Questions we covered:

• How do I lead a team remote?

• How do I lead my first job interview?

• How do I stand out as a talent?

• How do I coach a person?

• How do I manage a conflict between 2 team members?

• How to communicate effectively with an international team?

Transcript:

[00:00:00] And we are live again. Hello and welcome to Ask and Lead to Succeed the Q&A format of the startup SUCCEED, where I am answering leadership questions. And if you're interested in what we are all about, go to wearesucceed.com and you will find a lot of Q&As and as well all leadership education, webinars, and topics we're building out over time. Let's get rolling was the first one I've prepared. So first question I got was,

[00:00:41] how do I lead a team in a remote setting? 

[00:00:46] I think number one, you as a leader need to trust that people are not lazy. If not, then there is something completely wrong and you need to tackle the trust problem with your team. Be clear on their role and as well the task as part of their role.

[00:01:02] If everyone understands what exactly their role is and what their expectation towards that role is, it's very, very easy to fulfill the highest level of task. But then of course you need to go deeper and have specific goals. And I always like to have a proper KPI setting.

[00:01:20] So everyone inside the team has the same metric. And then with this you measure how successful are they contributing to that task, to that topic, to the customer success whatever your role and your team is about.

[00:01:34]  I like transparency where you have everyone in the team seeing the KPIs of the others and as well seeing how they're working with the KPI's and improve them over time. Because this transparency gives everyone the possibility to measure themselves with each other. And then what I like to do as well is a weekly standup.

[00:01:55]  I'm not a huge fan of daily because I believe that if you trust and if you build trust with your team, everyone understanding their key roles, then you don't need to do a daily standup and going deep into what are you doing today?

[00:02:09] Are you doing this? Are you doing that. Where you need to follow up. Basically micromanage. Of course, it depends of where you are in the world, what are the topics you are supposed to do and how deeply the team members need to be guided because every team, every team member will be in a different level of need as well in this case, the team lead. That's something you need to find out. What do your team members need from a support perspective, delegation perspective to be able to fulfill their roles and the task they have for that week? Very important. Be transparent. Have a weekly standup, and then do one-on-ones.

[00:02:48] I love to have one-on-ones with all the team members on a weekly. And it sometimes just half an hour checking in, what's going on? How do you feel? Is there anything I can support you. So that's for me, the ultimate part is trust. And then leading from the trust going in into how do you build a performing team with KPIs, with transparency, and then the ones and the team meeting once a week.

[00:03:14]  How do I lead my first job interview? I always start with, what is the role you are looking for? Understanding this role for you as the person who is doing and preparing the interview is very, very important. What are the skills? What are the capabilities? What is the know-how that people need? But then I would even go deeper. What is the optimal recruit look like? What background should they have?

[00:03:42] How do they contribute in the wider context of your team to this task, to the role? Would it be good to have someone with a specific background coming from an industry, coming from somewhere completely different because even if you hire someone for the same role, which you have already, sometimes it's good to freshen up people in a different way.

[00:04:02] So understand that before you start going into interviews. And of course, do your research. Super basic, Have a look at the CV. I'm not a huge fan of CVs, to be honest. For me the CV just gives you a perspective and it's a snapshot of what they have done over time.

[00:04:21] Sometimes you are missing the important things inside of the CV because a CV is not showing how are they performing in the environment you put people in. But it's a good indication for you to get an understanding. Then you have cover letters, a portfolio review, whatever, depending on which company you work in and where you hire someone from. Important when you go into the interview, be prepared, have written down all your questions. The key questions you should ask all the people you interview, because then you can compare the answers. And then read between the lines, build an environment where the people are open up. I always try to build a very, very cozy environment.

[00:05:00] And that's just how I am leading because I like to lead people with confidence. I like to. People in the way that they like to work with me and as well like to work in the team where they are. So if you show this from the beginning, if you built a trustful environment rather than, which I've seen a very distant approach where you just follow step by step key questions, which is like, ask a question, stop, answer, stop.

[00:05:29]  For me is very important having a conversation. So I highly recommend prepare yourself that you're able to do a conversation with someone. You can test this. If you do your first job interview as a leader, test it with a couple of people before. You can do this with your spouse, with your friends, with your brother, with your sister in an environment that's not giving you that pressure, where you can ask different question and see how people are reacting. 

