Category: Leadership

When people hear the term psychological safety, they sometimes assume it means being nice to one another or avoiding difficult conversations. In reality, psychological safety is one of the most important factors in team performance, innovation, and employee engagement.

Research has consistently shown that teams perform better when people feel comfortable speaking up, sharing ideas, asking questions, and admitting mistakes without fear of embarrassment or punishment. In today’s fast-changing workplace, creating psychological safety isn’t simply a nice-to-have—it’s essential for building high-performing teams.

What Is Psychological Safety?

Psychological safety refers to a shared belief that team members can take interpersonal risks without negative consequences.

In practical terms, this means employees feel comfortable:

• Sharing new ideas
• Asking for help
• Challenging assumptions
• Admitting mistakes
• Providing honest feedback
• Raising concerns or potential problems

When psychological safety is present, team members contribute more openly and collaborate more effectively. When it is absent, people often remain silent, avoid difficult conversations, and withhold valuable insights.

Why Psychological Safety Is Important

Many organisations invest heavily in leadership development, communication training, and team-building activities. However, these initiatives are far less effective if employees do not feel safe enough to participate honestly.

Psychological safety creates an environment where people can contribute their best thinking without fear of judgment.

Teams with high levels of psychological safety often experience:

• Better communication
• Greater innovation
• Faster problem-solving
• Stronger collaboration
• Increased employee engagement
• Higher levels of trust
• Improved team performance

In contrast, teams lacking psychological safety may struggle with conflict avoidance, poor communication, and low levels of accountability.

A Real World Success Story

Think back to the rescue of the Wild Boars youth football team from the flooded Tham Luang caves in Chiang Rai province in 2018. The governor of Chiang Rai at the time and leader of the rescue mission, Narongsak Osottanakorn, famously created a true psychologically safe environment.

Open and Radical Transparency: He established a direct, no-nonsense flow of information to the public and the parents of the trapped boys. By avoiding political spin and honestly explaining the risks and challenges, he built deep trust with all stakeholders.

No-Blame Culture: In a high-stakes military and bureaucratic operation, Narongsak unified the Royal Thai Navy SEALs, international cave diving experts, and local volunteers. He empowered experts to do their jobs without fear of bureaucratic retribution, encouraging them to freely share new ideas.

The rescue was a massive success and set a new global standard for crisis management.

And…A Real World Failure

Not so long ago, I facilitated a team development session for an international finance company with offices in Bangkok. It surfaced during a discussion that the director would routinely make surprise visits to staff offices and rummage through the desks of the back office staff. The reason given was that she didn’t want staff treating their desks as their own personal space and wasting office time on personal matters.

In addition, staff were frequently in tears after having been shouted at in meetings for not being “good enough”. When they became upset at this, they were shouted at again for being “too emotional”.

This blatant lack of trust and aggressive behaviour on display from the team leader was all rather shocking but not entirely surpising. Because I was also informed that the director had never once sat down to lunch or shared a coffee with anyone in her team. This is always an early warning sign in my books!

Was it all a leadership powerplay? Check out my post on Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons and his executive washroom.

Anyway, you can guess the end result of not having a psychologically safe environment. Those staff members who remained in their jobs became quiet quitters. Others simply resigned and left. The office had such a massive staff turnover that this particular leader was replaced in less than two years. Sadly, she was given another leadership position in another office in a different country.

The Link Between Psychological Safety and Performance

One common misconception is that psychological safety lowers standards or reduces accountability. The opposite is often true.

When people feel safe speaking up, they are more likely to identify risks, highlight potential issues, and offer constructive feedback. Problems are addressed earlier, mistakes become learning opportunities, and teams can adapt more quickly to change.

High-performing teams are not teams that never experience disagreement. They are teams that can disagree openly, respectfully, and productively.

Psychological safety allows healthy debate without damaging relationships.

Groundbreaking research by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson shows an interesting data pattern. The high performing teams she studies had higher failure rates than average teams. But this wasn’t because the high performing teams failed more, it was because they felt safe enough to report failures and discuss them openly. Underperforming teams try to sweep failures under the rug.

Because high performers report errors, they can fail fast, fix issues, and learn collectively before things start to snowball. A process called iterative learning. Reporting failures gives teams the data required to iterate and improve processes, effectively transforming mistakes into intelligence.

Psychological Safety and Innovation

Innovation requires experimentation, and experimentation inevitably involves failure.

If employees fear criticism or negative consequences for making mistakes, they become less willing to take risks. Instead of sharing creative ideas, they focus on avoiding errors and protecting themselves.

Psychologically safe teams create an environment where learning is valued. Team members feel confident proposing new approaches, testing different solutions, and challenging the status quo.

This openness often leads to greater creativity and continuous improvement.

Signs Your Team May Lack Psychological Safety

Leaders should pay attention to warning signs that psychological safety may be missing.

Common indicators include:

• Few people speaking during meetings
• Employees rarely challenging decisions
• Lack of new ideas or innovation
• Blame-focused discussions
• Fear of making mistakes
• Limited feedback between colleagues
• Important issues surfacing too late

When team members consistently remain silent, it does not necessarily mean they agree. Often, it means they do not feel safe expressing a different opinion.

How Leaders Can Build Psychological Safety

Creating psychological safety starts with leadership behaviour.

