Missing in Leadership

How to keep your team motivated

2012-01-17T10:09:00.000+11:00

One of the questions I often get asked, is about motivating the team. Leaders need to be sure they keep a keen eye on their team's motivation and take small and subtle steps to keep motivating members.
While some members are driven by cash it is surprising to find out that the majority of our team members actually prefer rewards other than cash to feel appreciated and rewarded for their efforts and so motivate them to do bigger and better things in the future. Try this experiment and see if it helps you maintaining your team in a highly motivated state, it cost you very little and is more about behaviours rather than using a reward as a motivator.

Next time you see one of your team members doing something that is particularly good, casually stop and chat and praise them for what they were doing, be sure to mention exactly what you saw and why it was good for them and how it makes a positive impact on the team. Observe their reaction and make a note later on how they received this positive feedback. You may be surprised how many people in your team really appreciate your action and respond in a positive manner. Try over the next three to four weeks to do this for all members and to be consistent in the delivery.

Look ahead in your team schedule and find an afternoon toward the end of the quarter and plan some team activity, perhaps bowling, golf whatever. Take the team out and enjoy, sometime during the activity when everyone is together make a short speech thanking the team for their efforts over the period. This is a team activity and a team reward for delivery of the team goals to date.

Some members crave public attention and will respond best to an award in front of the rest of the company, while this can be a very powerful motivator for the individual it can also have negative effects on the rest of team. I would only suggest to do this if and when someone has gone well above the call of duty and everyone knows it.

Monetary awards as a means of motivation tend to have a very short impact, however they can be useful for team players who are very introverted (as these people rarely want to be put in the spot-light).

Keeping our team motivated is one of the critical tasks we can do as team leaders, it something we should experiment with to get the right balance and keep our team at its peak.

Create break out year for your team

2012-01-05T18:54:00.000+11:00

A new year for most leaders means striking a plan for the achievements of the team. But what if you could create a situation to give the team you lead a chance of making a huge break-out? Would you give it a go?

Put this simple strategy in place and see your team prosper and grow. Late last year I posted about which team member would deliver the best result for the team if you could just find a little more time to help one member, again we'll look to these members to deliver our break-out performance.

This year we should plan early to get our usual quota and adopt this plan to get some big scores on the board.

First lets take our goals for the year and write them in a list. Next we take the list and categorise each goal, shared or team goal, individual goal, and break-through goal. Test your list of goals and be sure to whittle them down so there are only 2 team goals and a couple of each other category.

Next step is to arrange the goals in these three categories in a matrix against each team member. When you draw up your matrix place your weakest team member first in line and your strongest last in line.
Allocate your goals out to each team member, they should have no more than 5 goals. Try to fill your matrix from your weakest member through to your strongest. When you consider each member against each goal it should play out such that the strongest member has one or two goals spare. This becomes your opportunity to assign them with a break-out goal.

Before sharing your plan with the team it is important as the leader to reflect on what you have assigned to each member and assess its suitability, especially its ability to be achieved within the period.
Remember your first priority is to meet the team goals, once you are comfortable that can be achieved, you know that the allocation of the break-out goals to your stronger members will drive your team to a higher level.

As the leaders of our teams it is very important that we set realistic goals for each member and we positively support everyone to make these goals come to fruition as the year rolls out

Lead your team right to years end

2011-11-27T11:04:00.000+11:00

With the fast approaching the end of the year, Christmas for many of us and a new calendar and reporting year coming to a close. I'm often asked "How can I impact my team the most in the short time left?" This is a question that confuses a lot of people, if I only have few week left how can I impact the right people in my team to finish the year with a bang.

Lets say your team is seven members strong. look through their goals set earlier in the year and rank each member on how they have gone against the criteria you set together. Odds on one is a standout in the positive sense and another is a standout in the negative sense, while the rest fall somewhere in between.

You know full well that you will support each member but realistically you can probably only squeeze enough time to help one person get a few more runs before the year close.

Many leaders take the view to invest their time in the weakest performer in the belief that that may pull them up to the mark and get over the line. However the person who can make the most impact with your help is in fact the best performer. This will seem couter-tuitive to many. Let's look at in from a simple sales perspective.

Each team member has target of 100k sales per month. Your poor performer is pulling 80k while your top performer is pulling in 120k - both 20k variance from the goal. with some help from you one of these guys can do an extra 10%. This would leave us with 88k versus 132k. Your help is worth more when given to your top performer as opposed to your bottom performer.

As a team leader with limited time for extra coaching you can gain the most value for your team. So line up your team, identify who has kicked the most goals and spend some time finishing the year on a high note.

6 Steps to Leading your team through Change

2011-08-27T11:05:00.000+10:00

Change is inevitable for our teams, yet many leaders handle this poorly. In this article let's look at the basic steps that you can put in place to make sure your team is in the best possible place to cope and embrace the change it will experience. We need to lead change and not allow change to lead us!

Firstly, as the team leaders we need to expect differing members to embrace change in their own way. Fighting this will only make your job so much harder. Be prepared for the those that resist change openly, those reflective people who need time to think it through and of course those that want to charge off at a million miles an hour.

Change is very much a journey and we need to have a plan on how we will travel down this path. basically if you can put the following steps into practice you'll find the change happening to your team will be achieved in a positive and successful way:

Brief the team on the change to come,
Demonstrate management buy-in,
Walk through new processes,
Explain and demonstrate each persons new way of working,
Adjust along the way, and
Celebrate your success

Brief the team on the change to come,

Get your team together and explain the requirement for the change, be sure to explain the big picture of why the change is important. Talk about the journey ahead and the time frame that the change will be implemented in.

Demonstrate management buy-in,

In the early stages of change it is important to have the management team around and its very important that they talk about how much they want to see change and how it will be good for everyone and the company.

