Trust Your Team

I have started reading The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger. In the prologue he talks about doing a threat assessment on a situation and determine if we need to be engaged immediately, be informed and come back to or not wade in and move onto other pressing issues. I really like those thoughts and they tied in nicely with something I have been think about over the last few days and that's trusting my team.

There are many different aspects to trusting your team but today I want to focus on some practical thoughts rather than some of the deeper meanings of trust (that’s a whole other topic).

Intro

Every time I get to the implementation of a major project, there are two different things that almost always trigger my anxiety. The first is a need for control and the second is a strong drive to have anticipated and made plans for every possible situation or potential problem. Those two things tend to build upon each other and that can easily create a downward spiral if I don't recognize it and check it.

There are a few of ways (in no particular order) that help me check those tendencies and they all tie into trusting my team.

Knowing Myself

I have mentioned this before, but knowing my personality and tendencies are key. Just knowing that I'm going to react this way every time a new project is about to go live, helps me recognize it when it starts. I also need to trust my team enough to share this with them and to let them know if I feel one or other of the tendencies kick into overdrive.

Hire the Right People

This is probably the most important thing for most any team, project or business. Working with the best can take a huge burden off of the leader. When I hire, I look for attributes like curiosity, fit withe the team, adaptability and dependability. Notice that I have not mentioned skill. Skill can usually be taught, but what I do look for is aptitude. If it is a technical position, I don't need them to know the platform, I need them to have the ability to learn the platform. It's much easier to teach that than to help with someone's attitude.

Hiring the right people makes it easier for me to share my control tendencies and have confidence that I can let some of that control go because I have the right people working for me.

Admit That Perfection is Not Achievable

As much as I want every project to go perfectly smooth, it just never happens. There are always obstacles to overcome and not matter how much planning and preparation is done, things will change the moment you say go.

I have to remind myself of that regularly and stop myself from trying so hard to make things perfect that projects don't get to the finish line. Sometimes you have to just say that it's good enough and then iterate quickly. This also ties into having hired the right people. If they truly are dependable and adaptable, then they will deal with unanticipated issues and situations as they arise.

Manage Fear

This one can be very difficult, especially in a situation such as we face in the world today. Just like I have to remind myself that a project will never go perfectly, I also have to catch the fear before it gets in too deep. I have to recognize it and mentally push it aside. The only way I can do this is with the support of my team. If I hire the right people and we work together to be prepared, then we can't let fear paralyze us.

Summary

A team I am a part of has a pretty large project going live this week. Last week I found myself feeling the anxiety rise as I realized there were a lot of pieces of the puzzle that needed to be in place. I had to remind myself that we are a team and that I didn't have to have all the answers but that we could work through it together.

So think about where are some of the areas you need to trust and depend on your team more. What can you do to let go just a little bit? How will that help them and you grow? How will that improve team performance? Pick one answer and go and do!