Leaders can strengthen psychological safety by:

Encouraging Participation

Actively invite input from all team members, not just the most vocal individuals.

Responding Constructively

When employees raise concerns or make mistakes, focus on learning rather than blame.

Demonstrating Vulnerability

Leaders who acknowledge their own mistakes create permission for others to do the same.

Listening Actively

People are more likely to speak up when they believe their opinions will be heard and respected.

Encouraging Healthy Debate

Constructive disagreement should be welcomed as part of effective decision-making.

Recognising Contributions

Acknowledging ideas and input reinforces the value of participation.

The Role of Team Development

Psychological safety does not develop automatically. It requires intentional effort and ongoing reinforcement.

Team development workshops can help teams build trust, improve communication, and strengthen relationships. Through shared experiences and facilitated reflection, team members often gain a deeper understanding of one another and develop the confidence needed to communicate more openly.

However, activities alone are not enough. Lasting psychological safety comes from combining team development with consistent leadership behaviours and workplace practices.

Final Thoughts

Psychological safety is not about avoiding difficult conversations or lowering expectations. It is about creating an environment where people feel comfortable contributing their ideas, sharing concerns, and learning from mistakes.

When psychological safety exists, teams communicate more openly, collaborate more effectively, and perform at a higher level. It creates the foundation upon which trust, innovation, accountability, and high performance are built.

For organisations looking to improve team effectiveness, psychological safety might be one of the most valuable investments they can make.

Featured Image: By Edvard Munch – National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69541493

Somewhere throughout your career, you’ve probably heard a manager or leader say it: “We’re not just a company, we’re a family.”

This line is often thrown around in interviews, celebratory end-of-year speeches, team building events, and one-to-ones. Plenty of heads will often nod in response.

It sounds warm. Supportive. Loyal. But framing a workplace as a family creates confusion, blurred boundaries, and unhealthy dynamics.

It Blurs Professional Boundaries

Healthy work teams thrive on clear roles, accountability, measurable expectations, and professional conflict resolution. Families, on the other hand, often operate on emotion, history, and implicit rules.

If you operate a business team as a family, you risk making feedback feel personal, turning disagreements into loyalty tests, encouraging favouritism, and discouraging objective decision-making.

Professional environments function best when expectations are explicit and performance-based.

It Confuses Hierarchical Structures

Families are (hopefully) built around love and emotional support. Workplaces are not. They are built around hierarchies and titles. As an employee, you have a manager who evaluates you, controls compensation decisions, influences your career progression, initiates disciplinary procedures, and can even terminate your employment.

That is not a sibling relationship. It’s a power structure. Pretending otherwise can obscure accountability and make it harder to challenge unfair treatment.

A Job Is Conditional. A Family Isn’t.

Families (ideally) operate on unconditional belonging. Workplaces operate on performance and exchange.

You are paid to contribute value. If the business needs change or performance drops, employment can end. That doesn’t make work cruel – it makes it transactional. Just like when you buy something from a shop. The shop provides a product and you pay for it. In the workplace, you provide a service and the employer pays for it.

Calling a workplace a family masks this reality and can make layoffs, firings, or restructures feel like betrayal instead of business decisions.

It Can Be Used to Mask A Dysfunctional Environment

When organisations frame themselves as families, they sometimes lean on emotional loyalty. The language of family can be used (intentionally or not) to pressure people into working excessive hours, skipping boundaries, accepting poor conditions, or feeling guilty for saying no.

By saying “we’re like a family”, managers could be masking what’s really happening – dysfunctional management, frequent firefighting, poor results, and high employee turnover.

It Discourages Healthy Mobility

In families, leaving is dramatic. In careers, leaving is normal. If a company promotes a family narrative, employees may feel guilty for pursuing better opportunities, disloyal for resigning, or pressured to “stick it out.”

But careers are journeys. Growth often requires movement. A healthy workplace should expect turnover (and even celebrate employee advancement elsewhere).

It Can Breed Stagnation and Apathy

I once worked with an organisation that used the “we are like family” phrase frequently and it was one of the most dysfunctional teams I have ever worked with. I also noticed that many of the team members had been with the company for twenty to thirty years! Now, you could argue that this a great sign – a sign that employees are happy and content. Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

The other possibility is that these employees have become too comfortable in their positions. They do their jobs as they have always done and they’re pretty good at what they do – they should be after two or three decades in the role!

But if a company wishes to move forward in an increasingly competitive and fast-paced business world, they need drive, enthusiasm, innovation, and agility. The “old guard” might not be bringing this. Innovation requires challenging the status quo but family-style work cultures often prioritise harmony and peaceful environments rather than the risk-taking, productive conflict, and candid feedback necessary for creative growth.

Dynamic high-performers will likely have already moved on after being disappointed by the organisation’s lack of drive and the remaining “family members” would have been promoted into higher positions of power (see this post on The Peter Principle).

It’s possible that tenured employees within a family-like work culture:

• May lack new ideas or innovation as they’ve “always done it this way”
• May not want to rock the boat as they’ve become too comfortable
• May be resistant to change
• May not want to question leadership as relationships have become too close
• May not speak up about failures because they don’t want to upset their colleagues
• May get away with poor performance because nobody will hold them accountable
• May avoid tough conversations and feedback in order to maintain relationships

Accountability slides, innovation stumbles, and team performance remains no more than adequate. Doing the job, maybe, but never excelling.