Walk through new processes,

Get some workshops together and design and walk the team through the new processes. It is important for the team to be part of the design of this process as they will feel some ownership and be more prepared to put them into practice, than if they are simply told "this is the new way you work".

Explain and demonstrate each persons new way of working,

Have a program in place where each person who is affected by this change is taught and coached about how they need to do their part. Allow plenty of time for trial and error and be careful to be supportive and positive and the people adjust to the new way.

Adjust along the way,

At intervals review the progress and address each thing as it turns up. It is very important that do this in a supporting manner, as many people struggle with their morale when they are going through change.

Celebrate your success

Once you're there and the change has been complete. Take time out and celebrate, explain how much better the situation is and how each person made a great contribution to achieving this important team goal.

We live in a world of constant change, so it is important for us to have a strategy to engage and help drive our teams through this important stage.

Team creativity a path to success

2011-06-11T11:55:00.000+10:00

One of the perpetual challenges for high performance teams is to generate creativity into how they create products and serve customers. But how do we become creative. Lots of teams work on the strategy of hiring someone from outside their expertise area and throw them into your team and watch them create new ways of dealing with the challenges. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Is there a better way without the hit and miss of hiring someone in.

Believe it or not you probably have more than enough creativity within your team, and as the leader it comes down to you to draw it out.

One of the tried and trusted methods to do this is to run a brainstorming session, many people will use a structure such a De'bonos' thinking hats or the like to work through the process of coming up with ideas, fleshing them out, analysing the good and bad points etc and then finally settle on the idea with the best level of success. I've seen this work in plenty of teams and I've seen it fail. Often this way of working really suits seems with lots of alpha type people as they are quick to voice their opinion. In teams where a majority of the people are methodical or analytical this approach often appears to fail.

The teams that struggle with this methodology are built of people who are reflective and need to run things through in their head before they will voice the idea to the team. Even when you tell these people that you want all ideas regardless of how bizarre they may initially sound, these people often won't come forward.

For these types of team the idea is to run your brainstorming session in short bursts with three or four days between each session. This way those who need some thinking time will have it. At the start of each short session do a recap of previous ideas and take some time to ask for any new ideas. You will be surprised how many new strong ideas get presented.

As the leaders we need to take time to understand the personalities and their traits so we can implore the right methods to extract the creativity we need to drive or team to greater success. By being a little flexible and not rushing to the obvious conclusion you'll find plenty of creative ideas right with the team. Implementing them that's another story!

Credit the team on their success

2011-05-14T12:26:00.000+10:00

Everyone wants to feel they have contributed to the success of a project, when it is finally successfully launched, but do you ensure the credit goes to your team? One of our basic needs for all of us is to feel like we belong. When we do feel strongly tied to a successful team we are more committed to maintaining the performance.

How many times have you seen the team leader get up and make a presentation about the projects successful launch and all the hard work that that he put in to get it over the line. I bet the answer is you have seen this too many times, and you know that feeling as all the team members collectively sigh. i think we have all seen this leader at work and don't aspire to be like them.

While it is very important to keep the whole business apraised of what your team does, the better way to deliver good news is to involve the team. A great way to do this is to have your team make the presentation and talk about how as a team they came together and worked through all the issues and launched the project. The immediate feedback the team members get from management at this time of presentation is golden. They will have a first hand view of how the business sees this project and they will gain a sense of pride from the positive feedback.

This subtle difference in deliverying the message vuia the team will give your team a morale boost that you could never easily achive.

On the flip side of this, if the news is poor then it is up to you as the team leader to deliver the message and take the brunt of the feedback. Shield the team from the emotion, and deliver your own negative feedback while searching for what went wrong.

By making sure the credit for great jobs is given directly to the team, will better empower them to drive the team to more succeses.

Team Maintenance by applying motivation

2011-05-07T10:27:00.000+10:00

We often hear about people complaining about their job and the threat to quit and go somewhere else. While some people are just prone to complaining, a percentage of people will leave your team and go and try something else, and over time some of these members will come back. Often the complaint is about money, yet time and time again when employees are surveyed money rarely comes in the top ten things that keep people where they are. The challenge for us as leaders is to use this to our advantage and apply what we can to keep our team motivate and hence maintain our team focus.

So if money is not the major satisfaction factor within our team what is? When we look, into this we find that most people want to be a valued member of their team. Possibly this answer is a little undefined for many where an x percentage pay increase is easy to quantify - though often hard to justify.

What should we look to put into place so that each of our team members feels like they are valued for their contribution. Most often this is through a combination of simple team maintenance activities.
Do you know everyone by name? Do you know what's important to them? Do you take time to talk to them in a one-on-one sense and as the collective?

Do you have a mechanism for celebrations? Are birthdays, company goals holidays all celebrated?
Set some budget aside for a family picnic, send flowers to homes when significant events occur. Consider setting up a social club and offer to subsidize events. Sponsor a sport team. While these may seem a little intangible, if you can incorporate this into your team, many of your members will realise that they belong and their value is recognised.

If you can find a way to incorporate these simple things into your team schedule, you'll find the team will be more motivated and coherent, giving you the best possible environment to achieve success with your team.

The three Critical D steps to improve your leadership

2011-04-30T10:33:00.000+10:00

We often hear a lot about leadership and how to learn or improve on how we lead our teams to top performance. While much of this is way to technical for most of us, I like to simplify this to the three critical D steps to improve and maintain your leadership skills.

What are my three critical D steps?

Destination,
Determination, and
Diligence.

To know where we want to go we must have the Destination in mind. It's important for us to visualise what the end goal looks like, is it one of efficiency, is it a task that's complete, is it a certain level of customer satisfaction. What the destination is will help shape how we will achieve it. But before we solve the challenge of getting there we must have a very clear picture of what our team's destination is.

