Leading Teams
Leading in the VCSE sector involves being able to motivate others, to collaborate, build productive relationships and communicate effectively. Organisations are more likely to achieve their objectives when there is good teamwork, trust and communication. This page explores key aspects of leading teams or groups of people, the skills involved and resources and toolkits, which can support you in this area.
Psychological safety is a concept developed by Amy Edmondson (Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard) to describe a shared belief that the team is a safe place to express new ideas, concerns, to ask questions, acknowledge mistakes and share feedback and learnings. Research shows that where psychological safety is present, teams perform better.
In this short video, Amy Edmondson describes what psychological safety is and suggests three simple steps we can take to build it within teams or groups:
- Frame the work as a learning problem. Recognise that there is uncertainty in doing this work and we need everyone’s brains and voices to be heard. This creates a rationale for people to speak up.
- Acknowledge your own fallibility and that acknowledge that we don’t know everything: “I may miss something, I need to hear from you”. This creates more safety for speaking up.
- Model curiosity by asking lots of questions. This creates the necessity for people to speak up.
This short podcast from A Brilliant Thing CIC, includes a practical discussion about psychological safety and tips about how to create an environment where teams can share mistakes.
This useful guide from NCVO includes some simple tips about how to create a healthy team culture
This report from ACEVO and NCVO explores three pillars of leadership that enable leaders to create safe workplace cultures in which unacceptable, abusive or bullying behaviour is dealt with before it can escalate. The three pillars are: being values led, modelling ethical behaviour and nurturing a culture of continuous improvement. The report includes recommendations designed to support the development of safe cultures across the entire charity sector.
Creating purpose, objectives and plans with teams
A key part of leading people in teams involves identifying the team’s purpose and being able to work with your team to create clear objectives and plans. A clear sense of purpose, clarity of roles and understanding impact also help teams to perform well and to work together effectively.
This short guide from NCVO provides guidance about how to involve your team in creating team objectives and plans.
This exercise from Hyper-Island Facilitation Toolbox, could be adapted with a team or group of staff or volunteers, to identify roles and responsibilities.
Supporting team learning and development
When we are leading and managing teams within the VCSE sector, we will often be working with limited budgets to support staff learning and development. Learning and development may be required in specific areas to enable your team to deliver the outcomes that your organisation or group wants to see. It also plays an important role in motivation and personal and professional growth for the people we lead or manage. There are many ways that we can support ongoing learning – from training courses, qualifications and coaching through to creating opportunities internally within your organisation or group for reflective practice, mentoring and shadowing.
CIPD has a range of resources that can support you to plan for learning and development within your team or organisation.
Check out the personal development section of the GM Workforce Hub for a range of resources and opportunities to support staff learning and development.
This podcast from the World of Work Project explores how as managers we can develop people within our organisations, even if we are working within smaller organisations or groups.
This resource from the Tamarack Institute providers a short overview of single, double and triple loop approaches to organisational learning.
Sharing Feedback
Sharing and inviting feedback are key skills for leaders and managers. Being able to share feedback effectively with people in your team supports performance and creates a positive culture of continuous learning and development. Feedback also supports collaboration and the building of trust within teams and supports with resolving conflict. Creating a culture where sharing feedback is a normal and everyday part of working together as a team helps people to work more effectively together and to feel valued and recognised. This in turn supports employee engagement.
In this short video from the TED series, The Way We Work, Cognitive Psychologist LeeAnn Renniger shares a simple method for giving effective feedback.
This article from the Centre for Creative Leadership explores the Situation, Behaviour, Impact Model™ for sharing feedback and explains how it can be used for sharing feedback regularly within your team.
Using a coaching approach
As a leader or manager using a coaching approach can support your people to grow, develop and build confidence. Even if you are not formally trained as a coach, you can still use coaching approaches as a tool to lead and manage people within your team or group.
In this TEDX talk Saba Imru Mathieu explores how leaders can create better workplaces where people can collaborate and thrive and provides a simple overview of what a coaching approach involves.
The GROW Model provides a simple structure that can support coaching conversations. You can read more about the GROW model in this article.
Greater Manchester Coaching Hub CIC offers a range of support around coaching, including free training for VCSE sector organisations.