Leadership in Routine and Crisis: What’s the Difference?

Leadership is a crucial component of any business, but it becomes even more critical in times of crisis and change. Whether managing a small team of 2-10 people or a larger organization, the ability to adapt and lead effectively during these times can make all the difference.

The main difference between leadership in routine and crisis is the level of uncertainty and the need for quick decision-making in emergencies. Routine leadership involves established systems and processes, while crisis leadership requires adaptability and decisiveness in the face of uncertainty.

I have spent more than twelve years in leadership positions, most of which have been in high-paced and constantly changing military situations. But a big chunk of the time was routine; you might have heard the saying “hurry up and wait”; this pause in tempo is where leaders need to focus on processes and routines.

Not everyone can adapt to two so different types of leadership styles. Still, hopefully, after reading this post, you’ll have a better sense of how you can improve and adapt your leadership to effectively lead a team in routine and crises.

What Is Leadership in Times of Crisis?

Leadership in times of crisis is about adapting and making quick, decisive decisions in the face of uncertainty. In a crisis, it’s better to make a decent decision in time than a perfect decision too late.

In a crisis, it’s better to make a decent decision in time than a perfect decision too late.

But on the other hand, small teams that are well-equipped and well-led can change direction and adapt much faster than a larger and equally equipped team.

Adversity is actually how real teams are built; they are forged through challenging situations, something I have dedicated a large part of my career to understanding and building tools for.

You can understand why forging teams work and why team building doesn’t work here.

A leader’s ability to communicate effectively with their team is critical in times of crisis. Being clear, concise, and transparent while also being empathetic and understanding of your team members’ concerns and needs is crucial.

Keeping morale high and building trust within the team starts with being a supportive and caring leader.

Leading in a crisis also requires staying calm under pressure. It’s critical to acknowledge the gravity of the situation and the challenges that come with it – not to pretend everything’s fine when it isn’t. But by maintaining a level head, you can help keep the team focused and prevent panic or chaos.

When I speak with business leaders, the biggest difference in leadership culture that I see is that in the army, we focus 80% on leadership situations characterized by chaos and uncertainty. The other 20% is dedicated to routine.

In the business world, the numbers seem to be the opposite; a very small percentage of effort is directed toward the most difficult and most threatening situations. Even though most businesses will have to endure a crisis within five years.

I believe this is one of the big unspoken issues of the business world, and it leads to more difficulties and suffering than necessary.

Why Is Leadership Agility in Times of Crisis and Change Important?

In times of crisis and change, agility in leadership is essential to adapting to new situations and pivoting as needed, and fast.

Being proactive rather than reactive is one of the key benefits of agile leadership. Staying on top of developments and being prepared to make quick decisions can help minimize the impact of a crisis or change on your team.

A major player in the “proactive game” is contingency planning; the plan never survives first contact with the enemy. Knowing this, we must put a lot of effort into understanding possible situational developments and connecting them with easy-to-understand and remembered action plans.

A major player in the “proactive game” is contingency planning; the plan never survives first contact with the enemy.

During my time in the bomb disposal teams, I created and executed on thousands of contingency plans, I know how they work, and I stand ready to teach you what I have learned through experience; when you are ready, book a free leadership call with me here!

Additionally, agile leadership can foster innovation and creativity in your team and assist you in navigating challenging situations.

Building your team to anticipate change rather than react to it is one of the key benefits of agile leadership.

To overcome new challenges, your team may have to think creatively and come up with novel solutions to old problems.

I remember when the second in command on my EOD (bomb disposal) team solved a ten-year-old problem: loading and unloading the robot out of our team vehicle. It used to be a manual lift with a risk of back injury.

But he solved the problem by adding a few tackles and ropes like he used to do rock climbing. He was able to think differently, to look at the problem and draw on experiences from other aspects of his life, something that would prove invaluable on our many deployments together.

This all makes sense on paper, but if you can’t communicate this properly to your people, you are no better off than before.

The Role of Communication in Crisis Leadership

Leadership requires effective communication in any situation, but it becomes even more crucial during crises. When team members face uncertainty and stress, clear and transparent communication will help reduce anxiety, build trust, and get tasks completed fast.

When facing a crisis, leaders can use several key communication strategies:

Be transparent: It’s essential to be open and honest about the challenges and uncertainties that your team is facing. This means being upfront about any difficult decisions that need to be made and explaining the reasoning behind them.

Don’t mistake this for dumping information on your team; you must be a “crap filter” so they don’t have to deal with all the unnecessary information.

The trick is getting the balance correct; too little, and you might appear as "hiding" information; too much, and you'll have people worrying about things that will never impact them.

Keep the lines of communication open: Make sure to check in regularly with your team members and encourage straightforward and quick delivery of their message; there is no time to waste on issues that are not in imminent need of fixing.

Open up emergency channels for communication; this should be an encrypted service (like the Signal app) only allowing essential information to be passed.

Anxiety is usually driven by a fear of the unknown; this means that the leader’s focus should be to enable information to move where it needs to go.

Use fast language: When communicating during crises, it’s essential to be as clear and concise as possible to allow the speed of information; the most difficult part of combat is understanding the situation, the one who has the most accurate and timely information usually wins.

Your best tool here is to ask your team to repeat what you have said and then make sure you ask questions so you KNOW that they have understood what’s going on.

Be empathetic: Crises can be challenging for everyone; this is not the time to add extra stress onto your people; encourage people to do only what is vital and take the rest of the time off; recovery and sleep allow for good decisions and fewer redos.

Remember that REAL care is taking care of the problem that your team is facing, not just having discussions about their feelings.

Do what you belive is good for your team in the long run, not what will make them give you a high five today.

Decision-Making in Crisis Situations

One of the critical challenges of leadership in crises is the need to make fast and decisive decisions, often with limited information and with high risks.

Leaders can use these strategies to make effective decisions during crises:

Control for decision-making traps: There are several common decision-making traps that leaders can fall into during crises, such as overconfidence, groupthink, and anchoring bias. Leaders can improve their decision-making skills by being aware of these traps and taking steps to avoid them. These are all described in my favorite book, Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman.

Gather as much information as possible: You have probably heard that you should “gather as much information as possible” what I have noticed with leaders that take this approach is that they tend never to stop looking for information, and often their decisions come too late.

Decisions that are perfect but too late are worse than a semi-good decision on time.

Instead, learn how much information is enough to move on with the task. What exactly do you need (not what you want) to know before you can make a decision,

This may involve seeking input from team members, consulting with experts, or examining data and research.

Be flexible and open to new ideas: Crises often require leaders to think outside the box and develop creative solutions. This means being open to new ideas and approaches and pivoting as needed.

Remember that 99 out of 100 new ideas are really bad, but you only need one great idea to make up for all the bad ones. For every Google (a great idea), there’s a million Swosh (bad ideas).

Make a decision and move forward: While it’s essential to gather as much information as possible, there may come a point where you need to make a decision even if you don’t have all the information you’d like. It’s essential to be decisive and take action while also being prepared to adapt as new information becomes available.

With action comes clarity! Move forward and see what you can learn!

With action comes clarity! Move forward and see what you can learn!

Consider the long-term implications: Focusing solely on short-term solutions can be easy in a crisis. However, it’s essential to consider the long-term consequences of your decisions and how they may impact the team or organization in the future.

In the primary phase of the crisis, it’s vital to get out of the so-called “kill zone”; if you stay here, your business will fail. This is where your crisis management plan comes in handy; there’s little time to think and be innovative.

In the primary phase of the crisis, it’s vital to get out of the so-called “kill zone”; if you stay here, your business will fail.

In the primary phase, the focus is short-term gains and avoiding significant losses.

In the secondary phase, the tempo is slower, and we have taken our business out of the kill zone but not out of danger; now, it’s time to assess the situation and understand the threat. We start preparing for how our next action will impact the organization in the long run.

In the secondary phase, the tempo is slower, and we have taken our business out of the kill zone but not out of danger; now, it’s time to assess the situation and understand the threat.

Involve the right people: The right people can contribute various perspectives and ideas to decision-making. Include team members who have expertise in specific areas or may be affected by the decision. By doing so, you can make sure that your decision is well-informed and well-supported.

In the primary phase, you want people who can quickly understand what needs to be done on a deeper level.

Usually, this is someone who has been with the company for a long time or who you trust and communicate well with.