Like most serious goals we set our teams, the challenge will be tough and its our Determination to keep at it, to find a better way, to look for better outcomes that shapes how we get to our destination. Without determination we will faulty along the way and team will fall behind. We must maintain our determination and keep our team focused so we can achieve our goals.

The final D is for Diligence and an area many of us struggle with. The temptation when a task is 90% done is for us to begin to celebrate and move on. Good leaders of great teams know that they must be diligent and take care that the last 10% of the task is finished to ensure the completeness of the task. However our diligence also applies to looking at how we completed our tasks and searching for ways to improve so that next time we repeat this task its done faster or to a higher level of quality.

So basically that's my three D's to help us stay focused and improve our team performance. The application of understanding our destination, the determination to work through any issues and complete the task and then finally our diligence to search for the small details and make sure they are done to the best our team can.

Lead your team in the tough times

2011-04-17T20:07:00.000+10:00

Part of leading your team is to know how you team is going with their tasks. Are they on track or could they be falling behind. Do you need to step in to help, or provide some other support so the task can be done on time.

One of the important aspects of assigning work to your team is to ensure that the team members understand they must report their progress. The frequency of the reports needs to be set by you and must be a short enough period of time so that should a task be falling behind you have sufficient time to take some corrective action to get the task back on track so you team isn't impacted.

During your team member's report it is important that you ask qualifying questions to ensure that you can accurately determine if all assigned work is on-track for a successful completion. Where to start?, ask for a progress status, maybe view the work that's been done to date? The proof will depend on your industry and the assigned work. Often it helps to ask how long they expect it will take to complete the rest of the job.

Listen carefully to the response. If you are in doubt take care to ask plenty of questions so you can make a determination of the state of the work. Ask what assistance your worker needs to get over the line. If there is any doubt then it's time for you to step in and help the job done.

Once the job is back on track and eventually finished, it is important to do a review and work out why it got to such a critical stage. As the leaders of our teams there is always something to learn about our team and getting the best result for our team we can.

Leaders make the tough choices

2011-03-19T12:29:00.000+11:00

Too often we see leaders who seem to be bumbling along and look to be doing a good job while everything is rosy. Are you like that? I hope not! As the leaders of our teams its important for us to be ready to step in at any stage and make the tough decisions to keep our team focused on the end goal.

Often if you ask why did poor leaders fail to make these tough decisions the answer is likely to be one of the following: I'm afraid I'll loose this worker, I might upset the team, I know it will come good on its own accord. These are nonsense excuses, if your output is below expectations or customer service and quality is being affected then you MUST step in a make the tough call to get things back on track.

How can you prepare for this? Firstly you need to keep your ear to the ground and know what's going on. Is output on track? Is customer service the absolute best? Is the product quality flawless. Continual monitoring of your outputs will tell you the moment something is turning sour.

Do you know your people? I don't mean are they your friends, I mean do you know what makes them tick, what are their strong and weak points, is there any big thing happening in their lives.

If you know the info then you're ready to make these tough calls. Your imperative here is to keep the team strong and with it your team's productivity. If that means you lose someone along the way because they are not performing properly then so be it. If you have been cross-training your team members with all the different tasks your team complete, then you may take a short-term hit on productivity while you find a replacement.

If you're prepared to step in and make the tough decisions early, your team will have great performance and your team members will know exactly what you stand for, and that you are prepared to act for the good of the team. Great leaders look to the team and its combined work together as the ultimate in performance.

Lead your team by demonstrating your top results

2011-02-27T13:40:00.000+11:00

With much of the early work for the year behind us, it's time for the leaders to ensure their team works through and gets the top results you know they can deliver. In our last post we looked a putting a plan together to review and keep on top of the major goals throughout the team.

The next step in this plan is to ensure that our team results are visible to our bosses and their bosses.

How to do this is relatively straight forward if we follow these basic steps.

First discuss you team goals with your boss, as leaders of our teams it's important for us to keep our goals and their progress in the face of our bosses. Be sure to show how the work will progress across the year and the interim gaols along the way.

Next build your self a short traffic light report, highlighting each of these goals and a flag to quickly show their state, ahead of plan, on plan, behind plan, in need of assistance to get back on track.

As each month draws to a close update your traffic light report to demonstrate how well the team is travelling towards achieving these goals.

Often as leaders we are so focussed on doing a great job we fail to demonstrate to the rest of the business what a great team we have. We can address this through some positive PR.

Send you report each month to your boss and "CC" all those that your team interact with.

By sending this report each month your team's performance will be seen across the organisation. As your team achieves each of its goals, then you can add a note in what a great job they have done. The visibility of your team achieving and exceeding their goals across the wider team will keep your team in the spotlight. Their excellent work will keep your team morale high and performing well as others comment on how well they tackle and achieve their goals.

Steps to help team members achieve their goals

2011-02-16T09:15:00.000+11:00

The year is well and truly on the way and the economy is looking a little brighter. As leaders who want our teams to succeed, now is the time to take action and put a plan in place to help your team members get their goals.
Set aside some time to look at your ten most important goals, these will have been spread across your team earlier in the year when you set each members individual goals.

Identify who is taking the lead on each of these ten goals. Send them a quick mail and offer them a 30 minute meeting in two weeks time to assess their plan and action points to meet these goals. Mark each of these meetings in your calendar and add a task for your self the day before to spend 30 minutes of your own time thinking through the goal, its steps and what the outcome should be each three months.

Next assign a time in your schedule in June and September to review each of these goals with your team member.

Do your homework when you come to this scheduled time in your calendar, create your own outline of how you see this goal progressing and try to assess how you can make an impact to help at various stages. Note down the subsequent meetings.

