Permission to Lead Denied! When a Team Member is not Accepted as a Leader.

During the storming development phase, team members develop a sense of their relationship to the leader and each other.  As the members grow in their appreciation of each other’s talents and expertise, they begin to express a willingness to accept leadership and direction from others within the team and the storming subsides.  At various times within a High Performance Team, leadership will shift as tasks unfold so that the team takes advantage of each member’s strengths.

Unfortunately, there are times when the team simply does not respond well to a member and refuses to accept their leadership.  In fact, the team will often ignore the person which leads to more storming. Sometimes the problem is that this person isn’t really an expert in their area…and the team knows it.  Sometimes the one desiring to be recognized as a leader self-sabotages. They lack the skills (or are unaware of the skills needed) to create the environment where members give their permission to lead.

How do you help these members and move your team through storming?

-          Remind the team of basic leadership principles.

• The privilege of leading others stems from the permission of those you would have follow you. Your ability to influence is more important than seniority, position or authority.
• Permission to lead is granted only after others perceive you as:
  • Authentic.
  • Genuinely interested in them.
  • Willing to follow, serve or share power.
  • One with integrity to lead.

-          Respect their expertise and defer to it when possible. I’m not suggesting that you placate anyone, but that you model respect.  It isn’t necessary for teammates to always like each other, but they do need to treat each other professionally and with respect.

-          Remember that leadership is a set of skills that can be developed. As the leader, you may need to guide the team member to an appropriate leadership development program or commit to mentoring the member.

Unfortunately, there are times when you simply must remove the team member, particularly if they are not willing to accept responsibility for their own development for the good of the team. When that happens, ask yourself, “What about my hiring practices caused me to place the wrong person in the team?”  That’s a subject for several future posts. Include your own thoughts in the comments.

Have a great day!

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Leslie Knight is a trusted advisor to small businesses. She has over 20 years of experience in Corporate America which she applies to smaller entrepreneurial enterprises. She is also the author of Navigating the I.T. Minefield – Straight Talk for the Small Enterprise. To purchase your copy, please visit http://bit.ly/SNL4W.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Business, Team, leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.