What a Workplace Should Be Instead

Instead of a family, a workplace is better described as a team. Teams are powerful because roles are clear, standards are explicit, membership is earned, feedback is expected, and transitions are normal.

This clarity protects everyone.

A strong workplace culture includes:

• Psychological safety
• Clear boundaries
• Fair compensation
• Transparent communication
• Respect for life outside of work
• Accountability at every level

You can care about colleagues and build friendships. You can support each other through tough times.

But that’s community, not family. When someone says, “We’re like a family here,” it often signals good intentions such as connection, loyalty, belonging. But sustainable and high-performing organisations don’t rely on emotional obligation. They rely on clarity, fairness, and mutual benefit.

A job is not your family. It’s a contractual partnership.

And healthy partnerships work best when everyone understands the terms and conditions.

Leadership today is more complex than it has ever been. It’s a VUCA world after all.

If you’re not familiar, VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. Apparently, the phrase was first used by the US Army in the late 80s to describe the world after the end of the Cold War. The phrase has now spread into the leadership arena to describe the state of today’s business world. It’s just a little bit scary.

Teams are hybrid (or fully remote), expectations are higher, and the pace of change is relentless. Yet despite all this, great leadership still rests on a few timeless fundamentals. Master these, and everything else becomes easier. Ignore them, and you’re leaving the door open to chaos.

From my work with business teams over the years, these are the three essential foundations of effective leadership – the ones that consistently show up in high-performing teams.

1. Trust: The Core of Every Strong Team

Trust is the starting point of leadership. In the famous Five Dysfunctions of a Team model by Patrick Lencioni, an absence of trust is the primary dysfunction from which all the other dysfunctions arise. Without trust, people hold back ideas, hide mistakes, and second-guess decisions. With it, teams communicate openly, take risks, and lean into challenges together.

Leaders build trust by:

• Showing consistency between words and actions
• Being transparent, sharing information openly
• Listening without judgement
• Owning mistakes instead of blaming others
• Following through on commitments

When trust is present, work becomes faster, easier, and more collaborative. It is the leadership foundation that holds everything else in place.

2. Clarity: Giving People a Clear Path Forward

Even the most capable employees struggle when direction is vague. Clarity is about helping people understand what matters, why it matters, and how success will be measured.

Strong leaders provide clarity by:

• Setting clear goals and expectations
• Communicating priorities, especially when things change
• Making decision-making criteria visible
• Defining roles and responsibilities
• Ensuring everyone understands the bigger picture

Clarity reduces confusion, prevents duplication of effort, and empowers people to make better decisions. When teams know exactly where they’re going, they move with confidence.

3. Care: Supporting People as Humans, Not Just Employees

Today’s workforce expects leaders who genuinely care. Not in a superficial, “textbook” way, but in a meaningful and human way. Care is about understanding people’s needs, strengths, challenges, and motivations.

Leaders show care through:

• Regular check-ins that go beyond task lists
• Giving feedback with empathy and respect
• Recognising effort, not just results
• Supporting wellbeing and work-life balance
• Creating an environment where people feel safe and valued

Care builds loyalty. It increases engagement, psychological safety, and performance. When people feel cared for, they bring more energy, creativity, and commitment to their work.

Why These Three Foundations Matter in Leadership

Trust, clarity, and care work together. When leaders master all three, teams experience:

• Higher engagement
• Better communication
• Faster problem-solving
• Strengthened collaboration
• Increased accountability
• A positive, resilient culture

Most leadership problems (conflict, confusion, disengagement, and departmental silos) can be traced back to a breakdown in one of these foundations.

Final Thoughts

Leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating the conditions where people can do their best work. When leaders prioritise trust, clarity, and care, they go a long way towards unlocking the full potential of their teams.

These foundations don’t require big budgets or complex strategies. They require presence, consistency, and intention – qualities that every leader can develop with a bit of thought and practice.

It was Douglas McGregor who first postulated this theory back in 1960. Like Abraham Maslow (of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs fame), McGregor’s work was founded in motivation theory but unlike Maslow, most people have never heard of the XY theory. We learn about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in high school but McGregor’s work remains largely anonymous. That’s a shame because I think it is far easier for people to relate to and I believe that, if taught in schools, it would give young people a simple and approachable management model when they first enter the workforce and are often thrown into management and team leadership roles quite quickly.

At its core, the X theory assumes that employees dislike their work, lack ambition, and need close supervision and guidance while the Y theory assumes that employees enjoy their work, seek out greater responsibility, and thrive when given greater autonomy and less supervision.

X Managers

X Managers assume that the average person dislikes work and will avoid it whenever possible. This requires greater levels of supervision and more of a command and control approach. Since they believe that most people lack ambition and avoid responsibility, these leaders often choose to use incentives as a way to achieve organisational objectives. They are likely to implement strict rules and regulations, and direct their employees by assigning specific tasks to be completed.

Y Managers

While X managers can be authoritarian, Y managers are more participative. They believe that the average person can manage themselves towards their organisational objectives. They assume that employees enjoy their work and have the ambition to seek out greater responsibility. They believe that employees care greatly about their role and basically manage themselves with a high degree of creativity and desire to solve organisational problems. With this belief, Y managers often give more freedom and autonomy to their teams and do not micromanage.

