How to build or rebuild a team's confidence

Dale Carnegie's three commandments: Don't criticize. Don't condemn. And don't complain.

Leaders often find themselves needing to rebuild their team's confidence. It often occurs in new roles, where previous management has eroded confidence, but it can also happen to a previously high-performing team after a series of setbacks.

Getting confidence back on track is where great leaders distinguish themselves. A rousing speech might help a little, but true success comes from a thorough examination of hidden causes and undiagnosed problems. Here’s a short overview of a process designed to rebuild a winning team.

Acknowledge that the team is suffering

As the leader, it is not enough to criticize, condemn and complain. Performance is suffering, and the team knows this. Had they been able to correct it themselves, they would likely have done so already. Start with the assumption that they need your help to run the diagnostic and repair.

Discover underlying issues

Use one-on-one meetings with senior staff initially to gain a sense of the problems, and then hold a group session to air grievances from that same group afterwards. Emphasize that this is a safe opportunity to discuss issues, but don't do this blindly (without speaking to individuals first). Some people will be comfortable sharing everything in a one-to-one; others will find their confidence when they hear colleagues being honest.

Recognise the achievements the team have made

Giving credit for achievements lets the team know that you recognize their capability and potential despite all the difficulties. Recognition for achievements also serves as a foundation for building trust and garnering the team's support for the new approach.

Be vocal in support of the team's capability and capacity

Emphasize a sense of trust in them and remind them how to trust one another. Encouraging them to reflect on their achievements and acknowledge one another for their work, as well as the potential each holds, lays a good foundation for building a shared mental model.

Consider recovery time

If there's room in the budget, this is an excellent time for some rest and relaxation. Leaders often build events or take time to rest and celebrate success, but sharpening the saw is even more important when people are struggling.  Team activity and scoping sessions off-site can work, too. Getting the team away from work and into a creative, innovative, and collaborative state, where a new normal can be visualized or invented, is a worthy use of time. What are we keeping from the old ways, what are we modifying, and what are we scrapping?

Solicit Customer feedback

This is also a good opportunity to solicit customer feedback, whether internal or external. Not only is this good business practice, but it is also, along with the above, an obvious sign of your commitment to change. Things are going to be different, so the team can choose to get on board.

Bring in outside perspective

Invite other senior figures from outside the core to help perform a full diagnostic of what works and what needs improvement. External opinions, particularly those from individuals working outside of this group but who understand the broader business, can be highly valuable. The team will notice the rise in interest in their work. This has the effect of encouraging high performers and accelerating the departure of those who might fear the spotlight.

Revisit values

The business values and the artifacts surrounding those values, in terms of how this team conducts its work, may be out of line. This is an opportunity to revisit the values in light of how work gets done and even to redefine or re-describe values that align with what the team hopes to achieve now.

What do we want to do? How do we want to work? What is important to our success? How do we want to be judged? A small team can establish its own values, distinct from (but aligned with) the main company values, by distancing itself. This will create a shared working identity that can improve the struggling team. Look for ways in which behaviours, attitudes and shared insights can be helpful to the long-term goal.

Capability and Capacity reviews

A crowd-sourced 9-box matrix review of staff capabilities can be highly instructive. Gathering team leads together to evaluate the wider team (it is important they don't only rate their own people and that they understand that "we are all responsible for the talent in this business") gives an effective overview of the 20% who contribute most highly to the team's success. This is the group to find promotions within. Teams always know who truly adds value, and high performers will react well to seeing you understand and reward that ability.

Back your most effective people

Let the top 20% know that you plan to invest time into their careers. These are the individuals who will help shape the new reality of the team. It is essential they feel heard and valued. More money helps, but not as much as attention and opportunity. Look for ways this group can be mentored, coached, stretched and promoted. What additional responsibilities can members of this group take on immediately, and what can they work towards achieving? Link them to these opportunities and ask for their feedback, insight and ideas - not only does this show an active interest, but it also brings new thinking, allows you to keep tabs on projects, and even gives you an opportunity to see if the team's faith in the person's ability and potential was justified.

Get rid of the low performers

If the team have been honest in their assessments - and they may not be at first - you will have people classified by their peers as underperformers (low performance and low potential). It is vital to move these individuals off the team for the team to grow. Depending on your team and company, there may be other areas of the business that can benefit from these individuals. They are underperforming in your environment, but that doesn't mean they would underperform everywhere. Moving on conversations can be challenging, and for long-serving employees, there are performance measurement processes to go through to remove someone entirely, but remember that you are trying to build a great team, and they are trying to find a team in which they can be great.

