Leadership

I started writing again in order to get some of those 1:1 conversations and email threads out into the public where some of the conversations, learning and titbits of information can be useful to others. On that same theme I wanted to write down some of those learnings I’ve had building teams over the past 5 years. Grow mentors, coaches and champions This is something I’ve had learn as my teams have grown. When your team is small you are the mentor, the coach and the champion all rolled into one and that’s ok because with less than 10 people you can get away with that. At that scale you can invest in all of those activities with each member of your team; playing different roles at different times. As the team scales however, and as one team becomes multiple teams, you need to find those individuals that will do this on your behalf. Who are those individuals that people automatically look towards and who are those people who verbalise your vision and values when you’re not in the room? These folks you need to grow. I’ve also learnt that not everyone is going to be suitable for all of these positions. Your mentor is not necessarily your coach and your loudest champions might not have the experience or influence (yet!) to be your obvious mentors (although I’ll talk about reverse mentoring more later). ...