Supportiveness is showing your team that you care about both their work performance and their personal wellbeing. Supportive leaders invest emotional energy and time into fostering strong relationships and rapport among their teams.
A supportive environment equips teams with the tools they need to perform effectively and shows that you respect their concerns and ideas. Supportive teams are also happier, perform better, and are more likely to stay with the company longer.
A challenge in leading a multi-national company with tens of thousands of employees like Apple is having the time to support and understand the needs of every individual. To increase communication, the former head of retail and her team created “Loop”, a feedback platform that gave anyone in the organization a direct line to her and other leaders. By listening to their concerns and needs, Apple has continued to make improvements to keep every team member happy and feel that their feedback is being heard.
Stein has made a career around giving people the support they need in order to reach their goals. In 2008, he founded Betterment to make investing more accessible. At Betterment, Stein shepherds a culture that prioritizes three key qualities in new hires: horsepower, passion, and openness. These three qualities encourage teams to support each other, whether it’s on project or personal development goals. The culture of Betterment is known as a community built around a strong mission, trust, and respect.
To support both busy homeowners and low-income college students, Hadeed founded Student Maid, a cleaning company staffed only by students. She believes that a company environment should help employees thrive by encouraging freedom, ownership, and happiness. Her industry-leading retention rate is proof that her supportive approach not only impacts her team’s happiness, but also the business bottom-line.
Supportive leaders make it safe to ask questions and collaborate on problems. They foster trust and healthy working relationships between team members, thus promoting communication and inspiring autonomy
A supportive work environment eliminates the fear of failure, thus encouraging teams to learn from mistakes and setbacks. This openness to growing and learning are crucial to personal and business success.
Team members who feel appreciated and respected are more likely to be productive and less likely to leave the company. A good leader knows the value of company loyalty and how to build it.
Supportive leaders know that actions speak louder than words. They lead by example to gain their team’s trust by always following through with their promises.
Many leaders disguise support as an opportunity to criticize their teams. Remember that being a supportive leader requires your ability to be patient and offer constructive, actionable advice.
Leaders know their strengths and limits. Supporting is different than doing someone else’s work for them. You are doing your team a disservice by not giving them the opportunity to learn and grow from their mistakes.
Often, leaders make the mistake of neglecting relationships between teammates. The relationships between team members are crucial. If you want a highly committed team that gets things done, be a builder of relationships.
Establish a set of clearly defined goals with your team. Celebrate when those goals are met. Recognizing achievements helps to create a positive company culture and also encourages people to give 100% in their jobs. When a person receives praise, they will automatically try to give the same level of performance and even improve efforts further.
Failure is a necessary stepping stone to success. Create an environment where people are not constantly feeling judged on their past failures. Instead, create a supportive environment where people can try and fail without fear.
Supportive leaders should encourage teamwork. This can be done by keeping open channels of communication and encouraging feedback, as well as recognizing the team members’ efforts and rewarding them.
Having empathy for your peers is a critical component to be a supportive leader. Being able to empathize means to be capable of identifying and understanding another person’s feelings, without experiencing them for yourself at that particular moment. It is the ability to literally experience the world from another person’s perspective.
People want to feel appreciated. When you offer specific, positive feedback, your peers will feel valued and connected to the team and will know that you have noticed their efforts. When people receive positive feedback, they find more meaning in their jobs, which can increase their engagement at work and result in increased productivity.
