If you are a young startup or a growing small business, your success often requires you to expand your team. To keep your teams running efficiently, it is important to consider how you structure them as they grow. Teams should rarely be more than 10 to 12 people.
One of the central themes of team management is to influence future behaviour of individual team members. For a leader to effectively influence individuals, it is important to foster a relationship with each person. Without a relationship, it becomes extremely difficult to influence people in a positive manner. What people tend to rely on in the absence of a relationship is power. Some people in leadership positions rule by provoking fear with anger and threats. This type of negative, power-based style has an illusory effect of short-term gains. When the boss is feared, people tend to do just enough to not get in trouble. Unfortunately, they are rarely engaged in their work and as a result produce below-average results.
So why does the team size matter?
In my 15-plus years as a leader and a management consultant, I have seen all types of approaches to management and leadership. The most successful teams typically have something in common. The individual team members are engaged, believe in the goals of the team and feel supported by their peers. This sense of common purpose and a deep relationship is difficult to foster in a team of 50 people. For the leader of that team, it would be hard to remember everyone’s name, let alone understand the motivations of each of them. One of the most effective strategies for team leaders to build relationships is to hold one-on-one meetings. Yet it is a strategy that is often met with some resistance by managers who think they don’t have the time for weekly meetings with staff.
There are two common problems that create the belief that as leaders they don’t have time. First, leaders are already busy dealing with issues arising from a lack of direction or communication, which would be eliminated if they were meeting with staff individually and giving them direct coaching. Second, leaders have so many direct reports that meeting with them all would take up most of their week. Meeting with 10 people for 30 minutes each per week equals five hours of time. If you are not dedicating this amount of time to coaching and developing your team, you will struggle to maximize your staff’s contribution to your company. This is invested time in your No. 1 resource as an organization – your people.
Groom future leaders by structuring smaller teams
Early in my career, I worked for an organization that was growing by 20 to 30 people per week. This scale of growth is usually a death sentence to culture and organizational structure. Instead, it resulted in an amazing success story. It forced us to focus on cultivating leaders from within the organization. If you have a team that is more than 10 to 12 people, consider who in that team you would trust to look after things if you were on vacation for a week. Engage those stars on your team and ask if they would like to become leaders in training. You can scale back the size of your teams easily by selecting a few people to lead smaller teams. Your role as a manager then becomes supporting those individuals; rather than dealing with the day-to-day requests of 30 people, you can focus on the professional development of three or four key individuals. This approach will create a more scalable and cohesive team structure that will ensure your future success as an organization. •
Todd Kane ([email protected]) is president of Evolved (www.evolvedmgmt.com), which helps organizations use proven management practices to improve their business results. His approach has produced numerous award-winning teams across North America.
