Three Basic Practices for Managers to Link Team Members to Success
Evaluating the alignment of employees’ efforts with the business's growth needs should be a daily practice. However, managers themselves are often caught up in tactics and focus primarily on their own individual performance, to the extent that they cannot step back and see the big picture.
More employers are frustrated by the inability of managers to align with the business strategy and the priorities required for success. Instilling a new mindset about the meaning of management and the ability to see performance through a different lens is needed in the workplace.
How can we shift from a mindset that performance feedback, reviews, and planning are only annual or semi-annual processes that interrupt the flow of business to one that includes high-level awareness and clarity about what the team is strategically doing to work together and be successful every week? The flow of business depends on the right people exhibiting the right behaviors to achieve success. The following steps outline a simple approach to changing your mindset about your department and the focus required for each person, enabling you to track strategic progress easily each week.
Three Basics to Help Managers Set A Foundation for Success
1. Understand the business strategies for your department.
While it may seem shocking, few managers are actually clear about the specific strategies they are required to implement for the business over the next twelve months. Be sure you understand what they are. If you are not clear, propose goals and their strategies to leadership to create your own guiding force that will help you hold your team accountable. Once they are defined and approved, pull the team together and review them. Take a few minutes to allow the team to brainstorm the type of behaviors they think are required to achieve the goals. This simple step will give you a baseline for how well aligned the team is with your expectations. Note the difference for improvement opportunities.
2. Reflect, assess, and communicate.
Get a cup of coffee and take one hour to highlight the performance strengths and needs for improvement for each of your employees. Are they aware of the need for improvement? If you haven’t communicated them clearly, then they are not. Create no more than three clear developmental goals for each employee. Engage them in the process of helping to develop these goals to see if you are in alignment. Then, find time to review these individual development goals as a requirement of the departmental goals and strategies for success (as outlined in the step above). Schedule a 15-minute check-in with each employee each month to review their progress toward development goals.
3. Journal weekly activity.
Assign yourself 30 minutes at the end of each week to log your performance observations for each employee. Log them into a spreadsheet or a team leadership platform, such as BLOOM®, so that you can share the observations with the employee and ask any questions for clarification during your next meeting. By committing to this journaling process each week, you will become instantly more aware of what your employees are doing at a higher level and will take the time to compare notes with your expectations. This will not only keep you relevant in the eyes of your employees, it will also enable you to see the trial for success rather than letting the year slip by without understanding where things went wrong if you didn’t meet your goals.
By focusing on performance and goals at shorter, regular intervals, you’re better able to reward progress and to head off disaster. You’re empowered with up-to-date information about your team. You can use this knowledge to more easily adapt to new situations, ultimately gaining a clearer understanding of how your team contributes to the organization’s success.
Share Your Experience
Have you found a successful rhythm for performance/talent planning? How does it compare with what we've outlined above?