Imposing your own goals on team members is one of the fastest ways to lose their commitment.
Goal setting is a collaborative process. The role of the leader is to provide coaching to ensure everyone is in line with overall team goals. Make sure any online collaboration tools or other technology you use to support the goal-setting process doesn’t take the place of crucial in-person conversations.
The Rescuer
"It's faster to do it myself than to delegate it to others..." or "If I want it done right, I'm the one who has to do it..." or "Let me do this for you..."
These are the words of the Rescuer - the person, or in this case the leader, who solves problems for others that they should solve for themselves.
The Victim
No one likes to hurt someone else’s feelings, but that doesn’t justify providing feedback that’s so fluffy you never actually state the main point.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not asking you to be ruthless. Use positives, but don’t smother the message with them. The challenge is to make sure the constructive part of your feedback is clear, or else there’s no sense giving feedback!
One of the first mistakes new leaders make is to hold back on communication. Usually, this reluctance comes from fear, and it often breaks down into two (bad!) leadership styles:
Leaders who are concerned about losing control often overcompensate by micromanaging and being overly focused on tasks and results. They dole out stingy bits of information on a need-to-know basis, even though their people definitely need to know!
I am very excited to announce that my book Ignite! The 4 Essential Rules for Emerging Leaders will be officially launched and widely available on May 31st!
In the first part of this article, published in our March newsletter, we talked about 4 challenges mid-level managers face. They are often viewed as "caught in the middle" between the senior leaders above them who impose strategy that they are required to implement, and the team members who work for them that look up for direction and support. The four common and costly challenges I outlined were:
The performance management process in many organizations is irrelevant. Create 12-month/annual goals and then ignore the goals throughout the year.
How about a more agile process instead?
1. Create quarterly or more frequent goals that are aligned with organizational goals.
2. Make the review process more frequent - e.g., quarterly.
3. Update goals throughout the year so that they are in line with the latest organizational and market changes.
Here's one thing every leader must know. People want to know that their contributions matter.
But recognition efforts often fail when the following happens:
In the first of three posts about The Global Leadership Team, we talked about the importance of cultivating the team with agile leaders. Part 2 focused on creating the team's cultural building blocks. This post is focused on enhancing trust and respect among team members.
Building Trust and Respect Among Team Members
In the first of three posts about The Global Leadership Team, we talked about the importance of cultivating the team with agile leaders. In this post we'll focus on the importance of creating the cultural building blocks.
Intentionally Creating the Team's Cultural Building Blocks
In our work with senior leadership teams, we typically start by helping the team put in place what we call the Cultural Building Blocks. These are the foundational components that enable a team to be successful - regardless of whether team members are co-located or global.