In the secondary phase, you should look for the “thinkers,” those who excel at analyzing and who can sit down and structurally assess what has happened.

Most of the time, we don’t get to change the people on the team because of the situation; I prefer not to anyways, so instead, we need to encourage specific behaviors suitable for that situation.

You should train your team to understand that when you say GO, there is no time for questions, but as soon as things calm down, you are their most loyal listener.

What Is Leadership in Routine?

Some people put their leaders on a pedestal, seeing them as someone who tells everyone else what to do and how to do it. In reality, a true leader is someone who is with the team, consistently steering it toward a common goal. They do so unrelentingly and always with the bigger picture in mind. True leaders ensure that each team member is up to speed on where the team is and where it is headed.

Leadership in routine is crucial to the success of any business. After all, the team can move closer toward the goals in the day-to-day, seemingly mundane tasks. It is up to the leader to ensure that each team member does their share and contributes what is expected of them.

Here are some vital aspects that an effective leader must prioritize when it comes to routinely managing a team:

Focus On Business Operations and Processes

Business operations include all the daily tasks and processes involved in making a business run efficiently. It may include any of the following:

Formulation of marketing strategies
Sales monitoring
Web development
Inventory updates
Client appointments
Industry updates
Order tracking
Brainstorming/team meetings

Notice that most of these tasks are repetitive and almost monotonous. However, these are necessary to ensure the business works like a well-oiled machine. As a leader, it is part of your job to manage all these aspects of business operations and ensure that each task is accomplished efficiently and on time.

One of the key benefits of strong Standard Operating Procedures is that they consume very few resources to follow and implement. A good SOP or routine should reduce the number of decisions and wasted time and allow for a transfer of tasks between employees if needed.

This will, in return, mean a lower workload, a higher degree of goal accomplishment, and free up brain computing power for complex tasks.

Find Ways To Make Tasks Easier

Gone are the days of tedious 10-page reports and blurry graphs printed on scratchy bond papers. These days, effectively leading and managing a team calls for your ability and willingness to make things easier for each member so that tasks are accomplished systematically and cost-efficient ways.

This is where the beauty and convenience of technology come in. Nowadays, automation is key to ensuring that business processes, from the mundane to the extraordinary, are carried out swiftly and concisely. Automation can help you streamline business operations to make things simpler for the whole team.

I personally use Zapier (which I think is somewhat expensive and buggy) to sync my google sheets with Monday.com. I also use it to create tasks from my morning journal; when I fill in my three most important tasks for the day, it automagically sends it to google tasks!

My morning journal connected to Zapier and Google Tasks

Be In Touch With the Team

Regular briefing sessions keep each team member posted on new information and where the rest of the team is accomplishing tasks and goals. These will also help you keep tabs on your team members’ work and whether or not they need assistance from you.

One-on-one talks are my preferred way of improving productivity and boosting employee morale. Take these short hangouts as a chance to let your team members know why their unique tasks are crucial to the business’s success.

You can also take this opportunity to give them feedback on how they’re doing and what aspects you would like them to improve on. Asking them to assess your performance as a leader will also be impactful in reiterating that you are all part of one team.

Ensure that you don’t mix positive and negative feedback in the same session. As humans, we are predisposed to react more strongly to danger and threats; this means we will focus more intensely on negative feedback, and the positive tends to be forgotten or discarded.

But instead, offer positive and negative feedback in temporally different situations.

How Does Routine Leadership Compare to Crisis Leadership?

Crisis leadership requires creativity, strategy, and dynamism. As opposed to routine leadership, effective and reliable crisis leaders must be able to think on their feet, make quick and sound decisions, and execute their plans of action efficiently.

Crises are part and parcel of any business’ lifespan. You must always lead your team onward, whether it’s a natural disaster, product recall, or employee-related skirmishes.

The goal of crisis leadership is to respond quickly to unforeseen challenges and to minimize losses. As a leader, you must be viewed by the team as a strong guiding force and source of support. Another objective is to ensure that these crises will no longer occur in the future. If not completely avoidable, you must be able to devise tactics for better crisis management in the future.

Essentially, your crisis leadership strategies can make or break the business while it traverses through uncharted territory.

On the other hand, routine leadership relies heavily on predictability. Day-to-day tasks are anticipated, yet essential to the development and security of the business. The goal of this type of leadership is to ensure that all aspects are running smoothly and functioning synergistically.

Building Resilience in Teams

Crises are complex, and leaders must help their teams stay solid and resilient. Resilience is defined as:

The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
Oxford languages

Teams lacking in resilience tend to complain more, have less Intrateam trust, and focus more on themselves than on the team and the mission during the crisis.

Resilient teams are better able to handle challenges, adapt to change, and are more likely to bounce back after a crisis.

In other words, resilient teams understand that failure is inevitable. They anticipate it, learn from it and recover faster.

7 Strategies to increase resilience in your team

1. Foster a culture of support

Make sure team members feel supported and valued, and encourage open communication and collaboration.

The keyword here is feel; it doesn’t matter how much time and energy you spend creating a culture of support if nobody actually feels supported.

The number one tip I give to leaders trying to build a culture of support is to support them when it really matters, specifically when you don’t feel like it.

We are what we do, not what we say.

Here’s a great example of a culture of support

It wasn’t uncommon on my EOD teams that you would help the family of a deployed team with things unrelated to work. Such as helping to move or picking up kids at the kindergarten.

This wasn’t done to have the favor returned later, but rather from a sense of “you help out when you can” perspective.

We are what we do, not what we say.

2. Train your people in self-care

Considering the situation of the workplace right now, with employees scoring low in engagement and low in mental and physical health, it’s evident to me that self-care isn’t an innate function delivered to us at birth.

Instead, it is something we need to train ourselves and our team. Caring for yourself allows you to perform at a higher level over the long run. There may be a loss of productivity in the short term, but if your goal is to reach targets, that take years to hit.

… you need employees that perform with an average high, not just spikes in performance …

Then you need employees that perform with an average high, not just spikes in performance and then drops because of lack of motivation or health issues.

I’ve spent five years developing a framework that allows teams to find the balance between performance and recovery; this allowed me to retain my team for multiple deployments, something that had never happened before at my unit.

You can contact me here for more information and if you want to work together.

3. Foster a growth mindset

I see a lot of managers who think that their employees should stay within the “rules” and only do their job, be king of the process, but don’t challenge it.

I think this is one of the worst ways you can handle your primary resource (humans); the problem is that even if you do everything you can to make the process streamlined and stable, the world keeps moving.

New technology disrupts, your employees start families, and a pandemic hits; I think you get the point.

New technology disrupts, your employees start families, and a pandemic hits, I think you get the point.

If you don’t encourage your team to grow and continuously explore new ways, you’ll quickly struggle with low performance and morale.

This happened to me during my time on the bomb disposal teams, I remember we found out that there was a new and improved camera that could be fitted to our robot, but we weren’t allowed to use it due to red tape.

Suddenly the team was struggling with accepting the inherent risks of the job, “why aren’t we given the best possible resources to do a good job” I remember a colleague saying.

Fortunately, I had an excellent commander who gave us the thumbs up to build our own camera; this vastly improved our capabilities and allowed us to feel like we were in charge of our capacity building.

The lesson was simple (not easy): encourage team members to view challenges as opportunities for growth and help them to develop skills and strategies for handling difficult situations.

4. Build REAL teamwork

Since resilience is the ability to get back up after being beaten down, it sure makes a lot of sense to have someone reach out with a helping hand to get you back on your feet.

This is why teamwork, real teamwork, is so essential; there are a lot of teams out there that are mainly a gathering of people and unworthy of the title Team. A true team will help each other when there is a need.

But to make people work as a real team, you, as the leader, need to show them how this benefits them.

Having your team find out why they are important to each other is the first step to building a solid team.

This is complex but can be done with proper team creation strategies; at Sancus Leadership, our experiences tell us that forging unbreakable trust is the most effective way of creating high-performing teams. Reach out to us when you are interested in working together.

Strong teamwork and collaboration can help to build resilience within teams, so encourage team members to work together and support one another.

5. Reinforce the behavior you want more of

In the military, there is an idea that giving someone too much praise devalues its significance. That is to say, the impact of positive feedback is reduced the more often you speak it. This has led to military leaders cutting back on praise. I believe this to be completely wrong.

