Most of us have worked at a company somewhere along the way where we noticed some folks going through the motions and playing a person who is attempting to do their best work on TV, rather than really trying to do their very best work. Sound familiar? Of course, it does…. This is the second in a series of blog articles with Management and Leadership lessons that anybody could implement. Doing so will launch you on the course of building a high-performance team where every teammate is doing all that they can to perform and to help everyone around them to perform as well. If you implement these ideas, you will sense an improvement in a short time, just a few days or a few weeks should yield some positive progress. While you do that, your direct report employee associates will notice something good is going on around them, and they will lean in. Interested? Read on…
Equip Your Team For Continuing Success – Have you ever been tasked with slaying the dragon for your company and as you walked over to the castle to look for this mighty beast you noticed that the King had neglected to equip you with a sword, spear, and armor? Ouch! Yes, that’s right, there is nothing more disappointing than being asked to tackle the nasty problem for your team, and then determining that you have not been outfitted with the great necessary to do the job and to do it right on the first try. Why do we do that? It has never made sense to me. If you are a manager that wants to succeed, and if you want to be able to look yourself in the eye when you look in the mirror, equip your team for the battle that they are going to wage. Don’t short change them and don’t under-equip your team. You can go a long way toward guaranteeing that you will never under-equip your team if you anticipate their needs with some forward-thinking and sprinkle in a few good conversations where you listen to them about what they think they will need to be successful in slaying THEIR dragon. In equipping them effectively for the battle they will compete in, you earn their trust, encourage their commitment to give the fight their complete attention, and you reinforce their resolve to soldier on, whatever they encounter. Outfit your team and watch their win rate increase.
Provide Your Team With Generous Amounts Of Candid Feedback – Often Leaders struggle more with their teams than they need to, because they are reluctant to engage in candid discussions about how the expectations are being met, or not being met. You get to choose how much you talk about expectations and how many progress updates you give your team while they’re toiling. When you view giving feedback to your team like it will be unwelcome micromanagement, it most likely will turn out to be exactly that. If on the other hand, you look at candid conversations about expectations and progress as a learning opportunity or a coaching opportunity, they can turbo-charge trust between you and your employee associate. That trust will often quickly turn into employee learning, personal development, and career progress for your associate. Roll up your sleeves and go to work with your employees and leave nothing to chance. Give them feedback in a non-threatening manner, and do it often enough (I recommend you do it in weekly or bi-weekly one on ones) so that it becomes obvious to your employee associate that you care about them and prioritize their personal and professional development. Remember, every employee wants today to be better than yesterday, and they want to hope that if they keep working hard and working smart, they stand a good chance that tomorrow will be better than today. That’s a simple way to think about how important it is for you to speak candidly with your team about what needs to be done, and how you can position yourself as a performance management-oriented leader who will help them to figure out which direction to head and to increase their chances of successfully arriving on time.
These are a couple of additional ideas that you can incorporate as an Emerging Leader that will help you take your Management game to an entirely new and higher level. You need to make sure that your team knows you, and they know that you care about the responsibility of equipping them for success today and that you will continue to develop them so that they are even better in the future. Wrap it up by making sure that they know you will continue to equip them for success in that brighter bigger future and watch the positive momentum grow! Keep your eyes and ears open for another 4 lessons in how you can build some positive momentum by taking action on some positive changes that will build culture and drive high employee engagement with your team!
Michael Beach is a thought leader in developing leaders for fast-growth companies. Michael works as an Executive Development Coach and Business Advisor for high technology companies all over the United States. Michael and his team of coaches develop the leadership and management skills of Emerging Leaders so that their clients are always developing the next generation of leadership before that level of leadership is desperately needed. By proactively investing in developing tomorrow’s leaders today, you can ensure that your company will grow steadily and profitably. Michael and his team just launched a podcast on Leadership Development and Management excellence, called the ”What Are You Doing?” podcast. In each episode, Michael asks his guests (CEOs, Business Owners, C-Suite Executives, Authors, and Thought Leaders) to share their best ideas about developing leadership in fast-growth companies. Check out the podcast, or the Michael Beach Coaching & Consulting Youtube channel, which you can subscribe to for free. Subscribing will ensure that you get a steady diet of great strategies and techniques that will take your business acumen, your leadership ability, and your management influence to a whole new level of success.
