EP#08🌿Is Your Team Bracing for Impact? What Stable Leaders Do Differently

Being a stable leader isn't about being perfect. It's about being someone your team doesn't have to brace against.

In this episode I pick up the COVID story from where I left it episode 7, and share what happened when I invited a team to choose their environment. I also share the story of a friend's workplace transformation, why the carpark at one office told you everything about what kind of day it was going to be, and why lightening up might be the most underrated leadership tool you have.

I walk through three practical moves that shift your team from reactive to proactive, communicate changes before they land, distribute workload with awareness, and plan ahead visibly. None of them are complicated. All of them change how your team feels about who's leading them.

When your team can see you're thinking ahead for them, you stop being the person who passes the pressure down and instead start being the person who protects the ground.

There is no standing back watching someone burn.

EP#08 - Listen Now

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Do you find yourself passing stress down to your team without meaning to?

Is your team spending more energy reading your mood than doing their best work?

Are you the same person on a hard day as a good one, or is your team quietly bracing for impact?

Welcome back.

Continuing on from the previous episode, we look into why giving yourself permission to be human and vulnerable in front of the team has significant impact on improving predictability and how really levelling out your environment impacts stability.

We look at other ideas to improve and touch on why forward planning together signals to your team you've got them. I'm wrapped your back.

Checking in, how did you go reflecting on whether there could be areas within yourself or your leadership style that could produce unpredictability around your team? Did you make any changes? I'd love to hear how it went. What was the impact?

We are back to look at predictability and stability again with a focus on how to lift or improve these fundamental aspects of your leadership and your team dynamic.

What does it actually look like to build predictability and stability in your team?

What does a stable leader do?

When the ground beneath the team is unreliable, people stop spending energy on the work and start spending it on surviving the environment. How the leader deals with predictability and stability becomes the nervous system of the team. The leader is either the source of the stability or the source of the threat. There is no neutral. The impact of an unpredictable or unstable leader is debilitating for a team.

We all know how it feels when you feel nervous in a bad way.

You're aiming to prevent this from happening to your team. If done well, there is no anxiety, trust is apparent, and the environments are created where members can confidently anticipate leaders and teammates delivery, their actions, and know they can collaborate safely with each other.

The leader sets the tone. In a people first culture, the tone is permission to be real human.

Not feel like a workhorse or unvalued. It's okay to have a hard day to not be perfect.

This requires transparency, conversation, and connection to shape the environment.

To set up expectations about how everyone behaves towards each other.

If you haven't already, again I'll drop the Conscious Leadership Groups video on Above the Line, Below the Line Behaviors. It's a great way to signal change and set up a platform of what is okay and what isn't in your team. Name it don't shame it, but follow through on setting examples and checking poor behaviour if you've recognized you're in a toxic space.

In a predictable and stable environment, the team learns to trust the person at the front and next to them. That everyone will try their best to be the same person every single day regardless of what's going on or happening around them.

In the last episode, I left you with the COVID story half told. heard the problem, division was creeping into the room with the radio consistently reminding us of the weird world we were living in, with conflict within the team starting to surface as people felt the urge to express opinion on what was right or wrong.

The fear was thick, the circle of safety that Simon Sinek refers to in his book Leaders Eat Last, had cracked. Here's what happened when I invited the team to choose a better option while we were together in isolation by suggesting we didn't discuss COVID or have the radio on in common spaces.

And the team accepted the opportunity.

I was thanked by nearly everyone at the end of that day after I left the suggestion on the table.

What unfolded the days following showed me something I'll never forget about what people are capable of when they feel safe enough to choose and given the option. People will protect the team, the space, the unity, and they will choose to do it with respect.

The atmosphere around us lightened up. The common values we had as humans returned. The focus of our time together became one of connection. It gave us permission to not think about what was going on for eight hours a day; that was fundamentally scary as hell.

We also connected in purpose. We saw and used the isolation as the biggest opportunity we might never get again to step away from normal business and redesign the team to cope with a new world. There was more laughter acceptance that we had heaps to be grateful for, just having a job for a start. The focus went on supporting, not condemning.

After that experience, I will also never take for granted how important it is for you as the leader to show up for your team and that you accept the responsibility of looking after the ground your team walk on.

If you don't already, making sure this is your first priority each day will make a difference to how people view you, respect you and their loyalty. Just checking in first thing, a genuine hello, how are you? A wave out, how did your daughter or son go last night?

If it doesn't come naturally, give it a go for a few days and see what happens.

I was reminded of the opportunity to be real and connect on a human level, rather than dictating how I wanted things to go in a quick catch up with one of my greatest friends.

It had been a while since we'd had a catch up. She had a new boss. The difference she said was incredible.

The previous boss was predictable in their unpredictable, obscure nature.

Things like insisting on the type of hand soap in their staff room and really having to go when something didn't fit their world, insisting on extra performance and openly expressing judgment and condemnation when that was questioned or someone just couldn't accommodate.

The overbearing leader, staff never knowing when they could be told off. As a teacher, they explained the staff were visibly happier, and the difference in the environment for the children, less incidents, a stark and noticeable change. Personally, the toll of living every day under that type of oppression was taking time to unwind from bracing for impact. The new leader reassuring, understanding, patient.

Fighting for the things that mattered to the team and their priority, the children, no personal agenda.

We can't always be perfect, but we can be conscious of the posture we take when we're working with others. Are they working for us or are we working for them? A great leader works for the team.

