Talk to your team, brief your staff and be open with them:
- They will feel involved.
- You start energising the potential in them.
- Their feedback can stop you making mistakes.
- You are starting to ‘lead’ rather than just ‘manage’.
- Institute regular briefing sessions which you lead yourself. How you communicate, the way you talk to people, is all part of leadership.
- Finally GOYA (get off your arse) and be seen around the company on a daily basis – you SEE things starting to go wrong and you start to influence your team.
- They can see the bigger picture. I often quote a scene dramatised in the brilliant film of Cornelius Ryan’s account of Operation Market Garden ‘A Bridge Too Far’. Major Julian Cook, played by Robert Redford, has just led his company of the American 82nd Airborne across the Waal canal in canvas folding boats and repeating ‘Hail Mary’ as the barrage of smoke clears and machine gun start up. After the 82nd clear the far end of the bridge and make it safe the Irish Guards from XXX Corps cross the bridge in their tanks and stop, with the leading tank commander insisting that they dare not go any further because a powerful Tiger tank is sitting up on an overlooking hill. Redford (Maj Cook) screams at the tank commander that “they’re your guys” – the British 1st Airborne Division had been holding on several days longer than expected, were heavily outgunned, desperately needed support and were only 7 miles up the road. Had everyone known the whole picture just maybe the calamitous result would have been different.