Is One Leadership Style Better Than The Other?

In the modern business world, X managers would often be frowned upon. They are seen as the stereotypical bad bosses. The ones who manage their teams with an iron fist, micromanage every project, and hand out projects and tasks to each person without listening to feedback. Meanwhile, Y managers are in trend. Look at LinkedIn on any given day and you will be bombarded with posts about trusting your team to do their jobs. This has become especially pertinent with the rise of Work From Home (WFH) which has created an environment in which employees cannot be directly supervised.

But is it fair to label X leaders as bad and Y leaders as good?

In my opinion, no, it’s not.

As I say that, I can imagine you, the reader, raising an eyebrow or two. As a leadership trainer and team development facilitator, how can I say that? Surely everyone on LinkedIn is not wrong? Surely a more open manager who gives his or her employees autonomy to do their jobs is better?

Well, I do not believe that X managers are inherently bad. I think there is a place for the X theory of leadership. Likewise, the Y theory has its place as well.

Learn From Your Own Experiences

Let me tell you a story. Early in my career, I was the manager of a hotel’s recreation and team building department in Thailand. I had a team of 21 people to lead, including one assistant manager. Not long out of university, it was my first management role and I approached it in my ‘default’ management style. I used the Y theory because this is what came naturally to me. I did not want to command my team. I assumed they enjoyed the job as much as I did and that they would seek out responsibility on their own. I assumed that they valued the autonomy I gave them.

I would often ask my assistant manager “What are you working on today?” And on most days, he gave some sort of vague response, never specifically telling me what he was planning to get done. I didn’t think much of it. It was several weeks later when I asked him again. I liked to phrase it in different ways to keep things interesting so I said “What are your plans today?” He snapped at me and I could tell he was both frustrated and angry. His response was something along the lines of “Tell me what you WANT me to do!”

I was a little taken aback by his response so we had a little chat.

It turns out that he had basically been doing nothing for the last few weeks. There were plenty of jobs for him to be getting on with as we had discussed the ongoing projects for our department weeks earlier, agreed upon some very fair deadlines, and he had happily accepted responsibility for getting them done. I had then entrusted him to move forward with these projects at his own pace, come to me if he needed any support, and let me know when they were done. While I was happy for him to move forward at his own pace, I had not imagined that his pace would be stationary.

When given specific directions, he always carried out his duties promptly and to a high standard. But when given the freedom to make his own decisions and manage his own work commitments and time, he faltered. He required an X manager, not a Y manager.

This is why I say that an X manager is not inherently a bad boss. There are people out there who need to be specifically told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. And without supervision, nothing gets done. There are certainly people who get by with the minimum amount of effort, call in sick whenever they can, and sneak out early when possible. There are also people who simply don’t want autonomy and empowerment, even when it is offered. They simply don’t want the responsibility of making important decisions (and possibly making a mistake) and so would prefer just to follow instructions from a boss.

It may not be politically correct to say that but I believe it is important to be realistic and understand that some personalities respond better to X leadership environments than Y environments. That is not to be condescending. It’s just real life and leadership should not shy away from acknowledging this, despite what LinkedIn would try to have you believe.

And it’s not the case that an X manager will automatically have a bad relationship with their team members. Some team members appreciate being told what to do and can maintain a healthy relationship with their manager. My relationship with my assistant manager was much better once we had had our little chat and I realised what he wanted from me was LESS autonomy!

When To Use The X Style Of Leadership?

• When introducing new employees to the work process.
• In a crisis, when decisions need be made quickly and centralised control may be necessary.
• When health and safety requires adherence to standards.
• When strict protocols must be followed (e.g. manufacturing and quality control)
• When you have team members who respond better to X leadership.

What’s My Take On All This?

The moral of the story is that you should not follow a particular team leadership style just because it’s the fashion at the moment. LinkedIn and leadership coaches around the world will tell you that Y leadership is the way to go. But the fact is that we do not live in a utopia. It’s not a perfect world in which every employee is highly motivated and self-managing – even if everything else has been done perfectly (a fair salary, feeling valued by leadership, shown respect, given growth opportunities etc.).

Some people simply do not thrive in a Y leadership environment. Over the next few years of my management career I met quite a few other people who, while happy to accept responsibility for a task based on my guidance and framework, failed spectacularly to achieve anything at all. However, when I stepped into my X leadership style (remember that I am a Y leader by nature) and gave them direct instructions and close supervision they got the job done swiftly and efficiently and we had (and still do to this day) a great working relationship and we are still working together over 15 years later.

This is one of my concerns about Work From Home (WFH). While it may be wonderful for the right type of person and offer them a flexible environment in which to live and work and the autonomy to get things done in their own time, it might not be efficient for someone else. An organisation’s productivity is at risk. But this is a topic for another blog post and some of you might not share my opinions on the subject!

My personal opinion is that a team leader should understand the difference between X and Y leadership and apply them intelligently depending on the situation and the people involved. Don’t just follow what is currently trendy. The world is far from perfect.

There’s an awful lot of people in senior leadership positions who, quite frankly, shouldn’t be there. So why are they there?

