Please consider these tips for leading your team members better.
- Great team members want and deserve more responsibility. Consider what you can delegate to them. If someone on your team can perform a task you own 80% as good as you, delegate it to that team member.
- When coaching, if a team member owns a responsibility, coach them up but don't go too far. If you try to take them to 100% or perfect, you may inadvertently be taking the ownership back from them. They will be given the sense that they no longer own it and you kind of took this away from them by grinding too far. Manage them so that they know they own it and they are getting better and better at executing it. See bullet point #9 for the best way to help them understand 100%.
- How do we give meaning to each team members work? We can compliment a team member at any time when we catch them doing something well. That doesn't mean they are perfect and we can't coach them up in other areas in private, during our 30-minute one-on-ones.
- One-on-one Meetings and Cadence - by embracing the 30-minute one-on-one weekly or every other week meeting with a structured agenda, you get to get updated by your team member on how they are progressing with their priorities, provide clarification on how we do things from a culture standpoint and you get to review and even reset their priorities for the next period before your next one-on-one. If you are not pleased with a direct report's performance, this tool is as good as anything we have found for improved near-term performance. For more information on 30-minute one-on-ones, contact me at tim@ceoforums.us and I will send you how this optimally works.
- What if we have to have a conversation with a team member that is negative because of weak performance? The key is, the conversation can't be predominantly negative. "You are important here. We need you. I want you to be successful..........." Please click here to learn from Performance Expert Stan Beacham on how this is best executed.
- Consider Lee Scott's advice, "sharing praise is a compromise, give it all away." In other words, our organization has been performing very well recently. Do we have to own all of that or can we give that away to a team member or two or to the team as a whole?
- Does each team member know exactly what they "own"? Do they know exactly what their responsibilities are? Consider enhancing, for clarity purposes, their detailed job description. In our opinion, for every task that has to be done in an organization, we all should know who owns it for this period of time.
- Does each team member know why the job exists and what a job well-done looks like for their job, their responsibilities? Donnie Smith, high performing retired CEO of Tyson Foods used this to take Tyson Foods to the incredible performance they achieved during his era of leadership.
- Consider that "ambiguity breeds mediocrity and clarity breeds excellence," Covey. Each one of us, including "my own self," (as John Lee Hooker would say) we can deliver with much greater clarity our direction and information.
- Recognize that if a team member is performing poorly, it is likely 30 to 60% our fault. 30 to 60%, sometimes more and sometimes less, of the person's underperformance is caused by something we as an organization are not doing so well. Dive deep here. You will be amazed at how much upside you will find around this.
We wish you the very best in your leadership endeavors. If we can be of assistance or you would like to learn more about our products and services, contact me at Tim@ceoforums.us.