… the impact of positive feedback is reduced the more often you speak it.

We have all met leaders who throw around the words “great job.” At first, it feels nice to hear, but then you realize that they use it 100 times per day. In some sense, we all know this to be accurate; if everything is amazing, nothing is amazing.

Many leaders draw the wrong conclusion from this (as with the military example). The right way is not to stop telling people when they are doing a great job.

Stop giving positive feedback means that many of your employees will struggle with understanding what aspects of their contributions to keep and what to improve.

How will they then know what aspects of their work benefit the company?

The solution is simple yet very difficult. You need to be Ultra specific; if you tell someone, “great job,” you are actually saying, “something that you have done was good.” Not very specific and definitely not useful.

Instead, there is power in, “the report you sent today was on time, in line with company procedures, and your conclusion was easy to understand. The report made it easy for me to argue why we should invest in new equipment.”

It is ultra-specific on what actions were appreciated and clarifies precisely what impact their job had on the business.

It is ultra-specific on what actions were appreciated, and it clarifies exactly what impact their job had on the business.

It’s essential to recognize and celebrate small wins and progress, as this will help to build morale and resilience within the team.

6. Honest and transparent communication

One premise needs to be fulfilled for the strategies mentioned above to work effectively, honest and transparent communication.

You have probably encountered people who say, “sure, ill help out,” but somehow you can feel or intuitively notice that they are opposing but still accepting.

This is called passive behavior, and it is something to watch out for in the workplace; if you want to spot passive communicators and understand how they impact your team’s performance, I suggest you read this article.

Passive communication makes people bitter and breeds mistrust.

Passive communication makes people bitter and breeds mistrust; a person who doesn’t speak her mind adequately will sooner or later burst out in anger.

If you create a workplace culture where people feel confident to speak their minds without feeling beaten down or humiliated, you have laid the foundation of trust! This is a major deal!

Encourage team members to share their thoughts, feelings, and concerns openly and honestly. This can build trust within the team and create a safe space for team members to express their needs and seek support.

Preferably you develop this skill before the crisis arrives, but the upside is that the powerful teams I have been a part of comes out of diversity; without those times of hardship, we wouldn’t have been such a strong team.

Learn from adversity!

When you are ready to take the next step with your team and forge unbeatable trust, I welcome you to contact us and see how we can work together.

7. Encourage problem-solving and ownership

A crisis is, per definition, an unwanted situation containing a multitude of problems, so to remove yourself from these problems, you must solve the problem. And if you want to solve the problem, you must first realize it’s your problem to solve, that is, take ownership of the problem.

You have probably heard Jocko Willink speak on extreme ownership in his TEDx talk with the same name. If you haven’t, I recommend you watch it right now:

Jocko Willink on extreme ownership

Teams unable to solve problems effectively tend to get stuck. If you remember the discussion above about the Killzone, being stuck is definitely not what you want to be during a crisis.

When companies stick to old ideas and fail to adapt to the changes around them, they fail; one example is blockbuster, which where outrun by streaming services like Netflix. Blockbuster went from being one of the biggest home video providers in the US to go bankrupt in a few years.

This ever-changing world was earlier referred to as a VUCA world. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, a concept worth exploring if you want to learn more about how to lead under constant change.

Make sure team members take ownership of their work and find creative solutions to problems.

Make sure team members take ownership of their work and find creative solutions to problems. This can help to build confidence and resilience, as team members feel empowered to take control of their work and make decisions that can impact the team.

3 Strategies to Develop Agility and Innovation in Teams

As mentioned above, agility and innovation are crucial in crises. Fostering creativity and adaptability within your team can help you navigate challenges and seize new opportunities.

The following four strategies can help your team become more agile and innovative:

1. Encourage a culture of experimentation and risk-taking

you have probably been to one of those “mind map” meetings where everyone is supposed to do a brain dump and where “there are no bad ideas” and “no judgment is allowed.”

Most of those that I have attended are the opposite, someone shares an idea that popped up in their head, and 9/10 times, the idea is shot down before they make it to the whiteboard. “too expensive,” “too unrealistic,” etc.

This has a counterproductive effect on risk-taking, people tend only to share the ideas that will be accepted, and those are usually within the framework of older ideas, so innovation dies.

As you probably have noticed, the problem lies within the feedback loop. First, you are encouraged to share unfiltered thoughts, and when you do, you get judged by their quality. And since most new ideas are terrible, you’ll start feeling stupid.

You, as a leader, must create an environment where stupid ideas are not only allowed but understood to be a part of the process.

Here’s an interesting way of seeing the production of great ideas; what if you knew that it takes two hundred stupid ideas to find a good one? You’d be looking all over the place for the stupid ones, right?

A much better way is to take on the role of a scientist; a scientist is never wrong; they’re just testing an idea.

Another excellent way of encouraging risk-taking and innovation is to take on the role of a scientist; a scientist is never wrong; they’re just testing an idea. Either the theory holds up or doesn’t; either way, the scientist has learned something.

If you tell your people this is the way the team should approach new ideas, they will instantly feel more comfortable sharing; it’s no longer them as individuals who are being critiqued.

You have also removed the idea of losing; now everything you do has benefits, you either try the idea, and it works, or you try the idea, and you learn.

Try new approaches and be open to new ideas, even if they seem risky, become a scientist!

2. Remove obstacles

I have lost track of how many leadership development programs I have worked on, but what I remember clearly is the one main mistake that most new leaders make;

New leaders get too involved in the doing and too little in the thinking, especially in times of crisis and stress.

A typical exercise in military leadership development training is putting the students through a casualty scenario where stress levels are high, and the situation constantly changes.

This is where they make the mistake, they start caring for a casualty, going through the procedures themselves, and while being occupied, they don’t see that the car caught fire, and suddenly, the entire team is in danger.

The solution is simple, the leader must take a step back, take a few breaths and start looking at the situation as a whole.

The solution is simple; the leader must take a step back, take a few breaths and start looking at the situation as a whole.

Now the leader can serve his people in the best way; he will spot the smoking car and redirect resources to put the flames out before it’s an issue.

Your main task as a leader is to remove obstacles so your team can work as unhindered as possible!

Make sure team members have the help and support they need to explore new ideas and approaches, such as training or access to new technologies.

3. Train and prepare for challenging situations

By now, it should come as no surprise that adapting to constant change, anticipating crisis, and accepting the inherent risks of innovation isn’t something that every company can do.

Most companies are ill-prepared for these scenarios, and the main observation from us at Sancus Leadership is a lack of a proper leader and employee training in the right scenarios.

Your chances of handling a challenging situation without real-world scenario training are slim.

These exercises don’t need to be complex. With as little as a few hours per month, you can set up a realistic scenario and execute and evaluate it. The best part is that most advantages come from the first few hours of training.

20% of the effort gives 80% of the benefits!

Encourage team members to stay hungry for more training and provide opportunities for them to learn and grow.

Final Thoughts

A leader’s ability to navigate uncertainty and rapidly changing environments in crisis requires particular skills and abilities. The ability to develop empathy, agility, and innovation is crucial to crisis leadership, as well as assisting small teams in recovering from crises.

As leaders, we can help our teams navigate challenging situations more effectively by developing and using these skills effectively.

Remember to practice empathy, encourage experimentation and risk-taking, and foster a culture of innovation to lead your team through crisis situations confidently.

Why Small Teams Need a Leader! (Research vs. 12 Years of Experience)

I believe that (and science supports me in this) every team needs to be led! That doesn’t mean that every task requires a team, but not leading a small team has led to low performance and conflict in my 12 years of experience as a leader. So why is it so important to lead a small team?

The leader is responsible for coordinating efforts, removing obstacles, and pointing out a clear direction. Not leading a small team increases internal conflict, creates confusion, makes work inefficient, and demotivates the employees. This increases the risk of employees silently quitting or changing jobs.

Leading is many times confused with managing, and this is a huge mistake! If you want to make sure that you are leading your team, then this is the article for you. Let’s go!

What Is a Small Team?

In the arena of business, a small team is 2-10 people. Anything above that is considered large. On the other hand, in science and research, small teams usually mean 2- 3 people.

For the purpose of this article, we will use the business definition. Although for it to become not just ten people in a group but also a team, there needs to be a common goal that the individuals collaborate in achieving.

