As a leader, you can help your team maintain focus, boost their productivity, increase their efficiency and creativity and enhance their engagement, all of which will increase your organization’s bottom line.
How can you best accomplish all of that?
Here are some strategies you may want to consider employing:
- Establish a Non-negotiable Set of Reachable Goals. Whether it is each day, week, month, or quarter, meet regularly with your team and together discuss the non-negotiable goals that must be reached in order for success to occur. In addition, create the priorities and tasks necessary to accomplish those goals.
- Communicate Frequently & Regularly. Remind your employees on a regular and consistent basis of the goals agreed upon as a team. Challenge every one of them to use those goals as personal objectives and drivers for their own work, accomplishments, and focus.
- Empower Employees to Say ‘No.’ Employees naturally want to please their boss. They want to pursue appropriate solutions to situations of stress and to ease the burden of leadership. Their natural inclination to please can easily derail them from the priorities outlined for them and can make them a target for others to steal their focus. Empower and implore your team to say ‘no’ to any requests for their time that do not directly align with the goals and priorities set for the team. That means even empowering them to say ‘no’ to YOU if necessary!
If you want a well-balanced team who is engaged, positive, and productive, start by concentrating your attention on what matters most. They, in turn, will do the same.
- Be Mindful of your Requests. Have you ever sent an employee an email that started out by saying “Wouldn’t it be great if….” This is where employees get derailed in their focus and lose time and attention on what matters most. Remember their need to please? Well, if you are tossing out great ideas or concepts without filtering them through your agreed upon priorities, your employees will consider this to be a delegation, not a simple conversation. They will stop what they are working on to pursue an answer for you. Before suggesting or asking anything of your team members, consider whether or not the requests fall squarely in line with the priorities you set out for the team.
- Stop Messaging Them after Work. Nothing will burn employees out faster than a non-stop barrage of emails, texts, and calls after work hours. Give them the break they deserve. Let them focus on friends, family, home life, fitness, and whatever else matters to them personally once they leave the office. Discourage them from checking work-related emails after hours and encourage their personal priorities. Permit them to rest. In turn, you’ll have a more engaged, well-centered team the next business day and likely every day. Company culture and tone starts with the leadership.
If you want a well-balanced team who is engaged, positive, and productive, start by concentrating your attention on what matters most. They, in turn, will do the same. Together, you can achieve deadlines, establish boundaries and create a happier, more productive, and profitable organization.
Remember, you as the leader set the tone for the culture of your organization so you must be perceived as being committed to the goals you have set being achieved in a timely fashion as well as acknowledging the contributions of your team members and valuing their time at work and respecting their time outside of work. When you model that commitment, you will be much for likely to have your employees follow suit in their engagement, commitment, and achievements.