Leaders often reach their positions through one of the following pathways:

1. They’re great at their job so when a leadership position becomes available they’re promoted. Let’s call this the PERCEIVED ABILITY pathway.
2. They’ve been with the company for many years so when a leadership position becomes available they’re promoted. Let’s call this the PERCEIVED LOYALTY pathway.

The Perceived Ability Pathway

Freya is an experienced salesperson for a car showroom and she’s awesome at building trust, impressing potential customers, and converting them into buyers. She has the highest sales figures in the whole team. When the director of sales decides to move on to a different company, Freya’s promoted because she’s been the top seller.

She’s now leading a team of salespeople from her new office next to the finance director. She’s producing and looking at reports every day, discussing strategy with the general manager, and managing the ups and downs of her team.

But Freya has never had any real leadership training and she misses the showroom floor, the interactions with customers, and the excitement of closing a deal.

At this point, the company has not only gained an inexperienced and ineffective team leader, they’ve also lost their best salesperson.

The Perceived Loyalty Pathway

Loki joined a tour company as a guide when he was fresh out of school. For the next ten years he guided speedboat tours, leading guests through planned itineraries on a daily basis. He was never the top performer and his guest reviews were average. After all, he only became a guide because he thought it would be a fun way to meet people and he hated office jobs.

When the lead guide left due to ill health, Loki was promoted to lead guide because he had been there the longest out of all the guides. Five years later, the operations manager of the tour company moved on and Loki suddenly found himself as the new manager because, as lead guide, he was next in line and had been with the company for a long time.

The fact is that Loki had been there a long time not out of any particular loyalty to the company but because he was comfortable. The office was near his house and he enjoyed the easygoing nature of the work. No stress. No pressure. There was no need for him to change jobs. He had never been a particularly ambitious person and he only ever did enough to get by.

Leadership Is Not For Everyone

In both of these examples, leadership positions were handed out as a reward for either good work or longevity. While these are fictional examples, they illustrate the problem that so many organizations create for themselves – putting the wrong people in team leadership positions.

Not everyone is suited to being a leader and not everyone wants to be a leader.

For example, one of the responsiblities of a leader is to drive their team forward, leading the way through changing times. This requires energy and enthusiasm and sometimes a bit of risk-taking. A pioneering spirit let’s say. But not everyone is a pioneer of course.

What do we think will happen if a junior team member is full of ideas and vigour but is always held back by their boss who won’t even consider a change because “we’ve always done it this way”.

This is the type of response you often get from a leader who has followed the perceived loyalty pathway. It sounds harsh (and paradoxical even) but I’ll say it anyway. An individual may be a team leader precisely because they lack the desire and inclination to be one. It was a lack of interest and enthusiasm that meant they never left and so, over time, they inadvertently fell into the leadership slot.

Is this the type of leader that we really want? Is this the type of leader who will help drive the company forward? Is this the type of leader that will support and guide team members towards better things?

The Peter Principle

This management principle states that an employee continues to receive promotions and rise through the ranks until they reach a position of incompetence. So, the higher an individual rises within a hierarchy, the more likely they are to fail.

The two pathways to leadership outlined above both illustrate the Peter Principle. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for an individual to rise through the ranks on merit. Of course this can happen. As we gain experience, we improve. Individuals that show leadership potential are noticed and the best leaders rise to the top. This is how it should be.

All I’m saying is that the Peter Principle is far too common within organisations and can result in:

1. Increased stress for the out-of-place leader.
2. Detrimental effects on the rest of the team such as low morale.
3. Increased staff turnover.
4. Decreased productivity.
5. Poor decision-making.
6. Lack of innovation.
7. An increase in errors, mistakes, and accidents within a department.
8. Customer dissatisfaction.
9. Brand damage for the organisation.
10. Lost revenue.

How To Prevent The Peter Principle?

1. Develop an effective succession plan for key positions.
2. Commit to continuous learning and leadership training programs.
3. Adequately assess leadership potential in candidates for promotion.
4. Have honest conversations with potential candidates for promotion.
5. Provide adequate leadership skills training BEFORE promotion.
6. Conduct regular feedback sessions.
7. Don’t be afraid to look outside the organisation to find the right leader.
8. Offer higher pay for loyal workers without promotion.
9. Have open conversations if a promotion does not work out.
10. Understand that leadership is not the same as management.

The Simpsons Episode 15, October 18 1990

There’s an old episode of ‘The Simpsons’ in which Homer grows a full head of hair and unwittingly impresses Mr. Burns. He’s rewarded by being given ‘the key’.

This key unlocks the executive washroom, a toilet reserved for senior executives at the Springfield nuclear power plant. Behind the locked door to the washroom is a waterfall, a classical orchestra and a servant. And a golden toilet, of course. It is reserved for the upper echelons of Burns’ leadership team while the rank and file have to make do with a row of dirty, graffiti-covered toilet stalls downstairs.

It was always one of my favourite episodes from when I was an avid Simpsons fan. I’m not saying that I don’t like The Simpsons anymore, I just don’t really have the opportunity to watch it these days. Anyway, that’s not the point.

The point is that it is not at all uncommon for leaders to display such arrogance. Perhaps not the waterfall and orchestra (that would be silly) but private toilets? Yes. Private dining? Certainly. Private floors reserved for senior execs only? Floors from which everyone else is banned? Most definitely. Some companies even have policies that prevent employees emailing top management. I kid you not.