If there is no common goal or collaboration, then we merely have a gathering of people, and all the benefits of teamwork are lost.

We have identified in this article that entrepreneurial teams are more likely than lone entrepreneurs to generate greater growth. The reasons appear to relate to a distribution of resources and social capital, the plurality of experience, and enhanced capability for sense-making and problem-solving.
Exploring Distributed Leadership in the Small Business Context

Advantages and Disadvantages of Small Teams

Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In team leadership, we have something similar. For every decision we make, we have trade-offs and gains. When we build a large team, we have more human resources, but it gets harder to utilize those resources effectively.

As we move towards a smaller team, we are faster in changing direction and implementing new ideas, but we lose consistency and predictability.

Small Teams	Advantages	Disadvantages
	Solving complex problems faster and better	Struggling with big projects and short deadlines
	Minimizing bureaucracy and optimizing for fast communication	Limited capacity for diverse competence

Table comparing small team advantages and disadvantages

1. Solving Complex Problems Faster and Better

One of the most studied and scientifically confirmed benefits of a small team structure is the ability to solve incredibly complex tasks requiring innovation and creativity.

The small teams do this faster and more effectively than their larger counterparts. This means that small teams should be optimized for complex tasks where dynamics and the environment are constantly changing.

2. Minimizing Bureaucracy and Optimizing for Fast Communication

Getting to know someone and truly understanding them so that you can talk in a way that is respectful and effective takes time. This process is hard to speed up and gets even more difficult as more people are on your team.

Small teams can communicate goals and ideas across the team effectively since there is only a limited number of people you need to get to know.

Your ability as a leader to align how your people understand ideas with how you formulate messages is vital for effective small-team communication.

This inter-team member’s understanding minimizes the need for bureaucracy and external control. Instead of filling out an application form and having it signed by a manager, effective small teams use direct communications face-to-face.

3. Struggling With Big Projects and Short Deadlines

While small teams handle complex environments and rapidly change very well (if led correctly), they need more resources for bigger projects and shorter time frames.

There is no way for a small team to innovate, test, and implement at the same speed as large teams. It’s just a matter of capacity.

A large team can simultaneously test three or more ideas, working parallel. In contrast, a small team would have to work sequentially, greatly extending the timeframe needed to complete the task.

Larger teams have the ability to dedicate individuals to specific tasks. While on small teams, people usually have one or more primary functions once the projects get bigger.

There are also only so many things a few people can be experts in, and that leads us to one of the biggest challenges of small teams.

4. Limited Capacity for Diverse Competence

You want people who are experts in their area, and you want these individuals to be highly productive. But what if you have a project which is so multi-disciplinary that you may need 20 experts in different arenas?

This is one of the most brutal punches to the small team concept. If we assume that most people can only be an expert in one or maybe two areas, then for every area of expertise, you need one person.

How many experts do you need to solve your task? Five or nine, maybe ten? Quickly the team grows big and starts losing the small team benefits. There are ways to get around this, which I will not discuss in this article (but please email me if you want to dive a little deeper into the topic).

Leading vs. Managing Small Teams

The word “leader” often gets thrown around and sometimes is even used interchangeably with “manager.” We must be very clear that there is a huge difference between leading and managing.

There is also a huge difference in how we lead and manage small vs. large teams. And if we screw this up, people get demotivated, and efficiency drops.

Leading is defined as:

Leadership is a process of social influence that maximizes the efforts of others toward the achievement of a goal.
Forbes.com

Management, on the other hand, is defined:

Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a non-profit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing the resources of the business.

Leading, therefore, puts people and relations at the focus, and managing emphasizes processes, workflows, and organization.

To be great leaders, we must be able to manage effectively!

Lead People and Manage the Organization

We all hate being managed, especially micro-managed, and now we know why. It makes us feel like we are a “resource of the business” and not like human beings with wants, needs, and dreams.

But the organization needs to be managed, emails must be sent, and processes must be evaluated and improved. Managing is characterized by control, oversight, and a strict framework.

Managing is characterized by control, oversight, and a strict framework.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about understanding the qualities of individuals and ensuring each member can exploit his or her strength so that both the organization and the individual can reach the next level.

If we mix this up and apply too much control, oversight, and an overly strict framework on humans, they will lose their creativity and will to work. They will start to anticipate being managed, and they will hand over all responsibility to the manager, and why shouldn’t they? That’s exactly how you are training them to do it.

We should instead lead our people by understanding what makes them get out of bed in the morning, what makes them put up with the long working hours and average pay.

Then you will see what I saw on my last 6-man team, incredible engagement, individuals taking ownership of tasks, solving problems before anyone ever noticed, and deeply trusting each other.

So start leading your team and manage the organization!

Don’t Miss Out on the Unique Benefit of the Small Team

Have you ever heard about small teams outperforming big ones? While this is often true, this is not always the case. A study by Harvard concluded that small teams are only more effective at certain tasks:

Our analyses uncovered a nearly universal pattern: whereas large teams tended to develop and further existing ideas and designs, their smaller counterparts tended to disrupt current ways of thinking with new ideas, inventions, and opportunities.
hbr.org

There are a few explanations for the small team’s ability to innovate and be creative.

Taking risks requires a supportive environment where individuals won’t be afraid of failing. This requires trust, which is very hard to build on a large-scale team where high-quality face-to-face time is little to none.

What matters most to collaboration is not the personalities, attitudes, or behavioral styles of team members. Instead, what teams need to thrive are certain “enabling conditions.”
hbr.org

The small teams, on the other hand, are able to gain inter-team member trust and create the necessary environment quickly. If this is coupled with a leader who can clearly communicate the goals (which is easier and faster on a small team), innovation can flourish.

A compelling direction, a strong structure, and a supportive context
hbr.org

The trust and confidence that your work buddy is doing on his or her part should not be taken for granted. On a large team, it can be a real problem.

Research shows that individuals in larger teams perform worse than individuals in smaller teams; however, very little field research examines why.
sciencedirect.com

Importance of Having a Leader on a Small Team

So far in this article, we have discussed the birds’ view of why teams need to be led. Before we start talking about decisions that will set you up for success, I want to look at two central tasks of a great leader.

1. The Leader Is Dedicated to Understanding the Bigger Picture

What is the team’s role in the organization? What is the team’s role in the employee’s life? And how do these best merge so that the greatest outcome can be generated over the longest time?

These are questions that the leader of small teams should be focusing on. The benefits will include better employee retention, increased engagement, and a more innovative problem-solving team.

2. Anticipation of Future Events and Removing Obstacles

One big mistake I see in many leaders, specifically new leaders, is sharing too much information with their employees. This can significantly cause unnecessary confusion or anxiety.

This is especially true when the organization is in a big transition that will impact employees. If the leader shares every bit of available information, team members will get anxious (the obstacle) for no reason.

But if the leader shares too little, the employees will feel left out (the obstacle), and trust will start to fade.

This is a fine line to tread, but when done correctly, the team can focus on the task at hand and still feel comfortable that they will receive the vital information.

Three Major Decisions That Will Set Your Small Team Up for Success (Or Failure…)

When it comes to structuring and building your small team, a few decisions have shown to be vital to get right if you want to develop an effective and long-lasting team.

… the most powerful and constructive ways for leaders to help their teams succeed is to get those basic conditions in place, since their presence increases the probability that a team will evolve naturally into an effective performing unit.
web.mit.edu

This part of the article is a compound of the scientific literature and my own twelve years of experience as a leader of both small and large-sized teams.

1. What Kind of Team to Create

It must first be noted that not all tasks should be given to a team. Some work, such as creative writing, where an idea formed inside an individual’s head is brought onto paper and structured so that others can understand it, is best left to an individual.

Some questions that need to be answered when deciding what kind of team to create are:

Does the task need constant teamwork, or is it rather a merging of the products of individuals?

Does the work happen in parallel, or will it be handed over between the individuals sequentially?

Will the tasks mainly be solved virtually or “face to face”?

2. How to Structure the Team

Teams vs. Groups of People

First of all, the leader and the team must work together to build a real team.

“Real teams” differ from a “group of people” because they have three distinct features.

First, there is a membership that is exclusive and clear to the members. Second, team members need each other to complete the task. And third, membership lasts longer, allowing the individuals to establish effective ways of communicating and effective cooperation.

