4 Unique and Easy Steps to Build a Positive Relationship with Your Team as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

How does your team feel about you as a leader?

As a leader, the emotional connection you cultivate with your team can significantly impact their well-being and productivity.

In today’s episode, we dive into the critical relationship between leadership and team dynamics, especially in light of Mental Health Day. Discover a unique way to be more mindful about the relationship you have with your team, including how to improve it.

Through this 11 minute episode you will learn:

• A four-step process for building stronger, more positive relationships with your team
• Strategies to identify and enhance the specific feelings you want your team to associate with your leadership
• Tools to regularly assess and improve how you’re perceived as a leader, fostering a healthier work environment

Tune in now to transform your leadership approach and create a lasting positive impact on your team’s well-being!

WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Learn four easy steps to become a leader, your team or member positively for years to come and today's episode.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast, helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Welcome my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week and happy mental health day, October 10th. And this is somewhat of a continuation of the theme around wellbeing. And that has to do with the type of relationship that you have with your team. Because we as leaders have a lot of influence over the wellbeing of our team.

There's a lot of duty of care that comes with being a supervisor or a leader. And that is partly because we can help our teams to set more boundaries on their workload to be aware of when they are stressed, when they might need to take a break. Help them and model the behavior that we want to see as well as leaders in our team.

So today we're going to get into a four step process that you can do to build a more positive relationship with your team. And it was inspired by a quote by Maya Angelo. And that quote is: "I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." So I'm going to repeat that again.

The quote is: "I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." And I think maybe you can relate to this, whether it's, you know, from our leadership perspective or other perspectives, but just even thinking about some of the leaders in your life. Whether it was a religious, leader or a political leader or a. . School teacher, or a family member.

And if, especially if it's been a long time since you've interacted with that person, or since you've thought about that person. We don't always remember the details around what they've said or did, like the quote says, but we do in general have some kind of emotional response, what we think about them, whether it's positive or negative.

And I think that this is an interesting lens to put to our own leadership and how we are doing. In terms of how we are currently leading, but also how we want to maybe improve or get better.

Because however your team is currently feeling about you is probably how you will be remembered by them in the future.

And so the interesting question then is: how do you want your team to feel about you? So the beginning of this four step process, the first step is to come up with several feelings that you hope your team currently has about you. And I would just make a list. So as an example, when I was a country manager, I think that my list would have included things such as I wanted my team to feel that I was caring, that I was kind, compassionate, trusting, motivating and inspiring. I could go on.

But I suggest that you make a list of about 10 feelings that you hope your team feels about you when they think about you. And then once you've done that, I want you to choose one. One from your list that if they felt about you, you would feel successful as a leader. You would feel like you've done your job. So for me, if I prioritize one of the feelings that I listed, that my team had about me when I was a country manager. I think my priority or my top feeling that I would want them to feel trusted.

That they feel like I was a trusting leader. And the reason I chose trusting is because my perspective is when someone trusts you or you feel like they're trusting toward you. Then it probably also means that they value your work. That they empower you to do more and take more responsibility and to grow. That you feel safe to fail. That you feel safe to express yourself and that you are motivated to do more in a trusting environment. So that would have been my top feeling because my sense is if they felt like I was trusting, then so many other things that I also valued as a leader would happen.

So that's the first step, make a list of about 10 feelings that you want your team to feel about you. And choose the top one that's most important to you.

Step two is once you have the one word feeling that you want your team to have about you, then think about how well you are doing to make them feel that way now. So for example, in my example of trusting, how much did you know how much did my team feel trusted or feel like I was trusting? And how would I know that? So for example, at the time, I think that there was not a lot of gossip. And there was more open communication because people felt in this trusting environment that they were trusted enough to be able to communicate openly. There were a lot of ideas or new initiatives that came from the team and not just me, meaning that I trusted the way that they wanted to do things. And that the wellbeing of the team was good.

Like we had these engagement surveys and they usually responded very positively. We were usually one of the top ones in the region. And in part I think because they felt trusted and so they felt motivated and engaged.

Maybe there are some areas that I could have worked on trust even more.

And that would lead us to step three. But just as a review. Once you choose your top feeling that you hope your team has about you, then do a little analysis about how do you think your team feels that way about you now? And how do you know that?

What is the evidence for it?

And so in step three, we think about, okay, this is where we are right now. This is how we think that our team feels about us right now. And this is how we know that. And now we're going into, well, what can I do to even further strengthen that feeling? So for example, to strengthen a feeling like trust, maybe I would have delegated more or assigned even greater responsibility to my team or

given them more opportunities to take some of my roles and responsibilities as a country manager.

So make a list of the things that you feel that if you did an addition to what you're doing now, you would strengthen that feeling even more. And then finally step four is to occasionally like, let's say every six months, reflect and adjust.

So you can put this as a reminder in your calendar. And repeat steps two and three step two being: how are you doing right now? How do you know you're doing that? And then number three, how can you further strengthen the feeling that you want your team to feel about you.? And of course, if you have a great and open relationship with your team, you can also ask them in some way. Maybe even having them rate you on a scale of one to 10, how you're doing in that particular area. But I think that there are a lot of ways that you can understand how your team feels about you without even needing to ask them.

And it has to do with the way they interact with you and their behavior. All right. So once again, step one is to make a list of all the feelings that you hope your team feels about you right now. And then choose the top one that you would feel the most successful if your team felt that way about you. Step two is to then evaluate, how much does your team feel this way now about you and how do you know that? What is the evidence? And then step three, how can you further strengthen your team's feeling about you, this particular feeling that you chose? And then finally, number four, occasionally reflect and adjust and repeat steps two and three.

So you can even try this over this week. I think it really goes hand in hand with creating a vision or a leadership impact goal. It gives a more clarity to how you want to be remembered and seen by others and that when we have that clarity, Helps us make decisions in line with becoming more of that person who is trusting or who is caring or whatever. And so we eventually become even more of that person. All right. Until next time, keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?" You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com.Quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it!