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Jeff Bezos once famously said, "If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large." While Bezos' management ideas may not always have been perfect, he did have one thing right: Bigger isn't always better.
Big teams can have advantages, including greater knowledge among the team and the ability to take on projects as they grow in scope. Such teams can also have drawbacks: slower decision-making, reduced individual accountability, duplicative efforts and communication issues. In comparison, small teams can be more nimble and flexible and take on more personal ownership.
As a CEO, I've always believed that a team as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but when that team is a smaller one, there is always the challenge of making it work best for everyone and the organization. I'm here to tell you that it can be done even more effectively than a larger group.
When I first joined ICF, five of us supported all the functions of a dynamic and multifaceted international organization. We were very busy and pulled in many directions at the start. Because of this, we had to focus and find a way to be productive and visionary at the same time. For a small team to live up to this great potential, it must be properly supported and guided. In my experience, the key to getting the most from small teams is to apply a coach approach to my own leadership style.
A coach approach to leadership is based in applying coaching competencies such as active listening, presence, curiosity and asking powerful questions to your leadership style, with an emphasis on empowering team members to perform their best through heightened self-awareness, problem-solving, and determining their own approach to achieve the goals of their work. It can require some training and practice to fully achieve, but the result is a team that is empowered, driven, and achieving its highest potential.
Here's a practical guide to achieving meaningful goals when working with a small team with a coach approach in mind:
1. Establish trust
Trusting each other is a benefit of working in a small team that many take for granted. Team members know each other, have confidence in their colleagues and feel familiar working together. But in a small team, this trust can also be broken quickly and with great impact. As an entrepreneur, you hold the responsibility to lead by example and invest in fostering that trust with your team members.
To begin with, be open about the work, including your own and drop the formalities when sharing information. Honesty and transparency with your team model trust from the top down and show team members they can feel comfortable talking about issues or admitting uncertainties or mistakes. This strategy will also teach teams how to accept feedback constructively.
It can also encourage personal and professional growth because team members with established trust will collaborate openly and will not undermine or question each other's abilities. This dynamic helps everyone work more effectively together, with greater motivation and confidence.
Along with transparency, a coach's approach to leadership is driven by curiosity rather than judgment. This approach encourages team members to speak openly, striving to better understand each other's perspectives and opinions, roles and responsibilities and how everyone can contribute to accomplishing goals in a unified fashion. When different perspectives can be shared openly, the resulting work inevitably benefits.
Related: Strong Leaders Use These 4 Strategies to Build Trust in Their Workplace
2. Bring humanity to productivity
On a smaller team, it's easier to know each member's strengths and weaknesses, their work style and what matters most to each individual. This insight enables leaders to better assign projects, organize roles and hold workers accountable. It can also allow leaders to reduce the need for meetings and focus more on fostering productivity rather than "checking the box" of tracking milestones.
Even so, it's important that you give each team member clarity around expectations, support to own and succeed in their contributions and open communication to track where efforts across the full team stand at any given time.
Be sure to communicate to each team member that they are indispensable. Acknowledge each person's contributions and celebrate work well done. When leaders recognize their team's contributions, each member feels important and will become more committed to achieving shared goals. Never assume that the team members are already in the space to make their best contribution — some may also excel in tasks beyond their current area of focus. If there is room, let them experiment and expand their abilities. As a manager and leader, it is your job to enable their growth.
Related: 10 Simple Steps to Build an Exceptional and Efficient Team
3. Support diverse perspectives
Large or small, every team benefits from diverse perspectives. Smaller teams with members of diverse backgrounds combine different resources, skills and life experiences that can be applied directly to new ways of thinking and working. Improved problem-solving, more efficient decision-making, and a collaborative work environment merge to enhance the team's effectiveness. Make sure that your team, even if it's small, contains diversity of thought. It will pay back tenfold.
Additionally, "founder syndrome" is all too real, especially in smaller, family-run businesses and teams. Frequently described as a "resistance to change," founder's syndrome occurs when a founder takes on a disproportionate amount of responsibility when it comes to making decisions about the organization.
To balance this, the leader needs to bring diverse perspectives to the team and foster an environment where those differences are acknowledged and celebrated. This will help break down barriers when someone has a counterpoint to raise or an opinion that runs counter to the majority. Rather than feeling like an outlier, it's important that team members know that such inputs are valued as important contributions. A coach approach to leadership supports this with open-mindedness, curiosity and authenticity.
Diversifying a small team can be difficult at first, and it can take time to build the right small team. But when you do, small teams become fortified by new ways of thinking.
Related: How a Diverse Team Brings More Creativity and Engagement to Your Business
Small teams, big impact
As an entrepreneur, you might sometimes feel that you're a step behind the "big guys" in your industry, but your small team can be incredibly powerful. When you adopt a coach approach to your leadership style, you can foster trust, celebrate each team member's contributions, and gather diverse perspectives to supercharge your team's capabilities to achieve exceptional things. Always remember to share the success, express gratitude to your team, and celebrate their efforts — along with your own contribution. Most importantly, learn from the experience every time!
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