In this blog I want to talk about the importance of connecting before you try to lead. What do I mean by this ? What I mean is that a great many young leaders or beginning leaders will try to take charge of a situation or take charge of a team before they have put in the effort to connect with and build relationships with the team. 

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I was chatting with a friend recently and he has got a new boss. His boss is much younger than he is and he is in a team of people who are very experienced as they have been doing the job a long time. This very inexperienced person has come into the team and has spent the first two weeks laying down the law, telling them what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

He was shocked to find that the team were not too happy about that and the team were not willing to be cooperative with this new leader. So he came back to them and said, “What do I need to do to be able to work with you guys?” “What is it going to take for you guys to work with me?” One of the things they identified was that he needed to take the time to connect with the team and get to know them before he started barking orders at them and writing the rules and the regulations for them. 

If you do not take the time to build personal connections with the people you are trying to lead, they will never follow you. People follow people. They do not follow positions, they do not follow titles. It does not matter if you have a title and a pay packet to go with it, people follow people and so you need to take the time to actually build those positive relationships with your team, staff or organization so that they can know, like and trust you. 

There is an old sales term that applies to leadership as well, “Your people need to know who you are, they need to like who you are and they need to be able to trust who you are before they will follow where you want to take them.” That is going to take effort on your part and it is going to take time. So here are a couple of tips on how you can do this effectively.

1. Get to know your team.

The first thing to do is, get to know your team. Get to know your team personally. Ask them how they are, ask them what they do, understand their job. Do not start trying to tell them what their job is or how to do their job better. Do not even try to tell them that you are an expert in their job, even if you are. Just ask them what their job is. Say, “Tell me what you do here, tell me what you understand about the organization”. 

Also get to know them as people. Find out about their families, find out how many kids they have, ask them how long they have worked in the organization, what they do on weekends, what their hobbies are. Take an interest in them as individuals. I would suggest that you do this for the first couple of months before you start trying to establish your own position and getting them to buy into you.  You first need to show them that you are buying into them. 

2. Learn to engage with the team regularly.

The second thing you need to do if you are trying to connect with people is, learn to engage with them on a regular basis. Do not just sit in your office and hide away in your meetings. Take the time to actually go and interact on a daily basis. Go and say, ” Hello” to your team, ask them how they are doing, wish them a great day. Just for five or ten minutes every day connect with your team, and talk to them. This will work wonders for getting them to buy into you. What you are doing is saying, “Nothing is more important than knowing that my team is ok”. 

When you show your team that you care about them above profits, money, systems or meetings, whatever it might be, then they are more likely to say, “Hey you know what, this guy is the real deal or this lady is the real deal, we want to get to know them.” Do not try and cast vision the first minute you meet them. Get to know them and show them that you care.

3. Be transparent

The third thing you need to do if you are going to connect with people is this, you need to let them in on what is going on, be transparent. Do not be secretive about the way you are processing. Now it does not mean you have to tell them everything. I understand that there are stages and there are different levels of information but at least let them know the direction you are heading.

Give them information about what they should expect, give them information about what you are thinking but then ask for their feedback. Say,  “Hey, I was thinking about doing this, what do you think? I would love your feedback”. What you will find is, very often they will value the fact that you took the time to ask them but sometimes they will have a better insight of the organization or a better insight of how that will affect the organization.

They might be able to help you tweak things and make a better decision so include them in the decision making and get their feedback. Keep being transparent with them and you will find that they start to buy into you. 

So these are three things that you can do to connect before you try and lead. 

• Take the time to get to know your people before you start trying to lead them. Get to know their job, get to know what they do, get to know their personal life.
• Secondly, take the time every day to engage with them. Go and say hello, wish them a happy day, ask them how their night was, how their weekend was. Engage with them on a daily basis. 
• Lastly, be transparent and invite people to participate in your decision making. Share with them what you are thinking. Ask them for their feedback, ask them for their opinion and let them know the direction you are heading so that they can actually evaluate that and be part of the process.

So these are three things that I think you could do to connect before you try and lead. I hope that has been really helpful. If you have got friends or colleagues that you think will benefit from this, send them a link and we would love to get them involved as well.

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

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