[00:05:52] What I like very much to have someone else joining the interview. One thing is they can give you feedback. They can give you feedback on topics where you basically give them a brief before, Can you please look on how I'm asking question.

[00:06:06] Can you please look if I do this right? Whatever you're uncomfortable with, they can give you feedback. You have sometimes a bias to select people that are similar to you, at least in my case that was always the case. So having someone else who has an opinion about the person to be hired as well, often it's good to have a team member who is working with that person in the end inside of the same conversation. Then it's very helpful to have a conversation after the interview ended and then you can have a conversation: Hey, do you think that fits? How does this person compare to the other person we interviewed? And if you do all the interviews together, you will have a clear picture most of the time at least. It's very, very hard to select a person in just one interview. I love to have more touchpoints than one because you get a better feeling. 

[00:06:55] Next question, How do I stand out as a talent? 

[00:06:59] You need to understand your why. Why do you want to stand out? If you then know your why. You can use that why to know where you want to be inside of this organization.

[00:07:10]  If you want to get recognized and stand out inside of one organization, there's a reason for that. You want to get understood better. You want to show up. Everyone has different needs, so be clear and understand your needs first. Before you do anything. So why, What are the reasons, What are your needs and where you want to be with that?

[00:07:31] And then for me, it's very easy in a lot of organizations I see within a two, three months how the business works and how you can make a career. I'm of course plus 40 years old. I've worked in a lot of organizations where I sense what's going on and I'm a very much a people person, so I understand people and their demands inside an ecosystem.

[00:07:54] Number one is execute the work you get above average. If you are co consistently delivering work above average, you will be noticed. And that sounds super silly. For me it's not about working harder than everyone else, it's just working smarter. Just deliver something like a task that you're supposed to deliver for the department head a day in advance. If you do this consistently, they will notice that you are the only person that's delivering in advance. There not always a need for that, but it's just an example. And as well, if you deliver something extra to the task you're delivering, which is a benefit for the person you're delivering it to, or for the company as a totality, that's also going to be noticed.

[00:08:45]  That's why I'm saying it's not necessarily working harder, it's working smarter. And if you do this on average, always going 10, 15% above the average. You will succeed in an organization, understand who are the people in the organization and who have something to say when it comes to promoting people who are important. It's not necessarily always the highest people in the organization. 

[00:09:16] Go into fields where you can stand out fairly easy. If you are in a production company and you work inside of the production field, you will have a lot of

[00:09:27] competition, because that's the core business of the company. If you work in the whole supply chain connected to that company. There may be opportunities where there's a weak department or an area which needs a lot of improvement. If you go into this area, you are able to stick out fairly easy and have the possibility to get seen from other people.

[00:09:48] Go into the headquarter as closer you are to the center of power inside of an organization. I know this sounds weird and I'm not a big fan of that, but it works. If you're closer to the center of the power you are way more visible than if you are one of the best ones, but far away from the headquarter.

[00:10:09] Next question. How do I coach a person? First and foremost I'm not an expert in teaching other people to be a coach.

[00:10:18] So the best is do a coaching course. I did a coaching course and I can highly recommend every leader in the whole world should have a coaching education and get into that topic. But if we go simple and just advice from a leadership perspective. Number one, learn to listen.

[00:10:34] Listen in different ways where you hear what the person is saying. You sense what the person is feeling. You as well try to understand between the lines. And you try to bring all of this melting pot together, because specifically as a leader, you have a lot of conversation with a lot of people of your team, and they're sometimes task related, sometimes wider business related, sometimes personal related, sometimes performance related, sometimes payment related.

[00:11:10]  As a leader, you always need to understand how is your team member doing? If you want to learn to coach, it's very important to listen and understand and observe. That's the number one skill you need to learn. And you can start today doing this with your friends at home, with your family, with your kids. Being attentive and listen and try to build an ecosystem understanding of that person. How is this person doing? What is this person saying? Why is this person saying this in that way? Is there a reason for this?

[00:11:42] What do you believe is behind that? If you get into the listening part, reflect back to the person. A person is saying something to you and you formulate that differently in your words and say: "Oh, it feels like you are angry".

[00:11:56] Do I understand you right that, this, this, this, this. And then they will confirm towards you. And just with question and reflecting to them with not giving them the answer it will help you to help them. Which for me, the whole coaching aspect is about. You are guiding people to help themselves through asking questions and different perspectives.

