Leading High-Performing Teams Like Beyoncé
6 lessons in leadership that we all need from Beyoncé
If you know me, you know I’ve been stuck in a Renaissance loop 🪩 since the album was released in the summer of 2022 and it intensified when the tour kicked off this summer. If you don’t know me personally yet, Hello — my name is Ashley and I’m a Beyoncé-holic.
This tour has been a masterclass in marketing and promotion (peek here for an incredible overview of branding and marketing lessons learned). What fascinated me the most was that the Renaissance World Tour announcement was a simple Instagram post - months after the album debuted without any visuals aka music videos, for the MTV generation. As soon as the tour was announced people (myself included) were making plans to travel to see the show and were even contemplating multiple tour stops. In the months leading up to the tour, fans were crowdsourcing outfit ideas and scouring Etsy shops for elaborate costumes - without any formal dress code announcement from the Queen Bey herself. Simply put: the Renaissance Era was a movement.
The tour wasn’t the end - the fun continued with the recent release of The Renaissance film. Even though I saw the tour, once again, I rushed to the theatre to relive the moment(s) all over again. This time, taking a peek at what went on behind the scenes made something abundantly clear - Beyoncé gave us a masterclass in leading high-performing teams. Here’s what leaders and operators can learn from Beyoncé’s Renaissance era.
6 Ways Beyoncé Demonstrates High-Performance Leadership
A lot of leaders dream of advancing to a level in their careers where they can just “focus on strategy”. The reality is - the best leaders don’t ever *just* focus on strategy work, doing so would be a disservice to their employees, their customers, and their users. During the Renaissance film, we see Beyoncé involved in every single aspect of the show - from costuming, to lighting, to choreography, to stage construction. It’s clear that to her and to everyone else on her team that the smallest of details matter. And she’s right - the details matter, they matter even more when the bar is “best-in-class”. Beyoncé isn’t just a superstar - she’s a shining example of a leader of a high-performing team. We witness her leadership skills throughout the film, skills that only managers of high-performing teams flex in their day to days. Here’s how Beyoncé leads an incredibly high-performing team:
She sets clear goals and objectives: I’ve talked about the importance of reflection and setting goals for your team previously, so my operations and leadership brain jumped for joy at the behind the scenes tour footage that showed how the Renaissance World Tour came to be. Beyoncé spoke about wanting to create a safe space, wanting her fans to feel free and to have fun. We see that her team spent 4 years creating the entire Renaissance World Tour. Speaking from an outsider’s perspective, the vision for the Renaissance World Tour was so clear that even her fans understood the vibe and the dress code without it being formally announced. All of these things are indicators that she laid out the vision, goals, and expectations for her team incredibly clearly and that led to the incredible experience that many of her fans got to witness firsthand this year.
She provides feedback: Many managers make the mistake of waiting until corporate milestones (annual reviews) to give critical performance feedback - leaders and direct reports alike know that this approach just doesn’t work. It leaves team members in the dark about whether they’re meeting expectations and robs managers of the ability to provide feedback that leads to real change. Beyoncé masterfully shows us how to share frequent performance based feedback. Even after long show days, Beyoncé ends her night by reviewing footage and photos and sending her team notes on what could be improved. There’s urgency in when and how frequently she shares feedback with her team and they respond and react to it, because they know it makes them better.
She knows her team members on an individual level: We see her long-term trumpet player share the news of her pregnancy with Bey and the genuine excitement surrounding that moment. The film also highlights why she chose one of her dancers, Amari, as a mentor for her daughter Blue Ivy (who performed during the sold out stadium tour!). Appointing members of your team as mentors and being able to celebrate a team member’s personal milestones is only possible if you invest time in getting to know them as individuals at work and outside of work. The best leaders understand that while their team members are there to perform a job, they are also full human beings with a life outside of work and all of those factors have an impact on how they show up every day. They understand this and leverage their trust-building skills to build relationships with their teams.
She’s flexible: Rigidity is the antithesis of high-performance leadership. Great leaders know that curveballs happen and have a personal playbook for who they show up as in the midst of crisis and in the midst change. Even when unexpected incidents happen during the tour (like the sound going out 😳 ), we see her backstage working with her team to right the ship - even coming up with fun surprises for the fans who were waiting for the show to continue! At one point, she was able to incorporate a 3 minute costume change before the sound issue was resolved.
She’s willing to make mistakes: Perfect doesn’t exist. I say this as someone who has struggled with perfectionism throughout my career. The biggest thing that stood out to me during this film and the tour itself, as a long-time Beyoncé fan (since 1997!), is that she’s no longer striving for perfection. That shift made this tour that much more fun. We see moments when her sunglasses fly off on stage and she laughs it off vs. getting frustrated or editing out the moment in the film in favor of the other 40x when she got it “right”. If you’re not making mistakes, then you're likely not taking risks, and if you’re not taking risks — you’re not growing. Mistakes happen, the best leaders encourage their team to take calculated risks, learn from their mistakes, and grow.
She expertly navigates conflict: Let’s say you excel at all of the above, but are wondering what happens when you and your team are at odds? Just because Beyoncé is Beyoncé doesn’t mean that everyone around her just follows her direction. She faces the same obstacles that leaders do, your manager, director, or VP title is not enough for team members or stakeholders to “fall in line”. We see Beyoncé leaning into conflict, expressing her opinions confidently, presenting facts that counter what the experts on her team believe to be true, and then working to resolve it - all in service of creating an amazing experience for her fans. The best leaders don’t get upset when their peers or team members don’t just follow orders, they realize that they have more work to do; whether it’s a conversation, further explanation, or maybe a shift in plans.
Ready to become the Beyoncé of your workplace? Here’s some resources to get you going.
Good luck!
About me
I’m Ashley, a former executive turned business consultant and coach. I’ve spent a decade in tech, collecting successes and learning from mistakes so you don’t have to. Now I spend my time doing what I love the most: solving problems for growth stage companies. I work with founders/leaders to establish operations that enable growth and I work with individual leaders to level up their management and leadership skills - resulting in better business outcomes and highly productive teams.