map to help us navigate.

Here are the things we know now, these are the things we know we don’t know, and this is how we are going to learn and adapt along the way.

And this is how we are going to manage the risks along the journey, because we want to make sure we get to our destination safely.”

Creating a map like this is not only courageous, but it is also empowering for a leader and for a team, because you are facing into the unknown, with a plan, and a set of tools to help you adapt and respond to whatever comes along.

2. How To Create A High-Performance Team

Creating a high-performing team is something that a lot of leaders think is difficult, or is something that other leaders somehow magically achieve, but it is actually very simple to create a high-performing team, because a high-performing team is built on trust.

When your team trusts you, and when you trust your team, magical things happen.

When trust is present, you can have open and honest conversations about things like purpose, meaning, values, goals, and expectations.

When trust is present, you can have difficult conversations about performance, and you can give feedback to each other, and you can hold each other to account.

When trust is present, you can celebrate success, and you can learn from failure, and you can support each other through challenges and adversity.

When trust is present, you can be vulnerable with each other, and you can ask for help, and you can offer help to each other, and you can work together to achieve great things.

This is what leadership is all about. It is about creating the trust that enables a group of people to achieve great things together.

And creating trust takes courage. It takes courage to be vulnerable, to admit you don’t know everything, to admit you are scared about the journey ahead, to ask for help, to offer help, to care about your team, and to do the right thing, even when it is hard.

This is how you create a high-performing team, because a high-performing team is a team that trusts each other and trusts their leader, and is willing to go into the unknown together, with their leader, and achieve great things.

3. How To Maintain Resilience In Times of Change

When you are leading a team through change, it can sometimes feel a bit like climbing a mountain.

You can see the summit, and you can see the path ahead, but it is a bit daunting, especially if you have never climbed a mountain before.

What I have learnt is that when climbing a mountain, or when leading a team through change, it is really important to focus on the next 3 steps ahead of you, and not to worry too much about what is beyond that, because that can often feel overwhelming, and it can often deter you, or hold you back.

What I also know is that when climbing a mountain, or when leading a team through change, things often feel harder than they seem, and it is easy to underestimate the energy and the effort required.

So my advice to Andy, and to anyone leading a team through change, is to plot your map and lead your team one step at a time, and one day at a time, and to keep going, even when things feel hard, and to celebrate the small wins along the way, and to learn to recognise the signs of fatigue and overwhelm in yourself and in your team, and to take action when you see those signs, because leadership is about sustaining momentum.

Because when times are tough, a courageous leader is not afraid to say: “I am struggling, we are struggling, how can we support each other?”

Because leading a team, especially through change, is challenging, and it is only by being courageous that a leader can guide their team safely through the toughest of times.

I hope these 3 steps help you to lead yourself, and then lead your team with courage and confidence, and I hope they help you to navigate the unknown, and to create a high-performing team that achieves great things together.