Lighten up and don't pass on your world. Many times in our life, regardless of role or function at work, things get crazy. System crashing, people away, a revolving door. Your team can see the pressure you're under as well as feel it for themselves. On those days, if you can pop out of your bubble when you get the chance, lead a coffee shout, have a random laugh, go around asking how everyone is when you're the one who probably needs checking in on the most.

Be real when you can. Notice when someone else is actually under pressure.

It's a comment my friend also made. Their new leader was real about what it takes to reset. They understood sometimes even when you do your best it just isn't enough or something still goes wrong. We have to learn to let things go so the team don't freak out because you're freaking out. Supporting people's resilience is underestimated and not flipping out or driving your own agenda helps create resilience, therefore stability. I know how I feel when my bosses said you've got this.

When you and your team work on how to engage together, you're leveling out the them and us dynamic. Everyone's role in a people-first culture is just as important as someone else's.

There is no them and us.

Like an epic sports team, all roles are critical.

When your team see how you pitch up, the expectation is set. Your team will start to feel more like a community. A place where when someone loses someone close, they will choose to come to work.

Not because work was a distraction, because the team was where they felt safe enough to be themselves, have their moments, but know they will be supported when they felt alone.

That's not a managed environment.

That's an evolved environment.

I remember one workplace, the car park could be seen. I remember watching when our boss arrived and knew what mood they were in by the way they got out of the car. True story. And revealed to me much later, I wasn't the only one who got nervous when you could tell they were in a bad mood. Your team is reading you constantly. Make it easy for them. Be the same person every day. Mood, tone, availability, be reliable.

Planning ahead has significant impact on these areas, predictability and stability. Set up a regular monthly meeting with key members of your team to specifically deal with planning ahead. Look at what leave is coming up, cross training, issues or upcoming business changes that need to be worked through. And communicate all of that back to the team.

Three main areas your team will see you addressing if you do this.

One, communicate changes before they land, not after. Give people time to process. The disruption of change is therefore manageable. distribute workload with awareness.

Two, Know what each person is carrying. Don't drop something on someone on their busiest day. I've done that and I made people feel like I didn't care about them. If the team see that others are helping out, for example, picking up more customer service calls because two team members are training. It rallies people around each other. Swings and roundabouts.

Number three, plan ahead visibly. It doesn't have to be a perfect plan. A basic plan is definitely better than no plan.

In regard to predictability and stability, communicate changes or potentials before they land, in my experience is important. This moves your team from reactive to proactive, completely different energy.

I've met many leaders who don't want to discuss something until it comes up. In my experience, you're way better bringing up quickly the maybes. So creative solutions can already be simmering with your team before something actually hits or is necessary.

When your team can see that you're thinking ahead for them, you become the person who is protecting them, not the person who just passes down the pressure. That's a psychological shift.

You start to take the position of linebacker in people's minds, defense.

Retention of staff members because the environmental conditions are predictable and stable creates more safety and trust, more predictability and stability, more reliability in you as a leader.

You effectively are building a bulletproof team that has each other's back.

This type of culture reduces interpersonal friction when the environment's expectation, behaviors and conditions around people are clear, backed up and consistent. Even if they don't like aspects of someone's personality, they will support them with work without question.

A team that is already actively working together will flinch briefly at inconvenience, but bounce back and get stuck in quickly. It's astounding. A resilient team built on supporting each other will sustain that for a long period of time on their own, but eventually stability will need to return.

I made many mistakes in this area that in hindsight made me cringe. I understand how important these things are. Even if the ground changes around you, you must keep the ground around your team the same.

Predictability and stability aren't about running a flawless operation without ups and downs. It's the opposite.

It's been someone your team doesn't have to brace against.

And it's the team working well together to handle the ups and downs as flawlessly as possible.

The goal for me as a leader, a team performing at a high level regardless of what the day throws at them, knowing they're doing brilliantly, as proactively as possible, with as much enjoyment as possible.

Your team wants the same thing: a work day they can feel good about, work that has a rhythm.

Teammates and a leader who's got their back.

That's what you're building when you operate a people-first culture.

There is no standing back watching someone burn.

Your invitation for reflection. How do you think you could change the environment around you or your team to improve these fundamentals? Are you and your team well prepared? Do you know how your messaging lands with individuals?

If you haven't already, pop to the olivetreemethod.com and complete the leadership self-assessment to see how you and your team are tracking at the moment in this area and twenty-five others that can be improved using people-first leadership principles.

It will provide some ideas on how to support areas that might need help or frame up for you where you need help. I'm a huge believer in knowing the conditions around your team. If you don't know, you can't fix.

Next episode we look at meetings before jumping back into the next focus area which is communication. It's the perfect time to reframe everything you might think meetings are about and look at how they can be your biggest platform to introduce change, structure, expectations and engagement. Alongside how you react to mistakes, how you run your meetings can be powerful. I can't wait to dig in.

Be blessed and I wish you the best workday. Ciao.

Resource Links:

02.42 Above The Line/Below The Line – Locating Yourself - Conscious Leadership Group - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLqzYDZAqCI 

03.44 Simon Sinek (Book) – Leaders Eat Last - https://simonsinek.com/books/leaders-eat-last 

Next Episode...

Meetings - Why teams can dread meetings and how to turn them into your best team building tool for connection

EP#09 - Broadcast pending

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