At the appointed meeting time, have your team member take you through their action plan and their interim check progress goals along the way. Take care not to take over, however offer advice where you think their plan is weakest. Be sure to ask them what assistance you can offer. By the end of this meeting your team member will know you are watching the progress of their work and more importantly you are willing to buy in and offer help.

By engaging with your members and offering to assisting them with their goals, your team will see their leaders are committed to their success and will drive themselves to do the best they can.

Lead change across your team

2011-01-24T09:35:00.000+11:00

The new year is well and truly off and running. Many hope that this year will see the US get back to moderate growth. We can play our part here by ensuring our team is aligned to make the most of the year in front of us.

Before your team settle down with the to same old goals each member has had for the last few years, why not take these steps to gain better alignment and produce some powerful group goals to sharpen the performance of your team.

Step one get your team together for a brainstorming session. Have each member communicate their worst problem they see. In 30 minutes you should have 6-7 real problems your team faces. Spend 15 minutes or so on each problem defining what it is. Take care not to go into solution mode, what you want is a very detailed description of what the issue is.

Step two take each of these problems and have the team vote them, most impact through to least impact, should they be solved. The best way to do this is to give each person three votes with weighting of one, two and three. What you should find is that when you total all the votes there will be a clear division of those the team as a whole feel are important rather then those that just one or two feel are important.

Step three, Divide your team into smaller teams and have each of the small teams take one of the high priority problems as one of their goals for the year. Research has shown that if these groups come from different functions within your team there is a strong probability of a solution being found. While your are at this session it is important for them to turn these problems into SMART goals.

Step four, have each member commit to the action plan for their team goal and make it the second priority goal behind their most pressing personal goal.

Step five, we must ensure the goals become a reality in each persons yearly goals setting. We also need to take notes on where we see we will be needed to support these goals.

The benefits of setting the team goals this way is that all members of your team are aware of the broader goals, this will by default give them some empathy and help should any of the sub-teams press anyone for assistance.

Our role as leaders is to steer the conversation, problem and goal setting so the team will make the most impact for the overall team. Importantly we must monitor these gaols and assist to move any roadblocks. Just think if at the end of the year your team could solve you most pressing top four problems , what a better position your team will be in.

Prepare your team for the New year

2010-11-27T19:25:00.000+11:00

As the year draws to a close many leaders are busy tying up the loose end for the current year. However if you're a pro-active leader you should also be focusing on the year coming up.

Lots of people leave their goal setting for the start of the year, however now is the time for you to consider some major goals for next year.

How can we take the best of our goals this year help them to drive our future goals.

What are the best three things that your team can achieve next year? How would these goals take momentum from this years work. It is important to isolate any work or goals that can help to take a run-up and enter in full stride for the new year.

Now that you have taken stock of goals that can drive your next years results, you need to check which team members are most influential in this work.

Each time you meet with your team members you need to congratulate them on their great work this year and then take the initiative and explain how their current goals can flow into a big result for next year.

As team leaders it's important for us to identify and keep our team momentum, this way we avoid the roller-coaster effort and corresponding results.

Help your team finish the year on a high

2010-11-12T19:55:00.000+11:00

Only a few weeks to go and we'll close the books, performance and all other measurables for the year. So what should we do to get our team in the best possible position. Hopefully we have all been keeping an eye on our team members and how their performance is going. Now is the time to take quick action to get over the line in the best shape.

Do a quick review on each members goals for the year and note which goals look comfortable and which are just below par. Take a moment to explore each of the areas that are below the expected performance and choose the one that has the best chance of success if tackled with some extra effort over this last month.

For all our members look at the task/goal we think we can rescue. Examine why you think this goal is looking behind schedule, is it something they can control? If you stepped in could this come back on track? The best option is for corrective action your team member can take as they will gain knowledge and confidence if they can work through it themselves. How ever if it takes some intervention from you that is OK. Afterall the team performance is hightened by each member contributing as many of their goals as possible.

Next time you have a short meeting with each member, firstly have them explain how they think each of their goals are coming along. They may or may not be aware of any slipping goals. This is where your homework will pay-off. Now it's time for you to gently appraise their efforts and work with them to come up with a rescue plan. The more you can have them contribute ideas for the rescue plan the more they will feel ownership and inspired to get it done before the year ends. Be open about your thinking and be honest about how you can help.

It's our job as leaders to monitor our teams' performance and provide guidance and assistance where we can. By practicing this we'll be making our team stronger and more productive.

Provide strategic direction to your team

2010-10-24T20:28:00.000+11:00

It's great that we have our team together and through our continual coaching and feedback, things are working well. One of the challenges we face to move the team forward is to keep our team in the picture, the big picture!

Where do we want our team to be in one year, and five years? The main theme for us is to provide constant guidance in the form of our strategic vision. How do we see the team in the medium and long term. What do we want our customers to think over that period of time. Will we have grown in statue and capabilities?

As leaders it's our task to ensure that each member of your team knows what the strategic plan is. Why you may ask? What if they're in a customer meeting and the customer is calling for some changes in one area or another, if your team members know where you want to take the team, this gives them the opportunity to introduce changes to take the team one step at a time to realise these changes. what's more if the team members are part of introducing this change they will have a much stronger sense of ownership.

Strategy for us is all about the long term and how to get there. To make this effective we need to know this like the back of our hand. Where do we want to be, what steps need to be taken, who in the team needs to grow and in what ways. Once we have this sorted in our head, break each of these ideas down to your elevator pitch. Explain each of these points in a thirty second burst, practice them.

Now you have the picths in your head you need to deliver them to your team so everyone knows where the team as whole is going and what role each will play. This will add depth to your team as not only can they do their work well today, but they can keep an eye out for opportunities to fulfill the teams future.