Clearly Articulate a Direction That Is Accepted and Motivates the Team

We have all heard that goal setting is essential and that it can be the difference between succeeding and failing. It is also vital that this goal leaves the abstract world of the mind and becomes tangible so that it can be visualized and articulated to those responsible for fulfilling it.

But a tangible and specific goal will only do the team much good if it is also accepted and acts as a motivator. Once the team is on board and understands why this specific goal is important to the organization and to them as people, we start seeing workplace magic.

Increased performance, engagement, and well-being will follow.

3. How and When to Actively Lead the Team

Leading can be done in many different ways. Usually, we think of actively engaging with the team by giving directions, clarifying issues, or coaching through a specific task.

But leading is also choosing not to engage with the team or the individual. Sometimes, the leader will step aside and let the team do its thing. This is not to be confused with passive leadership, where the leader cannot engage because of fear and incompetence.

Before choosing how to lead the team, we must first understand what we want to achieve. If we are looking for an increase in performance on our team, then we, as leaders, should focus on setting up a clear direction and then identifying and removing obstacles.

But suppose the leader aims to increase the team’s engagement with the team’s goals. In that case, he or she should focus on finding challenging but not impossible tasks, build team commitment through real team building, and minimize social loafing by adding accountability to the team’s work structure.

Why and When Large Teams Outperform Small Ones!

I have spent my time as a leader at both the top and the bottom of organizations, and one of my main takeaways is the difference in team structure, behavior, and task performance depending on team size.

I have seen managers figure this out and become great leaders. And I have also seen the opposite, where great leaders become horrible managers just because they don’t understand the differences in leading a different-sized team.

Today I want to combine my thirteen years of experience with leadership science so that we can learn two things; When do small/large teams perform best, and how do we best lead small/large teams?

What Is A Small Team?

The definition of a small team differs in the area where it is used; in research, a small team is defined as a team of two to three members, while in the business community, a small team is between two to ten members.

For the purpose of this article, we will define a small team in line with the business community, up to ten people.

Now that we have figured out how we define small, we must also look at what a team is.

A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team

Worth noticing here is that if you don’t have a common goal that people are working together towards, then you only have a group of people, not a team. This difference is vital when it comes to team performance. Use this definition to ask yourself if you are on a team or amongst people in a group.

Use this definition to ask yourself if you are on a team or amongst people in a group.

What Is a Large Team?

The definition of a large team differs in the area where it is used; in research, a large team is often defined as a team of more than three members, while in the business community, a large team is between 10 and 20 members.

Some would argue that teams can be up to 50 people (Harvard Business Review), but I’m afraid I have to disagree. As mentioned above, one of the definitions of a team is the ability to work together towards a common goal.

One of the greatest challenges of any leader is to clearly communicate the goals so that members understand the why and what needs to be achieved.

Without this clear understanding, people can’t work together. And in a team that is too big, this becomes almost impossible, at least in an environment as complex as a business.

Therefore, the limit of a large team is drawn to twenty people, and dividing the group into smaller teams is vital.

The larger an organization, the greater the chance of inconsistency
and misalignment. Managers may be responsible for more employees
than they can support effectively.
State of American Workplace 2020

The Interesting Differences Between Small and Large Teams

The differences between small and large teams — How different is a small team from a large team?

Now that we have understood the differences let’s start comparing team sizes to understand what team is appropriate for what tasks and how we, as leaders, should lead!

Differences in Team Characteristics

Firstly, let’s compare the differences in team behavior. To lead, we must first understand the creature that we are leading!

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you that small teams are more flexible and can adapt to ideas at a much faster speed. Like the difference between a giant container ship versus a small speed boat trying to change course on the ocean.

But what does this mean for task performance?

Our analyses uncovered a nearly universal pattern: … [Small teams] tended to disrupt current ways of thinking with new ideas, inventions, and opportunities.
hbr.org

Harvard Business Review discovered in their research that this ability to change course means that small teams can use new information to impact processes and decision-making MUCH faster than larger, slower teams. But what does this mean for task performance?

This is partly to blame for the second big difference between small and large teams.

Small Teams Accept and Communicate Ideas Faster

If you have a new and challenging idea of how to do something different, one of the most significant challenges is getting your team’s acceptance of that idea. Change is difficult and painful so this resistance to change is a good safety mechanism.

And by the end of the day, most new ideas are bad, but that’s a discussion for another day.

The best way to get someone to accept your idea is that they can see the benefit, and for you to communicate in a way that each individual understands the benefit, you must first understand them as individuals.

Here’s where the large team runs into problems; the leader can’t understand and know all of his/her members, so communications must be generalized. This leads to a lower chance of acceptance (unless you are Simon Sinek).

But on the small team, you speak with individuals in a way you know they understand information. And you can instantly address objections! This is the true power of small teams, understanding what your people need!

Once the idea is accepted, it is time for the next challenge, accessing the infrastructure.

Large Teams Demand Big Logistical Chains

The incredible power of a large team is once it is lined up in the right direction, like the tanker ship mentioned before, there is no storm out there that can stop it. The team has enormous resources (people, time, gear) that can be utilized toward the goal once the goal is understood.

Spiderman’s Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The same goes with handling large teams – with great power comes considerable logistical demands.

Directional changes in small teams require less financial investment, less time, and less management.

If you have a team of ten and want to switch up your hardware to solve a task your old gear can’t, then it’s half the cost of a twenty-man team. This means a more extensive investment and more challenging to convince upper management that it is a good idea.

And if the idea fails (which most new ideas do), well… you get the point.

Leading Large Teams

Team Size Impacts Weakness

One of the most incredible benefits of small teams is their ability to build authentic trust fast! This is one of the core principles of effective small-team leadership and should be exploited to its maximum.

But the downside is that it tends to move the team into Groupthink, where the members trust each other so much that they stop questioning ideas and thoughts.

This is bad…

It leads to single-minded thinking, kills the creativity that small teams are known for, and tends to create an extremist view of “us and them.”

On the other hand, larger teams have a built-in function due to their size that inhibits people from getting to know each other well, making building deep trust with everyone difficult.

This means there will always be some resistance to ideas and suggestions since they are not automatically accepted (which happens with deep trust).

If the large team can encourage free speech, then the issue of Groupthink is basically eliminated.

Large teams are more likely to have coordination and communication issues.
hbr.com

So now we know what to avoid, let’s look at what to exploit!

Team Size Impacts Strength

One fundamental principle of outstanding leadership is understanding your team’s strength and leveraging it to the moon!

While small teams can be agile and change direction fast when opportunities arise, large teams can hold a steady course and outweigh any sudden short-term trends.

A small team’s ability to quickly adapt enables it to innovate and explore new ideas without investing too heavily. A downside is, of course, a sometimes haphazard and directionless wandering of the team.

Smaller teams allow for greater accountability, autonomy, and flexibility, both in terms of scheduling- and idea-based changes. They “foster greater trust among team members and less fear of failure.” (doist.com)

As discussed earlier, most new ideas fail, so this constant change of direction can often leave certain employees feeling aimless and lost. Without a competent leader, these teams tend to pick up new ideas too often and abandon them too soon.

On the other hand, the large team implements new ideas more slowly and less frequently since it takes time to get the message across and understood by the team.

On a Large team, once the goal is clarified, the team is on board, and the processes are set, the team will improve and implement ideas with much less fluctuation. The team members can, therefore, better understand their role and anticipate future obstacles allowing for greater efficiency in execution.

If life on a small team is chaotic and fast (the speedboat), then large team life is robust and efficient (the ocean tanker).

If life on a small team is chaotic and fast (the speedboat), then large team life is robust and efficient (ocean tanker).

In summary: small teams are best suited for innovation and exploring new ideas, while large teams are better at developing and improving existing ideas and systems.

Differences in Team Characteristics	Small Team	Large Team
Communication	Utilizes informal communication to its advantage	Strives towards a common and strict language
Logistics	Small footprint, low maintenance, easy to change direction and focus (days)	Large footprint, high maintenance, slow to change direction (months, years)
Biggest Weakness	Very receptive to Groupthink	The Social Loafing Effect
Biggest Strength	Flexibility Change team culture and accept new ideas fast.	Momentum Once lined up with the goal, few things can hinder its progression.
Most Effective Task	Innovate	Develop

Differences in characteristics between small and large teams

Differences in Leadership Between Small and Large Teams

As we have come to understand, the size of a team impacts what tasks are most suitable, and if the task changes, so must also the leadership.

