Are you an accessible team leader?

How important is being approachable to your leadership style? And how successfully are you communicating that with your team?

Over the last week, I've had clients from different organisations coming to their sessions saying that it's important to them to be seen as an accessible and approachable leader in order to empower their people but, in reality, they aren't being approached and they don't know why...

When we've looked at what has been going on, they've realised that while they create certainty around their busy periods, by updating their Slack or DM status to 'Do not disturb', they don't do the same for their freer periods, when they'd welcome being approached with queries, feedback or suggestions.

And because they aren't being approached, they keep their head down in attempt to stay on top of their workloads, inadvertently giving off the impression that it would be an inconvenience to disturb them.

Their assumptions around how others perceive their accessibility have created a blind spot that's out of alignment with how they want to lead and inspire their teams.

Certainty is a basic human need in terms of motivation and psychological safety.

A few things I've seen leaders commit to, to create that certainty around their accessibility and approachability are:

1) Changing their Slack status for x hours per day/week, to 'Open for your questions!'

2) Setting a fortnightly or monthly hour for a lunch-and-learn or Zoom coffee and catch up, to be inclusive of remote team members.

3) Proactively contacting two new people every day, for a chat to connect, have them feel seen and heard, and let them know how and when to get in touch with them in future.

4) Setting clearer milestone expectations in project delivery for reports to check-in with their wins and possible threats or risks.

What other ideas do you have for encouraging your team to approach you?