Delegate the right way

2010-10-14T15:40:00.000+11:00

Team leaders are often called upon to delegate tasks to their team members, and this is a practice you should get into the habit of doing. To achieve the best performance from your team it is important to do this the right way. Many people think that telling somebody to do a job is delegating and in the crudest sense they're right however if that's your style then you are missing out on quite a bit.

When we delegate a job we need to ensure we explain what the job is, what the performance criteria is, when it needs to be done by and when and who to report progress too. Miss any pieces of this puzzle and your delegation can easily go astray.

Next time you are about to delegate a task be sure to stop a minute and get a clear picture of all the aspects. Then take a careful note, explain what the job entails - any aspects that must be adhered too, how the job success is measured and the standard the job must be at. Next outline the time-frames the job must meet, maybe it has to start at a particular time, perhaps you cannot start until a special time or event and when the job must be completed. Lastly and this is the one most people forget, who needs to be informed of the progress and completion of this job. Without the reporting aspect you as the leader wont know if the job is done, neither will anyone else who needs to know, so be sure to add in the component of providing reports or status update along with the task.

Follow these simple steps and delegation will become an effective way for you to get more done in a timely and complete manner and improve the overall team performance.

Coaching for 4th quarter performance

2010-09-29T17:23:00.000+10:00

With Q3 finished we need to take a quick stock of our team and see how we are set up for the fourth quarter ride home to finish out the year.

Here's a quick strategy to put into action to make sure your team finishes on a high note for this year.

Take a pen and paper and list all your team members, then make a grid of one to five, this grid will later represent our goals for each of our team members. Take a few moment to appraise each team member and how they are progressing for each of their goals. Rate them one through five.

Now look through your simple matrix and identify all the ones and circle them, these represent our biggest issues with each member. Any one have more than one one?? Then he is your primary coaching target, place a one next to his row. Similarly work through the team. At the end of this process you will have a list of who needs to be coached quickly to bring back on track all the way through to the members who are going along great.

Schedule some one on one time with each member starting with the person who scored poorest.
Take them aside, identify what they're doing well and give some feedback in a constructive manner on areas they can improve, especially look at their behaviours and those they can address. Be sure to keep the discussion positive, after all we have a few months of performance to go to get ourself setup to finish the year on a strong note.

As the leaders of the team it's our duty to steer the team to success, by taking some positive coaching action now. This way we can be sure our team will meet their goals and finish the year in a strong position.

Team stressed - release the pressure

2010-09-12T21:02:00.000+10:00

How is your team feeling? Full of beans, or a little drained? One of our important tasks is to constantly monitor the health of our team members and step in and take action if needed.

Commonly when your team has been running hard for an extended time is the development of stress. If you can identify stress early and take some remedial action, then your team will be better for it.

Many leaders think this is a difficult task, at the end of the day just keep your eyes and ears open and you'll see and hear the signs. Team members telling you they can't make deadlines, members hesitate to take on any extra activities and general legarthy.

So what to do? If you catch it early perhaps its simple, take the team for a dinner or lunch, if they've been putting in some long hours then maybe bringing the partners along can achieve. Involving the partners often helps achieve some extra things, it shows the partners that you work with normal people, plus the partners get to too also share their feelings.

In this environment it is important for you to publicly thank everyone and their contributions.

If things have got further on then it is time for you to either add resources to the team to lighten the load or prioritise the work your team is doing to make it more manageable.

As team leaders it's our job to keep on top of the feelings within our team and take actions to keep them at a good level so we can continue to meet the challenges everyday.

Introduce coaching into your leadership

2010-08-22T19:37:00.000+10:00

One of the skills you should spend some time developing, is the ability to coach your team members. We've spoke over time about the requirement to allocate time with each of your team members and provide them some personal feedback about their performance. lots of the pro's will tell you this is only half of the story, as feedback is usually focused on what's happened.

If you can introduce some of the aspects of coaching you'll be able to subtly move members of your team forward and promote the team efforts.

In its basic form the role of coach is to direct the members. The best way to do this is to ask open ended questions about the tasks ahead, then further to these, use probing questions to have each member think through the possibilities and possible outcomes.

Just as a sports coach coaches from the side-line or during the breaks it's important to remember it's our team members out there playing the game that need to make their decisions, so our role is to help them see the possibilities and be prepared for the twists and changes that are likely to happen.

Take a chance and see if you can add some coaching into your team and see how it goes, I'd be very surprised if you don't see a positive outcome especially in each members attitude.

Keeping your team on track

2010-06-24T07:18:00.000+10:00

Regular updates with your team are a habit you need to excel at. By taking some time out every one or two weeks for a short catch up will allow you to stay in touch with each team member and to gauge how well the team is performing.

Take time to find a quiet place away from the actual work floor and develop a casual chat about what's going on with the team. Don't allow this to turn into a complaints session, just get a feel for how things are going.
Ask open questions about the major tasks are coming along. Listen carefully for any clues about issues that are blocking the successful completion of theses jobs. Make sure you are clear if there is some way you can assist or contribute anything towards improving the quality or outcome of these tasks.

Take a little time to explain what you are doing and how this contributes to the big picture. Most people are happy when they are busy doing their thing and they see their leaders busy supporting the overall goals.

By taking this positive action our team members will feel they belong to an inclusive workplace and will see that someone cares and appreciates the contribution they make. The benefits to us is that we get regular feedback on the team performance, so we should not get any surprises about the progress of the team goals.

How to conduct a mid-year review

2010-06-05T21:47:00.000+10:00

Now as June is well on the way, it's time to consider our mid-year reviews. Our teams will work at their best when we keep them on track to fulfill their goals and drive our dream performance.

Where to start, I find the best way to do this is to take the members goals and run a quick SWOT over the ideas. Which goals are on track, which ones have fallen by the way-side.
Rate each goal, is this looking to be complete in a strong and successful manner?, Check each goal to see if there are any weaknesses showing through, is the content up to standard, is this goal going to make it by the end of the year. Take a look at each goal have new opportunities presented themselves - maybe to stretch this goal. Are there any threats to any of the goals. What would be the impact if this goal is not met?