Suppose the manager doesn’t understand the differences in leadership needed between running a small and a large team. In that case, chances are they’ll end up, as the example I mentioned in the beginning, without trust and with a lot of friction.

Manager quality influences engagement more than team size does.
Gallup.com

Once the leader understands the opportunities that come with different team sizes, then he or she can exploit those to reduce misunderstandings and employees’ eating time on solving the wrong tasks.

I think we have all issued a “task order,” and once we got the results back, we realized, “this is not at all what we were expecting.”

Small Team Leadership

So what should the small team leader focus on?

Effective small-team leadership is characterized by understanding every team member as an individual with different needs and strengths. The small team leader should focus on building authentic trust and leveraging employees’ inner drive to achieve synergy and long-term retention.

The most significant benefit of the small team leader is the amount of one on one face time possible. If done correctly, this can 10x the speed it takes to build profound trust and understanding between the leader and team member.

Did you know that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement and heavily influence employee wellbeing? This is the reason why employees don’t leave companies — they leave managers.
Gallup.com

I would suggest you avoid classic team-building activities like playing a game and getting drunk. What you want to do is Forge Trust through adversity and challenge, which is something that is (or should be) happening during your workweek. (email me if you want some examples of how this can be done)

Most small team leaders I talk to, and I agree with this, say that the greatest challenge is making decisions that you know will negatively impact a team member’s life.

This is the dark side of knowing and truly understanding your people. On a large team, there isn’t enough time to get to know individuals in the same way, so tasks such as “letting people go” are often easier.

Large Team Leadership

Leading a large team is usually simpler, not to be confused with easy, but it tends to be more managing and less leading.

Effective large team leadership is characterized by focusing on clearly communicated and followed processes, leading a unit rather than individuals, and maintaining a “sufficiently distanced relationship” with the team members.

The greatest benefit of the large team leader is the ability to detach from emotions and make more balanced decisions.

Many managers fail and get overly detached, making inhumane decisions. Pushing the employees too far away will sooner or later make them look for another job or, even worse, silently quit.

If you, as a large team leader, find a good point of balance, and you keep close enough to understand their needs but not close enough to get too heavily attached, then you are in a great position to make effective decisions that benefit the organization and the employee long term.

I have seen too many leaders fall into the trap of giving the employees what they want today instead of giving them what they need for tomorrow.

I have seen too many leaders fall into the trap of giving the employees what they want today, instead of giving them what they need for tomorrow.

An example would be allowing people to go home one hour early because it would be nice, instead of taking that hour and training them in something that will benefit their career or life at a later stage.

Your job as a leader is to guide your people and organization towards a brighter tomorrow, not give in to the temptations of today.

Differences in Leadership	Small Team	Large Team	Notes
Communication	Understanding the individual	Uniform language
Greatest Leadership Difficulty	Finding harmony between organizational goals and employee sense of meaning	Building authentic trust
Greatest Leadership Benefit	Building authentic trust fast	Easier decision-making*	*Decision that will impact employees negatively but benefit the organization is easier with “distanced leadership.”
Main Effort of The Leader	Understand the individual	Understand the team as “one organism.”

Differences in leadership when managing a small or large team

Our analyses uncovered a nearly universal pattern: whereas large teams tended to develop and further existing ideas and designs, their smaller counterparts tended to disrupt current ways of thinking with new ideas, inventions, and opportunities.
hbr.org

The 3 Vital Similarities Between Small and Large Teams

So far, we have mainly discussed differences, but just as between men and women, there are significant differences, even if we are mostly the same. Here are the three most important similarities you need to consider as a team leader.

1. All Teams Must Be Led and Managed Simultaneously

The difference between managing and leading is a discussion for another day. Still, for the purpose of this article, I will define leading as the act of guiding humans towards a common goal and managing as organizing structures and people to achieve organizational goals.

Nobody wants to be managed, especially micro-managed. So our job as managers is to become as much of a leader as possible while still managing what needs to be managed.

Our strive should be to manage the organization and lead the people. If we don’t, and we start treating people as material possessions of the company, then we are setting ourselves up for failure as a team leader and organization.

But when we find the balance, we can create teams that achieve high performance over many years, just like I did with my last team, working together daily for 4+ years, something that has yet to be seen in my organization.

If we fail, we get people who silently wait or look to get another job.

Lead your people and manage the organization.

Large team leaders will need to lean more towards managing, and small team leaders will rely more on leading, but both will need to be excellent at specifying and communicating goals.

2. All Teams Need Clearly Specified and Communicated Targets and Goals!

As we discussed earlier, the difference between a group of individuals and a team partly lies in the ability to work towards a common goal. So how do you make a goal common?

A big mistake many managers make is they think just because an idea is obvious to them and they have already presented it to the team on a PowerPoint slide; then everyone must get it, right?

There are so many mistakes being made here. Firstly, most people don’t even listen to PowerPoint presentations. Secondly, even if they did, most managers don’t know what a goal really is, much less know EXACTLY and SPECIFICALLY what their team goals are. So how can you communicate something clearly if it isn’t clear?

Well, you can’t exactly. So the first part must be to get so specific and clear that your goal can be presented in one single sentence, and it needs to have all the seven core components of an effective goal.

A good start is to make sure your goals are “SMARTER”!

3. Must Build Authentic Trust

Trust has been a trendy word in the leadership community for many years. I just googled “build trust on your team,” and supposedly, there are over 10k searches each month in the US alone for this specific search term.

But what does it really mean? Trust is very complex but also something very simple and straightforward. You know if you trust someone, but it’s not always clear exactly why.

But you usually know exactly why you DON’T trust someone. They may have let you down, not kept their word, or somehow made you feel inferior.

The same goes for trust in a team. You want to be the person people feel they can trust even though they don’t know exactly why, and you must definitely avoid everything that makes people know why they don’t trust you!

If you lack trust, you don’t have a team. It’s that simple.

Building authentic trust can be challenging and may take time. But start by avoiding the pitfalls mentioned above, honor your word, make commitments, and accept that you will sometimes fail.

We trust the people whose actions we can anticipate. It matters less who you are than that you are authentic. People will accept your flaws if you accept theirs.

Similarities Between Small and Large Teams

Conclusion

In short, large teams are great at developing existing ideas, while small teams excel at innovation.

Small team leadership focuses on understanding the individual’s strengths and leveraging them to achieve a high-performing team. Large team leadership, on the other hand, emphasizes the team as “one cohesive organism.”

5 Strategies For Leading Remote Teams During Crisis!

Leading a fully remote team has been a new challenge for me as a business owner and a leader; the interaction is usually more formal, and there are no water coolers to hang out by. This makes trust-building less organic but just as important. And trust is vital when a crisis inevitably comes.

Managing a remote/hybrid team through a crisis requires the leader to set clear expectations, leverage technology, provide resources, encourage community building, and demand self-care. Too often, crises are handled as unique events needing novel solutions; this is not the case.

Generally, whether we communicate through a lit-up painting (aka screen) or face-to-face doesn’t matter. We are still human beings with human needs and behaviors. But there are some benefits and drawbacks worthy of our attention.

When leading remote teams during crises, leaders can leverage the following five strategies:

1. Set Clear Expectations

Just as in real life, It’s essential to be clear about what’s expected of team members during this time, including communication and availability expectations. The difference in a remote setting is that it’s usually much harder to understand if your people really understand the task.

As a leader, you need to be willing to touch “the line of being annoying” to make sure they understand the task, and you do this because you care about them and the mission.

As a leader, you need to be willing to touch “the line of being annoying” to make sure they understand the task, and you do this because you care about them and the mission.

If they don’t understand the task correctly, the team will struggle with reaching their goals, and if they have to redo a task, this usually leads to frustration.

Test your team to understand the mission at hand at the level needed for them to do a good job! Set them up for a win!

2. Leverage Technology to Your Advantage as a Leader

There are many tools and platforms available that can help to facilitate communication and collaboration within remote teams.

Thinking you need the coolest gadgets and the latest software for effective communication is a mistake. Instead, you must train your team to use those tools efficiently during different situations, such as crises.

Back at the EOD teams, every time we implemented a new set of tools, It took us a month or two before we were at the same level of proficiency as when we got the tools. It takes a lot of time to learn to use new devices effectively.