[00:12:19] One thing I needed to learn early on getting the coaching education. Don't put your opinion into things. I always give the example, I coached a person and that split up with the partner.

[00:12:35] And in my valueset that was not the right thing, but for the person that was the right thing and that person flourished afterwards. So that's just one of the examples. 

[00:12:45] Next question, what do we have? How do I manage conflict between two team members? Talk to the individuals.

[00:12:51] I think that's the number one. Talk and get an understanding of the individual positions. Let's say if it's two people, talk to both of them. Try to understand what is behind this? What did you understand? Why is this happening? Individually. Not putting them together straight away. Built a perspective that you understand of what's the trouble, why is the conflict there?

[00:13:15] Sometimes it's very, very simple things. I would be the mediator between them. I would not take a decision most of the time because what I've learned for myself is if you jump in and solve it, then you have have basically taken a decision on one side.

[00:13:32] I always try to empower the people to solve the conflict themselves. If you empower both of them individually: Okay, understand your perspective. See your point without agreeing with it, how do you think that you could agree with him or her? How do you believe that you could take this conversation to the next level?

[00:13:54] How do you think you could solve this? And then you ask them to reach out to eachother. And one of them will always do the first step, except this conflict is happening over a couple of years already. Then it's often very, very hard. But still you can be the mediator. I'm always trying to, not stepping in and helping them to understand this, and if they can't solve it themselves, then I jump in and basically put the two people together.

[00:14:20]  I would put them together. and again, mediate the conversation. Not taking a decision, have clear boundaries inside of the conversation of, Hey, this is what we talk about. There's no personal attack, there's no this, there's no that, There's no shouting, there's no this. Let's have a conversation.

[00:14:38] The goal of this conversation, which you need to state very, very clearly from the beginning, is to solve this. And that you expect them to find a solution. Then you take a step back and give them the possibility to have a conversation around this and find a solution, and that might take a couple of weeks, couple of months, depending on how difficult the situation is.

[00:15:00] How to communicate effectively with an international team. Understand the different cultures. I have worked on an international level where I've worked with US, China, or Asia in general, Central Europe, North Europe, South Europe. So there's a melting pot of different cultures.

[00:15:20] To be able to communicate effectively, you need to bring this to a level that you build a team level of communications. You need to build kind of rules for the team to understand each other. It's specifically hard, at least in my experience, when you talk with native English speakers, most of the time the conversation or the team language will be English and you need to it sounds weird, but you need to dumb it down. I'm often the black sheep in this, because I'm German, English is my second language. So I always try to get it to a level where it's like we need to be very, very simple because people don't understand this complicated word. There is a simpler word of that.

[00:16:04] So when you communicate with your team, specifically if you're native English, but same if you're a little bit more advanced in the English language than others use very simple language. And then of course, you need to understand what is the communication style of each individual. Some people love to read emails.

[00:16:24] Some people love to have one-on-ones. Some people love to have physical conversations. Some people love to have digital conversations, video calls, whatever. So if you understand this over time as the leader, then you can cater your leadership communication towards your team. In the right way that everyone can understand it in the best possible way.

[00:16:47]  Pay attention as the leader if people understand what you talk about, what you communicate into your team, ask them, Hey, did you understand what I mean? What did you understand specifically with different cultures? Very important because if you take me again as a German, I'm a direct communicator.

[00:17:08] It's similar in the Netherlands, where you have a direct communication style. Can you do this, this, this, this, this in this way, please. And it's very direct in other countries. I lived in Sweden. It's a different way of doing it to be successful if you do this in Asia, I've had the conversation the other day.

[00:17:26] It's again different. Understand the different cultures. That's the number one part. And try to understand on an individual level, even if you have 15, 20 and more team members, you need to understand what is their needs from a communication perspective and how would they like to get communicated to.

[00:17:44] Thank you very much for joining today. Go to wearesucceed.com. We have already huge question and answer page. And of course we have for all the different topics, webinars in our free webinar library, and that's what we are all about. Succeed, is looking into

[00:18:02] how do we enable 1 billion people by 2030 to have access to free leadership education? That's what we are going to build, and that's what we are trying to do. And if you're interested in more, check out our website wearesucceed.com. Contact me, contact any one of my team members. We are happy to have a conversation and learn as we go.

[00:18:26] Thank you very much for joining me today, and see you next week for the next Q&A