Now that you have an appreciation of the team member and where they sit with this goal, it's time to set some quiet time with the member and work through it. Be sure to give your member some time and advise them that you wish go through their goals.

Arrange a quiet place and make sure there will be no interruption. Firstly ask the member how they think their overall performance is going. Be sure to carefully listen and DO NOT interrupt. Now ask the member the go through each goal and critically assess their own performance, ask what's going well and what are you struggling with? Again be sure to listen carefully and again Do NOT interrupt.

Now it's time to stop and way up your own appreciation and what your team member has said. Be sure to identify all the areas that you agree the goals are on track, be sure to praise any great work that has been done to date. If there are any areas that are behind, quickly asses these and choose only three that have the potential for the best gain and suggest these are lagging and one or two things that may bring them back on track. ask some questions to ensure your team member is clear what you are proposing.

As the team leaders it is up to us to lead by taking a careful and measured approach to evaluating our mid-year performance of our team members we can ensure our team is producing great work and achieving the goals for the year.

Leaders and succession

2010-05-14T20:52:00.000+10:00

Do you have a succession plan? Have you chosen someone to replace you? Have you had them trained up so they could step into your shoes tomorrow?
If not then maybe today is the day to start pulling a plan together.

Take a look at the roles within your team and categorise them, as critical or normal. You can easily judge this if you consider what the disruption would be if they left the team abruptly. Would it be a case of just filling a head? Perhaps hiring a temp while waiting for the usual process to recruit a new team member. If this is not the case and the team would struggle without this person then you need to mark them as critical.

Now we have sorted the team members out, we need to evaluate, who might be capable to upgrade their skills with some coaching to take over the role. This is worth taking some time over to get the best fit you can.

What is the probable cost to conduct some upgrade training to each of these people, be sure to include their loss of productivity in addition to the obvious things such as travel and course fees if they apply.

Next look at the cost in lost productivity to the team if one of the current critical member left. This will produce a delta of the lost cost versus the upgrade costs. this is the cost we must bear to ensure our productivity remains high and our customers are provided with a constant good level of service.

By having a succession plan in place we can ensure our team will be minimally impacted if any member was to up and leave. The team will be comforted that there are people ready to take over and provide the necessary ongoing stewardship to our team.

Leading Virtual teams is a new expanded challenge

2010-05-09T11:14:00.000+10:00

It is becoming increasingly more likely that you will be called on to lead a virtual team (if you haven't already). The question on most peoples' mind when this comes up "Is this different to how I lead my team today?". the answer is yes!

Leading virtual teams is quite a new challenge that builds further on you team leading skills. Many of the subtle things you do today tomaintai and lead you team are not available to you when your team is virtual. For example, you cant catch-up and the water fountain and ask someone how their day is going and a casual update on the project. Furthermore you cannot get any of the body language of your members - where we would typically be able to tell when someone is upset or not committed to an idea.

Firstly you need to develop some close personal association so that you can talk about other aspects apart from the team's job, this way when you speak to them on the phone you will be better able to judge their mood and acceptance of the ideas flowing.

Secondly when you meet ( usually phone conference or email) take extra care to make sure every person has an opportunity to express their opinion - for better or worse. Work out a strategy to keep the conversation on track and be careful of those people who try to dominate the conversation.

Thirdly, while it is good practice to follow an agenda it is crucial you stick to it and that as each item is closed, you have appointed someone to take the relevant action and you have defined the time for updates and completion. At the completion of the meeting have each member go through the list of items that they will be working on and how much will be completed by the next meeting.

Note: If your virtual team is to be working together for some time, you should look for an opportunity to get the team together, this may cost a bit to do, however the result will bond you team in a much tighter way. If this is totally out of the question, try for a teleconference so at the very least everyone gets to put a face to the name.

As the team leaders of today we need to look at how we can expand our capabilities to lead virtual teams to achieve the companies goals.

Inclusiveness the way to stengthen your team

2010-05-02T17:57:00.000+10:00

Do you make all your team members feel special? Sometimes the act of treating your members specially can pay off big because they feel more attached and committed to the team.

While travelling recently I was introduced to a local company and the manager took me for a tour of their facility. As we visited each section he took the time to introduce me to all his team members. It was plainly evident that these members felt special as their leader had taken the time to introduce each person and explain what they did for the team. As each person was introduced he had each person tell me how they could help me during my short visit.

Our leadership training would tell us that inclusiveness is a fundamental requirement for each of us to feel happy within the team that we operate in. What was happening here was the local manager was putting this into practice, his team was made to feel they belonged, because as someone came to meet him and visit the company, then everyone got to be part of that experience.

While this seems a straightforward approach of being inclusive to the team members it gave each team member an opportunity to show what part they played in the ongoing operations of the company. Later when talking with some of the individuals it was quite evident that they each enjoyed their leaders way of managing the team and the fact that he gave them responsibilities and allowed them time to talk and explain how they fitted into the team.

I think as the leaders of our teams and with a little thought we can easily adopt this strategy when we have visitors, by taking our time to move through the team and have personal introductions. At the end of the day it doesn't take much time and everyone feels they are contributing to the visitors success while with the team.

Use a mentor to improve your Decision making

2010-04-24T10:07:00.000+10:00

As team leaders we need to make decisions everyday. These decisions are usually pretty straight forward and of a tactical or short-term nature. The main focus of these decisions is to keep the team active in their pursuit of the team goals.

Consider when it's time to make some decisions that affect the long term direction of the team and its' goals. This is when you need to adopt a different approach so that the decision is the best one you can make.

Try this simple strategy to improve your decision making.