General guideline: Implement new tools (software, hardware) only when you know it's going to Improve performance by a factor of two, do this before or after a crisis!

3. Ensure Team Members Have the Necessary Resources

Provide your team with the tools and equipment they need and training and support to help them adjust to a new environment.

The one executing the task is the one who knows best what is needed.

For someone to know what they need, they need to understand the mission they are supposed to complete.

This comes down to you as a Leader needing to be ultra-specific in the task delegation.

When you know they have fully understood the task, then you can start asking about which resources they need and start supplying them. And if you are an excellent leader, you would be on the forefoot and have already provided them with the necessary things.

We, as leaders, should do two things for our teams:

Number one, remove obstacles so they can work unhindered as much as possible.
And number two, supply them with everything they need to keep the speed of progress high.

Ask them what is vital for their success, and focus on providing that.

4. Foster a Sense of Community

Remote work can be isolating, so it’s vital to make an effort to maintain a sense of community within your team. This could involve regular check-ins, team-building activities, or virtual social events.

Remote work can be isolating, so it’s vital to make an effort to maintain a sense of community within your team.

Make sure if you choose to go the route of team building that, you understand why you are doing it. If it’s to build trust in your team, you should know that team building doesn’t do that.

You can read why team building doesn’t work and what to do instead here.

5. Encourage (And Demand) Self-Care

Crises can be stressful, and team members must take care of their physical and mental health. Encourage team members to prioritize self-care and ensure they have the support they need to cope with the additional stress.

The big problem is that people are often so engaged in solving the trouble that they forget about themselves. This is detrimental to the employee and the team; people will get overworked.

The big problem is that people are often so engaged in solving the trouble that they forget about themselves. This is detrimental to the employee and the team; people will get overworked.

I remember having one Highly productive guy on my team. You know, that type of person that never stops working and always delivers top-notch results. I would have to tell him to stop working and rest in high-intensity situations.

It might be tempting to push these High performing people even harder because they tend not to complain, but from my experience, that rarely works out.

Sometimes our responsibility as a leader comes down to telling people to stop. We MUST know when we have reached the level of good enough.

Here’s a quick but insightful video that leaders can learn from on how to better manage their remote teams.

5 Tips for Leading a Remote Team

How To Know if Your Employees Are Passionate About Work?

How to know if your employees are passionate for work?

All the low-performing teams I have observed have one thing in common; the leader thinks they are leading a passionate team. Passion goes hand in hand with engagement and impacts performance, progress, and creativity in the workplace. When leading, it’s essential to know if your employees are passionate and ways to engage them to their best selves. You want to know if your employees are passionate and signs that engagement needs to be added.

As a leader, you can identify passion by regularly connecting with your employees, encouraging them to pursue their strengths, giving them autonomy, and acknowledging their progress. As an ongoing process, you can also look for ways to engage employees and monitor their enthusiasm for work.

You can know how passionate your employees are through regular communication and observation. Read on to learn steps you can take to engage your employees and signs to look out for when you feel like passion is limited in your workforce.

Main Points	Description
*Regularly Connect With Your Employees*	Building a positive and passionate work environment by regularly connecting with employees, identifying their passions, areas of improvement, and potential signs of missing passion.
*Encourage Employees to Pursue and Grow Their Strengths*	Fostering intrinsic motivation in employees by encouraging them to pursue their passions and work on tasks they excel at, pairing individuals with complementary strengths.
*Show Value and Acknowledge Progress*	Using external motivators like bonuses, public recognition, or birthday parties to foster engagement, identifying objective metrics to evaluate progress, and highlighting worker’s increased performance.
*Give Your Employees Freedom and Autonomy*	Striking a balance between managing employees when necessary and giving them the freedom to work autonomously, boosting creativity, confidence, and productivity.
*Look for Opportunities To Engage Passion*	Continuously engaging employees, nurturing and incubating passion, acknowledging and rewarding employees’ excitement, motivation, and creativity.

How to know if your employees are passionate about work

1. Regularly Connect With Your Employees

Connection is the first step to promoting a positive and passionate work environment, as it gives you a starting point and lets employees know that you care about their well-being.

Regularly connecting with your employees is the best way to identify and analyze their passion, areas for improvement, and potential signs that passion is missing.

Potential signs that passion is missing from your workforce include:

Disengagement. Employees engage in tasks above what is asked of them when they’re passionate. Only doing exactly what is necessary indicates disinterest or lack of passion.
Complaints. Complaints from employees are, of course, signs that they are dissatisfied and perfect opportunities to discuss their grievances one-on-one.
Absenteeism. Life happens, and occasional tardiness is normal. However, consistent absenteeism or tardiness indicates a frustrated or disinterested employee.
Lack of Productivity: Your employees’ work performance is a general indicator of their enthusiasm for work.

Having an open-door policy in addition to one-on-one and team meetings can help employees express their concerns.

Team meetings are perfect for discussing workplace issues such as management issues or lack of supplies. An open-door policy and one-on-one sessions are more suitable for addressing employees’ problems.

2. Encourage Employees to Pursue and Grow Their Strengths

There are many motivations to do a job, some better than others. In general, external motivators such as reward or punishment are less effective than intrinsic motivators such as passion.

As a leader, you want to foster intrinsic motivation in your employees by encouraging them to pursue their passions.

As a leader, you want to foster intrinsic motivation in your employees by encouraging them to pursue their passions.

Every employee is different and enjoys different types of projects and tasks. Employees working on tasks they excel at and who foster their natural talents will be more passionate in the workplace than when doing jobs they dislike.

To improve the synergy of this method, you can pair individuals with complementary strengths who balance each others’ weaknesses and love what they do.

If you need help determining where your employees’ strengths lie, you can conduct one-on-one meetings to assess their assets.

Additionally, you can look out for these signs that your employee is passionate about what they do:

Asking questions beyond their specific roles. Passionate employees have a natural want to learn more.
Willing to stay extra hours. Passionate employees tend to lose track of time, be careful not to use your team, pay them overtime, and make sure they get enough rest so they can be healthy and work for the team for many years to come.
Creative and Innovative. Passionate employees come to you with strange and odd ideas; this is exactly what you want; you need to handle the thousand stupid ideas to get to that one game-changing one.

3. Show Value and Acknowledge Progress

While intrinsic motivation is the core of a passionate employee, external motivators can sometimes improve and foster workplace engagement. Bonuses, public recognition, or birthday parties can motivate employees to do their best work to some extent.

The key here is to identify objective metrics you can easily observe and evaluate. These metrics can be included in an overall performance evaluation demonstrating progress and highlighting successes.

Possible metrics to observe include timeliness, the quality/quantity of work, and direct knowledge of their job. You can also use performance metrics to determine if passion is failing in the workplace.

You can highlight workers with increased performance through public awards or recognition. These economic or social boons show you value your workforce and appreciate their efforts.

Additionally, you can acknowledge growth by providing educational and training courses for some employees that you plan to promote and give more responsibility.

These courses improve their capabilities and give them a solid career trajectory within your company.

4. Give Your Employees Freedom and Autonomy

Giving your employees autonomy is a powerful way to demonstrate that you trust and appreciate your employee’s work. While essential managing is good, micromanaging will demoralize and decrease passion.

The trick is to strike a balance by only correcting or managing your employees when necessary and giving them freedom most of the time. Employees who have autonomy are more creative, have more confidence, and generally work faster than those who feel constrained within their tasks.

Autonomous employees are more creative, have more confidence, and generally work faster than those who feel constrained within their tasks.

Sometimes teams need autonomy to do their best as well. When teams lack passion, they take longer to complete tasks, disregard instructions, and don’t cooperate. Giving freedom to groups that feel too hampered can help boost their productivity.

5. Look for Opportunities To Engage Passion

The final step to determine if your employees are passionate about work is to look for ways to engage them when opportunities arise.

Engaging your employees is an ongoing process that helps keep them on track and cultivates their passion.

Passion isn’t something people are born with and can’t be given or taken away. Passion must be nurtured and incubated throughout an individual’s career or life.

Passion isn’t something people are born with and can’t be given or taken away. Passion must be nurtured and incubated throughout an individual’s career or life.

As a leader, you are not only sparking passion in your employees but also maintaining it and helping them grow so they can be the best team members possible.