Don't forget your Core performers

Trying to build a team comprising only superstars is not only incredibly hard, but it is also statistically likely to end up being highly unsuccessful. You don't want a Super Chicken team. Long-term sustainable success comes from a motivated and inspired team that removes its unsuitable members, allows room for everyone else to grow and take ownership, and maintains a 5-15% group of outstanding performers. Being a Core performer in a high-impact team is an achievement in itself, and given time, some of these people might end up finding a niche in the company that allows them to excel even further.

Ensure the backing of louder voices

Teams always contain certain individuals with high influence levels. These people are not necessarily in the most senior roles in a group, but thanks to their personalities, they can sway a team's thinking and approach. These influencers are often popular and are experts at building relationships or cliques. If this group are on your side, their work will galvanise the change you want to enact. If they oppose your agenda (and their influence is not curbed) none of your measures to rebuild confidence or develop a winning strategy are likely to succeed.

Influence is a subtle thing, expressed in private doubts or in an attitude of undermining authority. It can be difficult for a leader to spot, as these individuals are often skilled in manipulation. A good way to spot these people is by having enough conversations with the wider team one-on-one, encouraging them to be open about their comments about their teammates. Often, these influencers can be intimidating to newer team members or those outside of a clique. Identifying them is similar to inference, which involves trying to read between the lines of comments, statements, and references. Getting this group on your side is the short-term plan A. Diminishing influence (by breaking cliques, giving responsibility to outsiders, changing the accepted way of doing things or moving people out of the team entirely) is the long-term goal.

Moving forward together

"Once they could trust me, I could incorporate core values: collectiveness, unity, pride. It was a commitment to nurturing." (Brendan Rodgers. Football Manager)

By now, you will have an idea of your people, capacity and potential. You understand what issues were holding the team back (or what the excuse was for previous poor performance). You are facilitating conversations about meaning and impact in the workplace and accelerating the careers of talented individuals.

The next step is to develop a shared mental model that will bond the group, augment it with new hires, and establish an onboarding process that enables these new recruits to be maximally effective as quickly as possible.

A shared mental model

Powerful, impactful, winning teams share common goals and trust one another implicitly to work towards those goals. Royal Marines Commandos teams don't share a helicopter with a team member they don't trust. Building this kind of trust (particularly in a team which has struggled in the past) takes a long time and a lot of consistency. The fundamentals however are simple enough: A shared core of beliefs in both the work and the ethos for getting the job done; a skilled team with the right people in the right seats; routine reminders of the how and why; enthusiasm from all the team members for further learning and development; leadership that empowers and encourages but also sets a high bar. Simple enough, but not easy.

Hire correctly for the new need

The steps above will have created new opportunities. If you've had to move on low performers or disruptive influences, look for promotion opportunities first as this is a way to show your faith in your team. Helping active, positive, and contributing team members into higher roles amplifies their voice. Sometimes, it is necessary to bring in external perspective, and these people benefit the team by not knowing anything about "the bad old days". They buy into the model and mission, bringing new approaches to finding a solution.

There's a need to ensure the hiring is done to high standards so as not to undermine the bigger goal. Make sure you have correctly identified the gaps and the skills and behaviours required in detail, then design a series of questions specifically around those needs. Set a high hiring bar and commit to a talent-first process so that your recruitment efforts show the team further evidence of your commitment to progress. Get a broad spectrum of the team involved in the interviewing process (even if just to chat between rounds) so that you can hear more voices and ideas.

Strengthen your onboarding

When you get your new recruit, make sure the onboarding process gets them quickly up to speed with the new shared mental model and vision. Buddy up new starters with recently promoted individuals or those who most clearly have a passion for the new project. This serves a dual purpose - it helps the new starter understand the passion the team has for the work (causing their behaviour to rise to the challenge) and the act of selling this vision and approach to a new start had the effect of reinforcing the employees' open commitment to that vision.

Solicit regular feedback from both the new starter and the team. Sometimes the theoretical vision isn't a practical reality of the ways the work needs to be done (even with the best intentions), and a certain recalibration needs to take place. Identifying this need early is crucial to maintaining momentum in vision.

Maintain the momentum

Finally, don't abandon the open conversation forum just because you feel the team now "gets it" and their confidence is back. Confidence is fragile, and your people will frequently find themselves in new situations where they must make tough decisions, often without sufficient input to make them certain. The way to maintain their confidence is to remind them of your faith in their ability to navigate those situations well, your belief in their capacity to make the right decisions, and your backing and support should things go wrong. These are messages that need to be repeated and reinforced as part of regular business operations. Keep the support strong, and your team will thrive.

Conclusion

Yes, it is a lot of work. Much more so than a rousing speech, but then greatness is not a short-term thing. Do the steps above well, and the reward is outsized performance, happy team members, and distinct competitive advantage - in short, it is what you are there to do as a leader.