Adjusting Leadership Styles to Different Sized Teams

While all animals are equal, all teams are most definitely not equal. Different teams require different leadership styles. Lead teams of less than ten people as though they were start-ups. Approach teams of ten to thirty people like you would approach your extended family. And once teams grow to more than thirty people, hierarchy is your friend.

In our new book, First-Time Leader (request an executive summary), we apply the BRAVE Leadership to framework to teams of different sizes.

BRAVE Leadership Framework

Behaviors are the actions that make real, lasting impact on others.

Relationships are the heart of leadership. If you can’t connect, you can’t lead.

Attitude encompasses strategic, posture, and culture choices around how to win.

Values are the bedrock of a high-performing team. Get clear on what really matters and why.

Environment sets the context for everything else in terms of where you are playing.

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Use “Start-up” Leadership Styles for Ten People or Less

With a relatively small team, the leadership style will focus on environment and values. Assess the external competitive landscape to see how you’ll compete. Assess the internal landscape to see how your marketing team fits with what others are doing. And get clear on the values that will drive future decisions. Build everything else on these over time. Play where you can solve someone’s problem. Then assemble your early team of complementary partners. Not everyone on the team needs to have all the skills required to do the marketing your organization needs. But someone on the team should, and all must buy in to the same values.

Lead small teams by focusing on problem solving, values, and creating momentum.

Approach Teams of Ten to Thirty People like You Would Approach Your Extended Family

Once the team grows beyond a nuclear family with everyone reporting to one leader, the nature of how the team works changes. At this point, attitude starts to become more important to the leadership styles. Get the strategy set, deciding at what you are going to be best in the world and use that as your guide for how to grow the team and which marketing, strategic, and operational capabilities to add first. With teams of ten to thirty people or so, you’ll know everyone and can treat them like extended family. Even so, this is the time to implement rudimentary people management and operating practices if the overall organization has not already done so.

The lesson here is that as the team grows, emphasize differentiation and culture.

Once Teams Grow to Over Thirty People, a Leadership Style Based on Hierarchy Is Your Friend

At some point you need to get over your natural abhorrence of hierarchy and start substituting some organizational and operating processes for your ability to know everyone on the team. With teams of over thirty people, leadership styles turn to relating and delegating appropriately. Work on the organization. Put in place enabling practices to scale. And remember the number one job of the leader is to own and reinforce vision and values. This gets ever more important (and complicated) as the organization grows.

When leading teams with more than thirty, people work on the organization and enabling practices while reinforcing vision and values.

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