Who is setting the pace in your business?

Have you ever watched a rowing race and noticed that one person seems to be doing something slightly different to everyone else?

That rower is called the stroke. They sit at the back of the boat, facing the rest of the crew, and they are the most important person in the entire eight-person crew. They’re not necessarily the strongest rower in the boat. Their job is to set the rhythm and pace that everyone else follows.

When they get their rhythm right, the rest of the crew do too. Everyone knows when to pull, when to recover and how to move together, which means the boat can travel faster and more efficiently.

But if the stroke is out of time, even just slightly, that ripples through the rest of the team and suddenly their rhythm is inconsistent and eight good rowers aren’t performing as well as they should be.

One person can have a disproportionate effect on the performance of everyone around them. The same is true for your team.

Most teams have someone, or several people, like this. People who are always looking for a better way of doing something, solving a problem head on rather than waiting to be asked and taking responsibility when something goes wrong rather than looking for someone else to blame.

They may not be the most senior person in your team or even your star performer, but they bring a different energy to the team. They raise the standard without necessarily saying anything about it because when someone consistently takes ownership, it becomes harder for everyone else to justify doing the bare minimum.

Sadly, the opposite can happen too.

If someone regularly misses deadlines, avoids responsibility or does just enough to get by, that behaviour can have an effect on the people around them too. Particularly if you don’t challenge their behaviour and allow it to continue. Which is why, when a business owner tells me that their team isn’t performing as well as they’d like, I think there is a more interesting question to ask before we start talking about recruitment, training or restructuring the team:

Who is setting the pace?

If you’re not sure, start by watching what happens when you’re not in the room:

• Who takes responsibility?
• Who helps someone else without being asked?
• Who spots a problem before it becomes yours?
• Who do other people naturally turn to?
• Who raises the standard around them?
• And perhaps most importantly, who is making the people around them better?

If you have someone in your business who is already having that kind of influence, don’t underestimate their value.

Spend some time understanding what they are doing differently. Is it their attitude? Their sense of ownership? The way they communicate? Their willingness to make decisions? The fact that they don’t wait for someone else to solve every problem?

Once you understand it, you can start making those behaviours more visible across the rest of the team.

And if you don’t have someone like that, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to go out and find a superstar. It may mean you need to be more deliberate about the pace you want your business to work at, the behaviours you expect from your team and what good actually looks like.

Making the standard clear

Of course, it’s one thing to know what good looks like. It’s another to make sure everyone else does too.

That starts with being clear about what you expect from people from the outset. Job descriptions and role pages should set out responsibilities, while a good induction helps new starters understand how the business operates and how they’re expected to work with others. Ongoing training can then help people develop the skills and confidence to meet those expectations.

It’s also important to keep those conversations going. Regular one-to-one meetings give you the opportunity to discuss how things are going, recognise good work and address concerns before they become bigger problems. Performance reviews or appraisals provide a chance to step back, look at what’s working and identify where someone might need more support or development.

The important thing is that the standard applies to everyone. If someone regularly misses deadlines or avoids responsibility, it needs to be addressed, rather than left for someone else to pick up the pieces.

And if you do have someone who is influencing the team, but not in the way you’d like, that’s probably even more important. Ignoring it doesn’t make the influence disappear. If anything, it gives everyone else permission to follow it, and that’s how a negative culture can form.

Building a strong team isn’t just about hiring the most qualified candidate, it’s about creating an environment where the right behaviours are clear, where people understand what good looks like and where the standard doesn’t depend entirely on the business owner being there to enforce it.

You don’t want one person to carry the team; you want the influence of your best people to spread.

That’s when you start moving from having a group of individuals working in the same business to having a team that genuinely works together.

And sometimes, working out where to start isn’t obvious.

At A4G, we help business owners step back from the day-to-day and look at what’s really happening in their business, including the people, processes and decisions that may be holding it back.

Sometimes the answer isn’t another hire. It might be clearer expectations, better management, a difficult conversation or simply understanding what needs to change.

And when the challenge is specifically around people, performance, employee relations or putting the right HR processes in place, our A4G HR team can help with that too.

So, who is setting the pace in your business?

If you’re not sure, that’s probably a good place to start.