Firstly take a good look at the choices and map out the following:

Create three choices based on the information you can find about the problem you're facing.
Consider the short-term , medium term and long-term future based on the information you have for each of your options.
Consider the impact to the team for each of the options, this needs to include, their capabilities, their change management requirements, level of skills, capacity to take on the tasks, time to move to the new system etc.
Consider the financial impact to the team and any individuals the options may present.
What is the likely time-frame to adopt each option?

Armed with this exploratory information it's time to seek out your mentor. Arrange a coffee, lunch or a convenient time to meet.

Outline the proposal to your mentor and detail the options you have considered. Ask them for their opinion on the option with the best chance of success. Listen carefully the chances are because they are not as intimate with the problem and its options they will come up with the new considerations or even a totally new option.

The value of using your mentor to help with these type of decisions is that, you'll get a more even and balanced approach to the strategic direction you move your team.

As the leaders of our team it can be exciting to move in new directions and when we carefully weigh the options we can move to a higher level of production and improve the performance of our teams.

Improving your skills as a leader

2010-04-13T22:18:00.000+10:00

If you've followed my journey you will see the year is well and truly on the way with our first priorities to get our team sorted out with their goals and development. This shouldn't stop now, if things are going to plan we should spend a some time doing a quick SWAT and determining what is it that I as the leader of this team need to do to develop and improve my leadership skills.

I try to set myself a goal each quarter to read one good book about leadership. If you concentrate on the content and look for ways it could apply to your workplace and your team, there are always tricks and tips you can see to apply yourself and improve some aspect of your leadership. I've read a couple of John Maxwell books and always come away with some ideas to apply to my team.

This book is not too long yet still filled with some solid content. I found when I read the book some ideas jumped straight out at me, yet I was very surprised that later on when I reflected on some things that had not gone particularly well, some words of wisdom came back to me for consideration on how I might handle the situation better next time.

Sometimes we are so caught up in doing what we need to do on a daily basis we stop making the time to develop some aspect of ourself that we can apply into the future.

It is very important we as the leaders of the team ensure that not only is the team blossoming but also that we are moving to a better state within our own capabilities and skills. As we move forward with our team we all benefit and our team is better postioned to an even greater job into the future.

Develop your team

2010-03-31T20:53:00.003+11:00

As Q1 fades into the sunset, what's the next step we should be looking at? Now with the year well and truly underway and things moving along, it's time to take a look at who in our team needs to undertake some development. One of the principal tasks of a good leader is to look at ways to develop our teams.

Who to choose and how to implement? Try this basic process.

Look at your business and its processes are there any gaping holes that you keep filling with contractors? Are their members in your team who want to do something different? These are the two main drivers. Perhaps you can have a win-win situation is there a team member who wants to move to another task and they have the skills to plug the teams capabilities.

Take the teams capabilities and write a task list for "Someone" that would solve the teams capabilities. This will give us two things: firstly it will tell us what the end result needs to be; secondly it will give us a way to identify the knowledge and skills gaps in the new person.

So run the process and it will help us to see what we would need to do to bridge the gap. Look at the person who is interested in upgrading to this new position and develop the necessary competencies.

Next it's time to sit down the person and have a heart to heart, help them to identify the upskilling and what effort would be required. Be honest and see if they will come on board, if they do then you will have killed two birds with one stone. You will have given the team member an opportunity for growth and will enhance your teams capability.

One of the highlights for a leader is to see our team develop and improve the productivity and capabilities of our team.

How to Counsel for Better Performance

2010-03-23T10:59:00.005+11:00

With the first quarter almost up, it's time for some action to get our team finely focused on getting to top performance.
Recently we spoke of checking out each members goal and seeing if anyone was falling behind. Well that's the easy part. Now for the tough stuff how do we counsel them to bring them back on track and alignment with our yearly goals.

Try this simple plan to sharpen up your ability to provide meaningful counselling to a team member who is falling behind.

Step one. Go back and assess the goals. Are they still relevant? Are they still possible? Do they have all the right resources? This will help us to understand what is the root cause.

Step two. Come up with a plan to get back on track. Do they need more resources? Is there something they are not doing right and you know how to do it better? Formulate a simple plan to get back on track.

Step three. Sit down with the person who owns these goals, and work through the following:

1. Ask them to rate their performance. What is going well and what areas are they feeling they need to improve on. Listen carefully and make notes where they agree or disagree with your assessment and your corrective path. Do not interrupt and let them go through their whole self-assessment.

2. Open you discussion by telling them what aspects they are doing well, be sure to show you agree with them if they mentioned this during their discussion. This will make them feel you are appreciating what they are doing and noticing the things that are coming along.

3. Next you need to point out two or three but no more areas that they are not performing well, again point out where you agree and where you disagree. Give specific examples of poor performance and offer a maximum of two alternate courses of action they may have taken to avoid such performance. Test they understand your assessment of their progress and make sure they can see a better way to do this in the future.

4. Lastly close the discussion by reinforcing what a good contribution they are making and their good performance aspects to date. Explain to them they they can be even better when the also concentrate on the aspects you discussed previously. Give them and idea of when you will meet again to further discuss their improved performance.

Our role as leader means its our responsibility to address any poor performance and correct so our team can get stronger and more productive. Try my simple system next time you need to counsel one of your team members and let me know if it was a success for you.

Is your team on track to meet their goals

2010-03-17T20:27:00.004+11:00

As the end of the first quarter approaches, it's time for us as the leaders of our teams to take a few moments to check that everything is on the right course. Earlier in the year we looked at setting goals and what we wanted our teams to achieve this year.

Now as the end of the first quarter quickly rolls in, its time to take action.

Follow this simple plan and see how it goes.

Firstly take each member and revisit their goals for the year. Next chat with each member and look at the progress of their plans. By this stage each goal should have a detailed plan and we should expect to see the first few points have been completed.