It’s a statement of importance from them. To the rest of us, it’s the source of water cooler chat and colourfully-worded jokes that could not be repeated to a child.

A Little Effort Goes A Long Way

Needless to say, these types of behaviours are not great for building a team. Teams need leaders that are visible and approachable. Leaders that get stuck in and pull their weight. Leaders that demonstrate that they are part of the team, not some higher unseen power that has all the answers and should be followed without question.

There never has been and never will be a leader who has all the answers – despite what some of them may think. It only requires a little effort to become a better leader. It starts with being more human. Yes, it’s really that easy.

• Have lunch with your subordinates in the staff canteen.
• Invite them for a coffee sometimes and have a chat about anything except work.
• Say hi to everyone as you wander around. Don’t just nod your head before you skulk back to your corner office and your spreadsheets. Show some interest in who these people are.
• Take some snacks into the office to share. Stay and mingle for ten minutes and enjoy some cookies.
• Attend the annual team building event and join in with enthusiasm. Don’t disappear to play golf. Everyone can see you and they’ll all be disappointed by your absence.

There are hundreds of small gestures that you can make on a daily basis. Don’t hide away in an ivory tower with a fancy toilet and expect your team to trust and respect you. That’s why I bring up the story from The Simpsons and the executive washroom.

And if you don’t know why you should do these things, you should resign immediately from your leadership position.

You just don’t get it.

Imagine a football team in which the on-field leader (the captain) hangs around the center circle watching everyone else kick the ball around. They observe from a distance. They send an email when somebody loses the ball. They don’t even join in with the half-time water break. They drink their own private water, perhaps a more premium brand, in a different part of the field.

It sounds ridiculous I know. The sad thing is though, people around the world have to put up with absentee leadership every day. It’s when a person somehow makes it to a management or leadership position and is more than keen to accept the privileges and higher pay packet that comes with it, but then avoids all meaningful connections and interactions with their team.

A survey of 1,000 workers in 2015 showed that 8 out of the top 9 complaints about leaders were related to leaders who were absent or disengaged.

Here’s a couple of examples that I know of personally:

• A marketing executive I know recently won a prestigious industry award. While her team obviously congratulated her, the general manager did not. Seriously?
• I was recently facilitating part of a leadership development program for a hospitality company. It was attended by selected high-performers in the company to train them for future leadership positions within the organisation. None of the organisation’s senior leaders showed up to speak at the event (or even just to say hello). On a leadership development program. Really?
• I know of one general manager who is well-known for not speaking to anyone outside of his immediate circle of executives. He walks around his hotel inspecting things and making little notes but never engaging with other members of staff. WTF?

These are all examples of absentee leaders. Can these people not stop for a second and think about how their behaviour might be perceived by others? Can they not think how they would feel if things were the other way around? What’s even worse is when these so-called leaders go on and on about team building within their organisations and instruct their HR departments to make it a priority but then demonstrate the exact opposite behaviour to what they are espousing.

Leaders Who Are Anonymous Deserve To Be Ridiculed

I’ve worked with one or two absentee leaders myself. Here’s an example from early in my career, when I was living in Europe. It involves a leader who sat in his office looking at spreadsheets all day and rarely, if ever, ventured out into the workplace jungle surrounding him.

I once got a ‘nod’ from him when I was standing at the urinal in the men’s room and he walked in. When two men meet in a workplace toilet facility, there is only one thing to do. Politely nod. Then, get on with the business at hand. I remember this moment well because I felt it was a form of team bonding.

After that one moment of meaningful connection, he never spoke to me again. He disappeared back to his cave. I like to think it was because he was embarrassed about the small size of his……sorry, I’ve become distracted. Rant over.

This is one rant in a series of personal rants and diatribes about silly and ineffectual behaviours displayed by leaders and managers across the world. Please don’t expect in-depth psychological analyses and discussions of empirical training models here. I write these posts for my own light entertainment and, I hope, yours.

Based on “The Art of Teaming” workshop, this slightly expanded version looked at how the concept of teaming can be applied to any type of team – whether it’s a team that has been together for years or one that has recently formed.

Our client was an international tech company focused on financial and regulatory markets. Something to do with blockchain – whatever that is…

I’m still a long way from understanding exactly what this company does but the great thing about leadership and teamwork is that the same skills apply to any industry. Here, we touched upon learning from failure, building trust and breaking down communication barriers between departmental silos.

There’s always some serious stuff in these workshops of course and we created a safe space for participants to share some hard truths. But there were plenty of interactive activities along the way including a fun team challenge to simulate rapid idea sharing and speaking up.

And what an awesome meeting venue it was. Beanbags, sofas and a sea view. Why can’t all meeting rooms be more like this?

There’s a common theme in offices around the world. When the manager wants to assign a job to someone, often a job that they don’t want to do themselves, they “delegate” it to someone else in their team. This is usually followed by a wry smile that says “I don’t want to do this job. So I’m giving it to you. We both know I don’t want to do it. That’s why I’m delegating. You now have no choice in the matter because I’m the boss and delegation is a privilege that bosses have. Don’t bring this matter up again until it’s done.”

Yes, all of that in one smile.

The thing is though, this is not delegation. It’s abdication. This is a completely different thing and is less desirable.