Passionate employees are engaged and excited about new ideas or projects. These individuals will ask lots of questions and propose innovative ideas to explore.

When employees are excited, motivated, or creative in their work, acknowledge them with a reward, promotion, or extra responsibilities they will be happy to take on.

How to know if your employees are passionate about work?

Final Thoughts

Workplace leaders have many responsibilities, and one of the most essential is maintaining passion among their employees.

Passionate employees are more motivated, creative, and engaged in their work. Individuals lacking passion are absent, frustrated, and have poor work performance.

You can determine how passionate your employees are by regularly communicating with them, encouraging them to pursue their strengths, acknowledging progress, giving them freedom, and engaging them throughout their careers.

Generally, the best way to promote passion is by allowing individuals to feel heard and respected while nurturing their intrinsic motivation.

Here’s a quick video of Simon Sinek sharing his thoughts and perspective on creating a trusting environment for the people you work with, where they feel involved, respected, and appreciated, which results in them enjoying and loving their job.

5 Simple Strategies To Increase Team Honesty (No More Lies)

Establishing honesty and trust within the team is crucial to your business’s survival, growth, and success. These affect the team’s productivity and how harmoniously and efficiently everyone can work toward common goals. Unfortunately, people often lie at work to protect their interests, preserve relationships, and avoid facing the consequences of their actions, so dishonesty must be effectively countered.

The most straightforward strategy to increase team honesty is being a good role model and showing your team that being truthful is the safest and best path. Being honest shows a person’s integrity, so consistently rewarding direct employees. Recognize publicly so the entire team is motivated to follow suit.

In this article, we will talk about how you can encourage your team to be more honest, starting by being a great role model for them and displaying the type of behavior and mindset you would like them to adopt. We will also discuss how simple tactics like regular bull sessions, suggestion boxes, active listening, and public recognition of honesty can help your team embrace the value of integrity. Let’s start!

How Do You Build Honesty in a Team?

You can build honesty in a team by exemplifying the behavior and character you want them to espouse. Strive to uphold high moral and ethical standards and show your team that being truthful is always the safest and wisest route. Listen actively when they speak up and openly reward honesty. Don’t punish honest mistakes.

Here are some of the simplest ways you can foster honesty in your team:

1. Be a Great Role Model

Leading by example means you exhibit the behavior you expect everyone on your team to adopt. As a leader, your team looks up to you and sees your behavior and outlook as the gold standard in business (if done correctly). Some will try to emulate you, especially those aiming to advance significantly in their careers.

Leading by example means you exhibit the behavior you expect everyone in your team to adopt.

Leading and managing a team calls for you to have high ethical and moral standards, and one of the ways you can show this is by always being honest with your team. Always be upfront when sharing feedback with your team members.

Don’t hesitate to call out inappropriate behavior. Always commend excellent performance.

Being open and truthful will give your team members a clearer view of your standards and expectations. It will also encourage them to voice their ideas straightforwardly because they know you support transparency.

2. Hold Regular Bull Sessions

I can’t stress enough how important it is to listen when the team shares feedback and opinions actively. This shows them you value their input and will inspire them always to maintain open communication lines within the team.

Bull sessions — informal group discussions — are great ways to loosen up the team and make each member feel they are an integral part of the group. Invite team members to offer suggestions on how to tackle particularly challenging situations. You can take these casual meetings as opportunities to update the team on the latest goings-on in the business, even not-so-good news.

You can also invite team members to interact, debate, and discuss relevant issues with each other. Encourage everyone to share their opinions, ideas, and suggestions. Invite them to openly discuss any possible problems within the group and settle disputes through healthy dialogues.

Make your team members realize that their voices are heard, their inputs are valued, and they’re not mere workers who are expected only to do what they are told.

These regular meetings will also help dispel any ill feelings within the group, especially those caused by misunderstandings and inaccurate conjectures.

I have used informal settings to solve many problems on my old team; most of the time, the team doesn’t even see it as a meeting, merely a time to discuss exciting topics.

Open communication lines within the team will help prevent a culture of negativity and rumor-mongering.

3. Provide Multiple Avenues for Effective Communication

Only some people are comfortable with speaking up. Some people would much rather air out their ideas and feedback through other means, so provide different avenues to maintain open communication lines within the team.

I worked with a guy for five years, he rarely voiced his opinion publicly, and it didn’t bother me. Instead, I would quickly talk with him after the meetings and ask his opinion.

Most times, the answer was that he didn’t have much to add (being quiet when you don’t have anything to add is a rare skill), and sometimes he would have pieces of gold to offer.

Here are some other ways you can encourage team members to “speak up:”

Place a suggestion box in strategic locations in the office. This is so people who want to stay anonymous can do so, but you should question why people need to be anonymous.
Create a separate email account. Set up a different account where your team members can send you feedback, opinions, and ideas. Having this separate from your official business account can help filter team-related information so you can address them sooner and minimize the risk of these messages getting overlooked.

4. Foster Accountability

Adversity is an unavoidable part of running a business. It’s okay to be daunted and overwhelmed when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but it is essential always to be willing and capable of overcoming them. As a leader, take it upon yourself to teach this concept to your team.

Along with this positive outlook on facing challenges is the value of accountability. Establishing the importance of being responsible for one’s actions and decisions is crucial, especially when these affect the entire team. As an effective leader, you must create an atmosphere where your team members will not feel threatened or ostracized when they own up to their shortcomings and mistakes.

Effectively leading and managing a business means instilling the value of always working together as a team through all the ups and downs. When faced with challenges, encourage a healthy exchange of ideas to help address the situation. Allow the erring team member to step up to the plate and lead the team in turning an adverse scenario into one that propels the team closer to attaining goals.

Effectively leading and managing a business means instilling the value of always working together as a team through all the ups and downs.

Among the main reasons employees lie in the workplace is the fear of being misjudged, shut out, and ridiculed, especially when they show vulnerability. By being a considerate, level-headed, rational leader, you encourage your team members not to be afraid of making mistakes — and owning up to them — because they know the entire team always has their back.

5. Openly Commend Good Performance and Honesty

Most employees are motivated to excel when they feel their hard work is always appreciated. One way to boost your team members’ morale is by openly commending them for excellent performance. This will encourage your team to always give their best effort in everything they do and be always inspired to choose to do what’s right even when nobody’s watching.

In this aspect, you’ll be taking honesty to a whole new level by ingraining integrity in your team. Businesses with a culture of honesty and integrity comprise team members with strong moral standards, high ethics, and a clear sense of what’s wrong and right. Leading and managing a team will become more straightforward when leaders fully trust their team.

What better way to increase team honesty than to reward team members who exhibit this notable trait? Make it a point to recognize team members often publicly and persistently so that the entire team realizes that honesty is always the safest and best route.

Strategy	Description
Be a Great Role Model	Exhibit the behavior and outlook you expect your team to adopt, and always be honest with your team.
Hold Regular Bull Sessions	Listen actively to feedback and opinions from your team, value their input, and maintain open communication lines within the team.
Provide Multiple Avenues for Effective Communication	Offer different ways for team members to air out their ideas and feedback, such as suggestion boxes and a separate email account.
Foster Accountability	Establish the importance of being responsible for one’s actions and decisions, encourage a healthy exchange of ideas to address challenges, and create an atmosphere where team members can own up to their mistakes.
Openly Commend Good Performance and Honesty	Boost team morale by recognizing and rewarding team members who exhibit honesty and integrity, and make honesty an ingrained value in your team’s culture.

How to Increase Team Honesty

Simon Sinek, in this talk, explains the importance of creating an environment where people are encouraged to be honest so they can work at their natural best.

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1. Set Clear Expectations

2. Leverage Technology to Your Advantage as a Leader

3. Ensure Team Members Have the Necessary Resources

4. Foster a Sense of Community

5. Encourage (And Demand) Self-Care

1. Regularly Connect With Your Employees

2. Encourage Employees to Pursue and Grow Their Strengths

3. Show Value and Acknowledge Progress

4. Give Your Employees Freedom and Autonomy

5. Look for Opportunities To Engage Passion

Final Thoughts

How Do You Build Honesty in a Team?

1. Be a Great Role Model

2. Hold Regular Bull Sessions

3. Provide Multiple Avenues for Effective Communication

4. Foster Accountability

5. Openly Commend Good Performance and Honesty