Leading for Growth!

What makes a good leader? How can you as a manager facilitate growth for your team? Is there one type of leadership that is better suited to secure rapid growth than another? From a jungle of articles and advice, whether talking about transformational, relational, trust-based, or developmental leadership, we’ve come to identify a model that helps us quickly build and develop our companies in cooperation with our teams.

In our world of growth and start-up, the needs of any given organization will vary depending on the developmental stage it’s currently in. For New Normal Group, it is always important to find out what works for both ourselves and our specific companies right now. Analyzing the organization, its strategies, and the talent pool is key. Two factors have emerged as particularly useful in building exponential companies and also proven essential through growth and scale-up:

  • supporting individual team members to make sure they reach their full potential.
  • rolling up our sleeves and working side-by-side with the teams to achieve our goals.

Being a Supportive Leader

Whichever label you use, many of the “best” leadership theories have one feature in common: a pro-social, generous leader who can generate good results. But how do they do it? By supporting individual team members, their performance, and helping them achieve their goals. Research even shows that a supportive leadership style positively affects team performance, motivation, productivity, and the work environment. We, too, have seen this first hand within our group companies.

Yet to us, a supportive leadership style often also entails tearing down traditional views of management as top-of-the-ladder positions. Rather than viewing the leader as the team’s spearhead, we often view them as the team members’ platform to develop from, grow from, and leap from. 

To us, leadership is about interpersonal relationships at work. Having a genuine willingness to put team members’ wishes and needs before your own and help them reach their goals is paramount. We focus on how we can help each team member develop, learn new things, perform to their potential, and contribute to the growth of our team and organization. If they can reach their goals and ambitions, we can reach ours in return. 

Getting Our Hands Dirty

The second leadership behavior we’ve seen as imperative to creating exponential growth is “to dive right in.” By this, we mean rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty, working alongside our team members, and together tackling the daily challenges we face. If we were to create a gap between people in leadership positions and the teams, our ability to adapt, make swift decisions, and our flexibility would be severely diminished. 

So far, we see a lot of positive effects from this approach:

  • We are leading by example, which has a positive influence on our culture. Building trust is so much easier when we are truly in it together and creating a resilient team ready to back each other up.

  • We are continuously and more directly in tune with what’s going on in the organization. This allows us to pick up on any opportunities or challenges as quickly as possible and act accordingly. 

  • Let’s be honest - it’s way more fun! Who wants to be removed from the heart of the business?

  • Finally, and perhaps most importantly, being an active part of the team allows us to be better at factor number one - supporting our team members.

More Exponential Thinking

People & Organization

Diversity as a Competitive Advantage

Experience has taught us that a focus on diversity directly results in higher rates of innovation, increased adaptability, and faster growth. But why?

October 15, 2020 | Aleksander Farstad
People & Organization

Inclusion: Fueling the Strategic Potential of Diversity

In our group, we create our new normal by challenging the status quo. And we do so by bringing different perspectives together, through securing a diverse team. 

February 9, 2021 | Silje Bogen