In the business world, abdication is unfortunately far more common that delegation and most people get it wrong. If you, as a manager and leader, assign a task to someone and then move on and forget about it, you’re not delegating, you’re abdicating. To be more blunt, you’re shirking your responsibilities as a leader.

Real leaders know that they remain ultimately responsible for any task that they reassign, no matter who is in direct control of it. They maintain ownership of the task. Consider the following points to delegate effectively:

• Select the right person for the job based on their individual skill set, not just someone who you feel has the time to do it
• Ensure that they have or will receive the proper training to be able to complete the task well
• Provide clear instructions for the task and your expectations
• Ensure that the assigned person has access to any resources they may need
• Act as a mentor and facilitator

To summarise, delegation is not about offloading crappy jobs to others so you can do the things you prefer. It’s about making informed decisions and moving the right chess pieces into the right positions at the right time. Then, don’t run away and disappear like an absentee leader. Be a mentor, take on a supporting role if necessary to facilitate your colleague’s success.

Maintain ownership and continue to show genuine interest in the outcome. After all, if you’ve delegated to the right person, with the right skill set, supported them along the way and created the right environment in which they can operate efficiently, the outcome is far more likely to be a success.

Team building is built on a foundation of trust. Delegating a task effectively demonstrates that you trust that particular person to complete the job to the same standard as you would expect of yourself. This is why it’s crucial to maintain ownership of the task and outcome. If you abdicate and run, it shows you don’t really care.

Orientation? What Orientation?

I was recently chatting with a friend who had just accepted a new position in the marketing department of a luxury hotel in Phuket. I asked her what steps the hotel had taken to integrate her into the team. We commonly refer to such a process as ‘workplace orientation’.

I was astounded to hear that she had been given no orientation at all. No tour of the resort. No introductions to team members other than those in her own small department. No conversation about employee policies and dress codes. No friendly chat with the general manager. No basic training in the use of bespoke software.

When I say I was astounded, what I actually mean is that I was not surprised.

Exactly the same thing had happened to me years ago and I now know that it happens to so many of us. But why? It’s such a simple yet powerful thing. Even just half a day meeting people would work wonders. Why throw a new hire into the deep end and expect them to start walking on water? Show a little compassion!

How Hard Can It Be?

For weeks, my friend struggled with the switch to Google Workspace. Like so many people, she was more comfortable in Microsoft Office as she had been using it since middle school. A couple of hours with the IT guy going through the basics of the Google ecosystem would have prevented hours of stress and unnecessary mistakes.

A quick tour of the resort and some friendly introductions to team members from different departments would have created a more welcoming environment. An environment in which she would feel valued and appreciated rather than feeling like an intruder.

A quick conversation with HR about the hotel’s dress codes and policies would have eliminated countless minutes stood in front of the mirror every morning worrying about whether her choice of outfit would be seen as too formal or too casual.

You see? It’s really that simple.

Your Team Will Benefit Greatly

We know from the Stages of Team Development model that team dynamics change every time a team member leaves or someone new joins. The team will return to the ‘forming’ and ‘storming’ phases once again and new norms will develop. It’s incredibly hard for a new hire to join a team that may have been together for years. A simple introduction and a shared lunch would surely help, right?

The reason that a new team member is brought on board is to fill a skills gap. They are there because they are needed. Without this new hire, the team and the company as a whole would suffer. So, perhaps companies should show a bit more appreciation and help ensure that the new hire can get up to speed quickly and efficiently. A worker will never be as keen and motivated as they are during the first few weeks and months. They should be given all the tools and support that is available to them. Build bridges early.

While this is an issue that HR departments should certainly be addressing, I’d also like leaders to try harder here. A leader, in this example the hotel’s general manager, who takes the time to personally welcome a new hire will immediately build trust with the new team member. We all know that trust is one of the foundations of a successful team so let’s build that foundation from the very first day. Show people that you care about them and that you want them to succeed.

My suggestion to business leaders and HR departments is to spend a little time planning an effective orientation in your company. As a department head, if your corporate HR has no such program, be a good leader and implement your own. If you can help ease your new team from the forming stage and through the storming stage more smoothly, you will soon start norming and performing once again.

My friend did receive an umbrella as a welcome gift. Useful in a tropical country, certainly, but a branded hotel umbrella is probably more effective as a marketing tool than a team building strategy.

The Need for Teaming

Amy Edmonson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, coined the phrase in her book ‘Teaming: How Organisations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy.’ She describes it as a verb referring simply to ‘teamwork on the fly.’

We usually think of a team as a stable entity. For example, a business unit in which team members have been together for some time. They may be happily ensconced at either Stage 3 or 4 in Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development model. They are norming and performing their way towards their business goals.

Not all teams are stable entities though. Recall the rescue of the Wild Boars football team from the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai in 2018. This was a unique situation and there was no script or playbook for the rescuers to follow.

A team of experts was quickly pulled together. It consisted of Thai Government officials, Navy SEALs, foreign cave diving specialists, drilling engineers and islanders from South Thailand who were experts in collecting bird nests from cave environments. I’m not sure what the technical term is for bird nest collectors.

Not only did these individuals bring a wide range of skills, they also brought differing ideas, viewpoints, priorities and personalities. They had never met before and were faced with a crisis that had never been seen before.

