Grow or Go? What do you when you feel you've outgrown members of your team.

Grow or Go?

When your business seems to outgrow certain members of your team, when they expect their loyalty to be valued above all else and when they start to exhibit distracting or disruptive behaviour you might find yourself asking “should they grow or should they go?”. Walking this new line is a juicy challenge that calls for a step up in leadership. 

Let’s start by looking at why team members can get inadvertently left behind and why that leads to inevitable friction.  

Growth is change – and change is hard. People respond differently to change depending on how they’re affected by it. 

Safety first! 

When the business we work in changes significantly, or our perception of our place within it is in doubt we can start to feel very out of control. Depending on our experience, that feeling can make us feel incredibly insecure. 

For team members who associate their identity with work or who are particularly motivated by a need to feel safe, secured or valued this can feel particularly acute. 

If we feel that our most basic need for security isn’t being met for example we struggle to focus on anything else until it is. 

Loyalty matters

If they've been with you since the start, or part of the journey for a while there will be a depth of loyalty and connection they form an “unconscious contract” which is a huge factor in driving performance, loyalty and the ability to go the extra mile without resentment. If that contract is broken by a perceived lack of consideration or a sense of being excluded it will manifest for them as a feeling of betrayal, with consequences for you and the business. 

What you might see is that they start behaving differently – becoming demanding, uncooperative, uncharacteristically negative. Left to continue this starts to show up as disengagement, silos of discontent and a withdrawing of involvement in key forums - sometimes even failing to show up at all.

Some of the things you may have really valued about them start to work against them, and you. The feeling of imbalance or a sense that they aren’t recognised will lead to comparison with other team members  and often land on them asking for promotion or more money.

If they feel too remote from the business that they knew – they may start to project, to act up, become a saboteur.

If they feel marginalised and as though their role is smaller they may try to land grab. Or ask for more responsibility.

They may expect, and therefore push for, a more senior role to reward their loyalty or to try to secure their place.

This puts you in a tricky spot becasue promotion at this point might be, understandably, far from your thoughts. If they don’t get what they ask for they can become even more tricky. They often can’t understand why, when they helped build the business, you won’t reward them for this.

If this happens across several team members you may start to see this manifesting itself as an ‘old guard, new guard’ situation in your team.

At the heart of all of this is that they are now working in a different business than they were. There’s a gap, which only gets wider the faster the business grows. An intentional leader will see that gap and provide the necessary framework to bridge it in the best way for the business and its people. 

Bridging the gap.

To have the right impact in a bigger business and a bigger team team members need to be able to evolve their skillset to meet the needs of working in a bigger team – influencing skills, communication skills, project management, decision making and strategic thinking are all crucial especially in a fast growth high change environment.

The ones who will last the distance as you grow will be able to flex and develop these skills proportional to the scale of the challenge. .

If they can’t grow, or they don’t want to then yes, it may be time to go.

To help them, and to lower the water line on whether they are going to be a valuable part of your future team here’s a few of the things that you can do to support them.

Focus on being the leader

It can be easy to move into combat mode when long standing team members appear to turn against you or start making unreasonable demands. However, this is an opportunity to role model clear and consistent leadership.

Start by answering the following questions:

What is the gap to where you need them to be? 

What are the skills you need them to be able to demonstrate consistently? 

What are the relationships you need them to be able to nurture and depend on?

It’s your role as a leader to help them see that the behaviour they are demonstrating is the opposite of what’s going to get them what they want and, if they are valued, that you’ve got their back and will support them with the growth they need.

Keep them in the picture 

It can be easy to assume your longest standing team members are automatically on the journey with you as they simply always have been. This assumption can trip you up though. Having come from being very dialled into what’s going on ‘at the top’ a bigger team dilutes this closeness. That new lack of proximity to decisions and information can quickly alienate.

They need to know they are still important. Take the time to make sure they know what the strategic direction and priorities are. What is the roadmap and what’s their part in it?

Ask yourself if there’s value in involving them in decision making at their appropriate level?

Create consistency 

Sometimes you will have established, and possibly ‘immature’ ways of working with the people you’ve worked with the longest. And you may have unintentionally decided to ‘up your game’ for your newest and possibly more senior team members – the ones you’ve bought in for the business you now have and want to grow.

It’s that inconsistency that can create a feeling of disparity and favouritism. Establish a consistent and intentional leadership style that you can apply across the board and do it on repeat.

Along the same lines, you will often have established friendships with your oldest members of the team. Or at least a kinship from being through the best and worst times together. 

This can lead to you dealing with things casually. Deal with everything consistently and professionally and as awkward as it may seem, you do create that much needed feeling of security as a starting point. Push yourself to be clear and open on development gaps and what a good job looks like.

Bring clarity

What you’re observing in your team is what is referred to in Tuckman’s stages of team development as typical ‘storming’ behaviour. Questions over roles and responsibilities, conflict and uncertainty are a natural part of growth. Getting super clear on roles and responsibilities is a very effective antidote to this. 

Be clear on roles, responsibilities, expectations and ways of working. Knowing where and how they can add value, can bring back that all important need for security and a feeling of achievement and growth.

Get super clear on the behaviours you expect. Own it, make it part of how you have every conversation everywhere. And model it from the top. 

Manage your own feelings

When someone starts to make unreasonable demands or is behaving in a way that feels as though it conflicts with what you’re trying to achieve, especially when you have such an established relationship, it’s understandable that you may feel betrayed and unsettled by their behaviour too. 

Check in on those feelings and go back to the earlier points about leadership style and consistency.

All of these actions are best done as soon as possible when you start to grow your team. Anticipate the team members who may be at risk of feeling or acting this way and you can avoid a great deal of potential strife. 

It’s worth remembering though, that despite all of the above potential actions, there will be times when no amount of in house development or upskilling will meet the needs of your fast scaling business for some of your team and not recognising when it’s time to make a change holds back potential. 

Part of your role as a senior leader is working out what roles, people and competencies are needed to get the job done as it scales and evolves. If your team members are no longer right for the journey, it’s critical  to work that out quickly and either re deploy those people or help them to find a role somewhere that is a better fit.

At the heart of this often tricky challenge is a need to redraw the boundaries and an opportunity for you to step up and evolve your leadership style relative to the business you have now. To do that well you need distance and perspective - something that is far easier with the help of someone else. I help CEOs and their teams gain much needed perspective and clarity every day. Why not drop me a line if the above resonates - I'd love to hear your take on the above.

Get in touch on LinkedIn or drop me a line on hello@rebeccamorley.co.uk