9 Key Tips On Leadership Skills & Team Motivation
Here’s my latest post where I’ll discuss some essential pointers on leadership and how to motivate & inspire your team.
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. — Jack Welch
Organise & Involve Your Team
Knowing the bigger picture and railroading it through your team can be counterproductive. Your best approach to get more out of them is to involve them in some way in reaching set goals, perhaps in planning the best way forward. Keep your finger in the pulse and check their progress, finding out where they are falling down and helping them provide solutions to get them back on track. Encourage team meetings for individuals to get on a soapbox and voice their concerns and frustrations. You’ll find this an excellent platform to exchange constructive ideas that will lead to an improvement in service and productivity. The moment your team are actively challenged and are thinking rather than being told, you’ll realise you’ve elevated your skills as a leader.
Specify Your Expectations
You know the old saying “You Get What You Give” and the same applies to being a good leader. The way to get a better quality of work from your team is to be more specific in what your expectations are. If you ask one of your employees to complete a review on a process and share the findings, because the request if pretty general, their findings may not be matched to the peak of their abilities. A much better way of getting more from your team is provide more detail as to why certain things are important, why you think they could be improved and what you need looking at in more detail. A leadership move is to ask them for their views engaging them to providing you will a much improved approach to the task and ultimately, the results.
The Importance Of Family Matters
I myself put my family first before anything else including my work. As a leader, you need to understand and make allowances for family matters and emergencies. The fact is that we’ve all experienced it during our working life and successful leaders and managers should factor these events in as far as possible. Many of you will realise, family matters directly influence work patterns so make sure you make your team aware that you care about their family & home matters.
Keep A Regular Check-In
Performance reviews, assessments and appraisals can be conducted quarterly, bi-yearly or annually and a good leader shouldn’t wait for such times to give constructive feedback on the performance of the team. Keep your finger on the pulse by checking in more regular with your team and providing them with more regular feedback. You’ll find this method encourages them to stay focused and on track.
Be Empathetic Towards Your Team
Take an example of one of your highest achievers who habitually sets high standards and is always on time with their delivery. Let’s assume one day, he doesn’t deliver on time. Some managers would conclude that it’s this team members’ fault but as a leader, you should realise, this is out of character and show genuine concern, adopt an understanding approach with compassion and try to find out the reasons for this lapse in performance.
Ensuring Your Team Understand Why
Successful management and leadership includes a precise approach to your goals and providing clear guidelines on how to achieve them. To get your team to feel more motivated and to achieve results quicker, take time to explain why certain things are important because this will motivate the team. You’ll find this approach makes the difference between a project lasting for days rather than hours.
Trust In Your Team
When you are 100% behind your team and trust them implicitly, they will use this as a work springboard put their heart into delivering great work for you. Less experienced managers have a habit of small details and try and micro manage work that often undermines employees that are more than capable of delivering. Rather than doing this, it’s best to give them the tools and platforms allowing them to execute the work to a high standard and at the same time, retaining your trust.
Understanding Skillsets & Willingness
There are 2 main contributors for underperformance in employees. The skillsets required to complete the task and the willingness to do so. A shortfall in skillsets is relatively easy to address with proper support & training. The willingness factor is a little more complicated since managers need to have time and patience to delve into what motivates employees. Factors such as ‘do they understand the grander scale of things’ or perhaps determining a mental block. It falls upon you as a successful leader, to find out and address the reasons for underperformance.
The Importance Of Little Things
The modern day workplace is pretty much ethnically diverse and multicultural. You’ll be amazed at the importance of taking an interest in your team’s holidays, special events and religious festivals and even birthdays and anniversaries. Keep track of these events because it’s an excellent way of building relationships and showing your team that you are not ignorant about their individual lifestyles. They’ll appreciate you much more for noticing.
This post was originally exclusively written for LinkedIn by Max Chohan, owner and content writer at One Sardinia.
