Leaders that defend, celebrate and promote their teams demonstrate loyalty and in return gain loyalty. All three of these behaviors have a huge impact on how you are perceived as a leader and what you get in return from your team(s).
Let’s review each of them in more detail.
1. Defend. A friend of mine shared a story the other day about an experience he had with an unhappy customer in his dental practice. On occasion people come to his office a little grumpy and can be rude to his front office staff/team – though nicer when they get in the dental chair for some reason 🙂
On one particular morning a man came into the office unhappy and was berating the front staff. My friend intervened and told him to leave and that he wouldn’t tolerate him treating his staff like that. He told him he was welcome to go find another dentist that wouldn’t mind him acting like that!
Afterwards one of the members of this front office team came up to him with tears in her eyes and thanked him for caring. What kind of impact do you think this leader had on his team? What kind of impact could you have on your team by coming to their defense as warranted?
2. Celebrate. Most families do a great job of celebrating. They celebrate birthdays, baptisms, weddings and graduations to name a few. Any reason they can find to come together and celebrate they do.
However, my experience has been that on teams in the workplace we don’t do this nearly enough. When is the last time you broke out cake and ice cream to celebrate a team anniversary? When is the last time you broke out the music, lights and pizza to celebrate a team project milestone?
Celebrations reinforce positive things, they are fun, they lighten things up and allow teams to come together and mingle in more positive personal ways.
3. Promote. While promoting people is an important activity of leaders, promoting your team has important value as well.
It is up to you as the leader to talk about your team’s value, to herald their successes, champion their purposes and to tell their story. If you don’t promote your team, who will?
Helping your team become more visible to the larger organization creates greater team pride, rewards and satisfaction. It could also result in less defending as well 🙂
Defending, celebrating and promoting your team are big factors in increasing team loyalty. What leader doesn’t want more of that?
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