They don’t care how much you know until…

Remember how you finish this phrase?  The completion of this phrase is one of the keys of leading a team of people… especially if you are personally considered a content expert. Here is the full sentence …

They don’t care how much you know … until they know how much you care.

Many leaders have developed the habit of seeing the workplace in the military mindset. 

• This is “work” and it’s meant to be “serious”. 
• The team needs to be relentlessly “solution focused”
• Personal issues are” left at the door”
• The leader is the “expert” and tells the team what to do. 

Now we all know people with this leadership style.  It’s clear that they know a lot - in many cases, they hold their leadership position because they are an acknowledged  Content Expert. AND it’s really hard to be a great follower because you’re not sure how much they Care… especially about you as an individual person.

And the interesting thing is this… we have solid research showing that the leader’s ability to Care has a direct impact on Team Performance.

Remember the book “First Break All the Rules“? It’s subtitle reads, “What the World’ Great Managers Do Differently”. It actually provides a template for leading a high performance team that is research based and built on a foundation of caring about your people.

In the book, Marcus Buckingham reports on 25 years of research by the Gallup Organization involving polling of 80,000 managers and over 1,000,000 employees. The entire project was focused on isolating the defining characteristics of high performing teams. Their findings are absolutely fascinating and have a staggering amount to do with how much the leader cares about his/her team members.

The research consistently showed high performing teams had members who answered “YES” to the following questions.

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
5. At work, do my opinions seem to count?

Notice the last three questions here.  Obviously the leaders of these teams cared about their people.  They understand what each team member does best.  They care about them as individual people.  And they obviously ask questions and actively seek out their input on the job.

Go one step further:
Put yourself in the position of a Team Member, rather than the leader. Look at these questions and imagine that you are in a workplace where you would answer them with a “Yes”.  How would you feel about your leader?

That’s the thing about caring… it has a powerful reciprocal nature.  I know you care about me … I naturally begin to care about you. I naturally want to do my best in the service of a team and a leader who care about me.

And the Gallup information here shows that this mutual caring (and respect) as a powerful influence on team performance. Remember, the teams who answered “Yes” to all six questions proved to be the highest performing teams.

So, if you’re a team leader, always remember that your team’s performance probably depends more on how much you care that it does on how much you know.

And it’s a whole lot more fun/exciting/engaging/rewarding to lead by creating this type of a team environment. 

The coolest part is that these five questions give you a template for creating a mutually caring environment on your teams.