Leading A Strange Group (Even If Youre Inexperienced) - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Leading A Strange Group (Even If Youre Inexperienced) - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career What happens when youre placed in a leadership position of a group of people you barely know and have never worked with before?   How can you come into that situation and be successful at branding yourself as an effective leader?   Can it even be done if youre not already a confident leader in that area? In the last couple weeks, Ive had the really interesting experience of observing two leaders who came into that sort of  situation.    Both of those experiences started off the same way. In each case, I was at an underwater hockey tournament playing with a team put together just for that tournament.   The players were from  different locations, most had never played together before, and  the players had  vastly-different skill and ability levels. The challenge of each team captain was  to pull together  this hodgepodge group on the morning of the tournament and turn us into an effective team. Sounds like a nightmare situation for a leader, right?   Theres really nothing worse than being responsible for leading a strange, unorganized, varied-skill  group into intense competition! As it turned out, one leader did a great job.   The other floundered from the beginning and never gained the respect of our team. In the case of the second captain, what brought her down was not her inexperience with the game, it was  how she failed to get us to see her as a leader. The leader brand So what could she have done to brand herself as the leader?  And as she was relatively new to the sport herself, was it even possible for her to be an effective leader?   Absolutely!  Even though my first captain was an accomplished veteran of the sport, the majority of what he did in the beginning could be done by anyone to show their leadership abilities. Heres how you brand yourself as a leader right away, even if youre inexperienced. 1. Find out your teams capabilities ASAP. When youre thrown together with a random group of people, theres no way you can succeed if you dont know what the individuals on your team can do.   As soon as my effective  captain found out who was going to be on his team, he got in contact with the whole group and asked us to tell him (a)our experience with the sport/ability level and (b)the position we usually play (and any back-up positions we could play.) As a result, he gained some extra hours to figure out our strategy and knew what he had (and in some of our cases, what he didnt have!) 2. Schedule a time to get the team together for the first time. When youre with a random group of people who you dont know, theres nothing worse than wandering into the tournament space, and not knowing who youre supposed to find, where youre supposed to go, when youre playing first, and what youre going to be doing.  Trust me its nerve-wracking.  Thats why it was a smart move when my effective captain asked us all to meet him 30 minutes before the tournament started to meet and discuss strategy. 3. Plan a strategy. Once our effective captain brought us together, we briefly discussed what positions we were playing, and then launched into a strategy session.   He told us what formation he thought we should play, and then we discussed how our abilities would play into that and how to take advantage of the playing field.  We came out of the meeting feeling confident in what we were doing, and especially in his ability to lead us. Inexperienced leaders can make this work even if  you have no idea about the strategy your team should use! Leading isnt about having all the answers, its about asserting that its important to have a strategy and then guiding the discussion.     So if youre inexperienced, brand yourself as a leader by getting the team to come up with the strategy together.    Its not the leaders job to make the entire strategy its the leaders job to make sure the team gets a strategy! (Even if it comes from others!) 4. Enforce the strategy. Once your team has developed that strategy, the leaders job is to make sure that strategy happens. My first captain was extremely effective because he kept bringing our team back to the strategy at every break, held us accountable and pushed us to achieve it.   Whenever we were gathered at the wall, he asked were you doing what we discussed for your position?   Knowing that he would ask if Id positioned myself to receive the puck at a 45 degree angle made me more conscious of where I was on every play.   I didnt succeed every time, and neither did my teammates, but that accountability pushed us to adhere to the strategy ,and was a huge component of our success. Good strategy, effective leader If your team has a strategy, but then runs wild and doesnt use it, you wont be seen as an effective leader.   And holding your team accountable is critical to having a successful strategy.   That way, if the strategy is good, your team will be successful.   And if  your strategy isnt working, you know its because the strategy doesnt work (and the failure isnt due to  your team  not doing what theyre supposed to).   Then you can change the strategy until it does work. Being viewed as an effective leader doesnt depend utterly on experience and prior success in that field.   After all, there are many sports stars who are horrible  coaches in their sport while others who were less successful as players turn out to be incredible coaches.   What matter is how you conduct yourself as that leader. Even if  youre asked to lead  a hodgepodge team with many inexperienced, low-skill players who have never played with you or each other before, and you have no idea what youre doing, its still possible to get your team to see you as a good leader. All you have to do is find out the capabilities of your team quickly,  bring the team together right away,  determine the best strategy for its ability, and then keep checking in with your team to make sure that everyone is sticking to that strategy. Author: Katie Konrath blogs about creativity, innovation and “ideas so fresh… they should be slapped” at www.getfreshminds.com.   She works for leading innovation company, Ideas To Go.