Just think how hard it is for a work committee in your office to make a simple decision about what brand of coffee to buy for the rec room. Now, imagine what the cave rescuers were dealing with in this extreme pressure environment.

Yet, somehow, they pulled it off and safely rescued all 12 boys and their coach in what was a truly outstanding demonstration of skill and teamwork.

This rescue was teaming in action.

A New Leadership Approach

In many industries, Taylorism still dominates even today. KPIs are monitored, systems tweaked to make them ever more efficient and repetitive. Predictability is still king. This is fine in certain types of industry. Indeed, it’s required. Manufacturing, for example. These companies are ‘organising to execute,’ according to Edmonson.

But this approach is wholly inadequate for much of today’s tertiary and knowledge-based economy. The globalisation of modern business requires innovation and flexibility. Ford and Taylor would struggle in today’s world. Rather than ‘organising to execute,’ teaming requires leaders to ‘organise to learn.’

Edmonson explains that organising to learn is a leadership style that looks to enhance collaboration and learning by doing. Experimentation, questioning the status quo and sharing feedback are all crucial to the teaming process. In this system, things are not set in stone and leaders should seek out alternative perspectives.

As business becomes even more complex and globalisation requires solutions yesterday, the ability to pivot is what sets companies apart.

It Doesn’t Come Naturally

The principles of teaming apply to both ad hoc teams as well as traditional, stable teams – but it doesn’t come naturally. It’s a new way of working and requires modern leaders to change their style, moving away from the command-and-control approach that has been engrained in many leaders’ minds. I am still surprised at how common micromanagement is in today’s workplaces. We can and must do better.

Modern Business Requires Modern Solutions

The modern business world is vastly different from the world of just twenty or thirty years ago. The rise of freelancing and the hyperspecialisation of roles means that team members may change on a weekly basis. The speed and complexity of global business and communication in the 21st century may require project teams to come together rapidly and deal with an unfolding international PR crisis.

Traditional leadership styles do not allow for the high level of innovation and rapid decision-making that is required these days.

It is clear then that teaming, as a verb, should be added to every leader’s vocabulary.

When Employees Lose Their Mojo

I wanted to share this little anecdote with you because I feel that it nicely demonstrates what happens when leadership doesn’t keep a sharp focus on the team.

At the time, I was a regional manager at a large hospitality company here in Thailand. My department was currently in the middle of an office move. We were moving into a newer and more modern room that was closer to the action. We were, in fact, taking over the room from another department that had recently made their own move to new premises.

Since we were taking over a room that had been occupied and fully operational right up until a few days before, all its features were still in place. Specifically, ethernet cables still trailed around the room, waiting for the room’s new occupants (us) to plug in our laptops.

I contacted the in-house service department to ask for a quote for a few items. Service the air-conditioning unit, fix the door lock. Things like that. When the quote came back, they wanted to charge for all-new ethernet cables.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked. “The other department only moved out a couple of days ago and everything was working fine when they left. I don’t want to pay for something that’s not required.”

“Why do you care? It’s not your own money.”

Those last two sentences uttered by the office manager still annoy me, twelve years later.

Loyalty Goes Both Ways

Before I became self-employed, I treated every job I had as if it were my own company. For example, I never wanted to waste company money.

After all, that company chose me over someone else and chose to pay me a fair salary each month. Without that job, I would be struggling to pay my bills. Employers do us a favour by giving us a chance and employing us. They don’t have to. They deserve that we care about their interests and the bottom line.

That’s true up to a point of course.

We all know how it goes though. We might start off keen and do our utmost for the benefit of the company. But when the company’s leadership continually demonstrates a lack of appreciation for our efforts, we lose our mojo. We lose heart.

Recent research reports that 79% of employees who quit their jobs claim that a lack of appreciation was a major factor in their decision. 65% of workers report that they weren’t recognised at all within the last year.

I believe this is what had happened to Miss. A. She’d lost her mojo and maintained the attitude that since her employer did not care about her, she would not care about their interests. She questioned why I did care. And, frankly, who could blame her if it were true that her employer did not show any appreciation for her efforts?

It’s a common enough scenario. One that repeats itself in offices around the world every day.

In many cases, the person who has lost their enthusiasm gets fed up, resigns and heads off to pastures new. Then, someone with even less enthusiasm is promoted from within to fill the space and the vicious cycle spirals dangerously downwards into the depths of teamwork hell. Dynamic team members are slowly driven away while mediocre employees reap the benefits and move up into positions of greater power and influence. It’s called Peter’s Principle and I’ll be discussing it in more detail another time.

Leadership Is a Way of Life

I’m not going to end this little story with a few bullet points of techniques to try. It’s not that black and white. Leadership is a way of life. It needs to happen all day every day in our workplaces. If you get it wrong, you’ll lose your most valuable assets. The high performers will walk out the door in a cloud of disappointment and frustration.

Meanwhile, you will cultivate an environment of mediocrity in which team members simply don’t care. They’ll do their jobs (just) in order to collect their pay cheque. Nothing more.

I’m sure we all love to have our backs scratched. It’s insanely pleasurable right? Stay with me here on this analogy…..

As a leader, your employees are scratching your back on a daily basis. They’re doing the jobs that you can’t or won’t do and you benefit from that in terms of business or department success. Just remember to turn around and scratch their backs too. Everyone needs a good back scratch.