Next we need to evaluate if each member and their plans are on track. Work through each member's plans and develop appropriate feedback and consider how to bring any lagging plans back on track.

Early intervention will give you the best chance of correcting any issues. By this early checking you have enough time to get any wayward plans corrected and back on track.

Providing feedback on goals that are running off the track is never easy - but at the end of the day all good leaders know that keeping all our team members on track is the way to maintain a focussed team that will win in the end.

Treat your team fairly or risk poor morale

2010-02-20T12:14:00.003+11:00

Some disturbing news over the last few weeks, makes you think if the board of directors is very well advised when it comes to treating all your team members fairly.

Consider this three weeks ago the company broadcasts to its employees that there will be no annual pay rise this year. Most team members take this on the chin and accept times are tough and at least I still have a job to go to.

Imagine the hurt these team members fell when last week the company announces it has increased the CEO's salary by some 20%. Wow what a way to smash your companies morale.

While both announcements were in there usual sugar coated spin, the team members were not impressed and many were openly upset by the double standards applied.

I doubt many team members would disagree that some people get paid more than others as they have special skills to contribute. However when people are treated vastly different it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those involved.

Next time you need to make big announcements, perhaps you should take a step back and take a reality look to see that everyone in your organisation is being treated in a fair manner.

By treating everyone in a fair and reasonable manner, you stand a great chance of maintaining your team's morale and building towards the future.

Cross training to strengthen your team

2010-02-14T13:01:00.003+11:00

As the year gets well and truly underway, now is the time to look at how you can strengthen your team.

Take a few moments and look at all the tasks your team has to complete over the year, write these down in a list leaving three lines between each entry.

Next take a look at all your team members and match a name against each entry as the main person to complete this task. From here work through the list again and find a backup person to each task. Finally work through the list again looking for alternate backup people who could do this task.

The important step now is to look through each of your backup people and rate them on their capability to do their backup task, anyone who score less than seven out of ten you need to highlight.

Analyse your list and look for the area you just identified as a weakness in the depth of your teams capabilities. Consider the impact to your team if the principal person got sick or left your team.

Now it's time to earn your money, talk to each member you have identified and come up with an action plan to get them cross-trained to a higher level of competency. Some members will resist while some will see it as an opportunity to grow. Its your job to ensure that by half-way through the year you have covered all these gaps.

As the year progresses look to exercise your backup people from time to time to ensure they keep their skills up to an acceptable level. Be sure to provide feedback as each one of these backup people go through their paces and make sure they know why they are doing this.

By ensuring our teams are balanced with a good level of cross-skilling our team will develop a better appreciation of the other team members and what they do, but also you will have a far greater team with depths of skillful people to call on.

Team members to work task evaluations

2010-02-07T18:18:00.003+11:00

At the start of most business years we get to hear all about the goal setting process and having each member of the team be assigned some goals to drive the productivity and performance of the team over the next twelve months.

Today I want to take a step back from this and look at making an evaluation of all the tasks your team needs to complete and considering if the right people are doing the right jobs.

One of the big dissatisfiers in the workplace and within our teams is when members are doing tasks that they don't enjoy, or are not part of their job descriptions. Consider this: you hire some young college graduate who specialises in writing software. As it turns out he is a wiz with numbers and spreadsheets. A couple of months later you're getting bogged down for a project review and you need someone to pull the profit and loss statements together. He takes the job on hand and does a wonderful job. Now six months later he is complaining about not being happy with his job, and sadly when we look back and review what went on we see that we have moved his tasking away from software development and now more than 60% of his time is involved in managing the books for the projects.

This is not an uncommon scenario as we look to get the tasks for team completed sometimes we overlook who is doing what and are they the best person for this job.

There are lots of ways to protect our teams from the this type of mis-direction, here's one simple way.

Firstly take a look at all the major tasks your team needs to complete, write the task out on the top of a sheet of paper. now take each team members Job Description (JD) and highlight the top four or five entries (this is what our members see as their principal tasks).

Secondly work your way through each team members job description and find any that have a first or second entry that matches to the tasks you put on each sheet of paper. Write down the name of the JD and the person under this task. Work your way through all your team members assigning their first and second tasks to your list of team jobs.

At the end of this process you should have a good split of names to each task, sure some will be primarily doing this task while others maybe assisting.

Watch out for any tasks that only have one person assigned or worse still have no-one assigned. if this is the case you need to do some research and find out if: the job is not being done at all, if someone is doing it as an extra.

Now we need to develop an action plan to plug these holes. If some is doing a task that is quite obtuse to their JD it is very important we talk with them and gain feedback and to why they do it and are they happy to do it. Maybe you need to acknowledge there is a gap and come up with a strategy to fix the issue or at the very least work out some form of compensation so they keep doing the job while you find a way to fix your workplace. Remember if you have landed someone with the task of being janitor or something they find not stimulating they will usually become unhappy in your team and want to move on.

By taking a holistic view of our team members, the jobs at hand and the team members expectations we can ensure the work is properly allocated and maintain a good team spirit.

A Logical approach to planning your year's goals

2010-01-17T19:09:00.004+11:00

Lots of us struggle to put a decent plan together at the start of each year and then get to the end of the year and wonder what happened. Often our boss is to busy to sit down and detail out what his/her expectation is.

Try this simple process by yourself then put your plan to your boss and see how it goes. By taking the initiatve and presenting your boss with a plan for the year you can dctate the terms in many cases.

First let's go back and assess how 2009 was, what were the major accomplishmnets, were there any issues that your feedback suggested could have been completed better?

Write down a list of the ten tops tasks that need to be done for 2010, at this stage just jot them down as bullet points. Now draw columns down beside each of these tasks. Heading for the first column, "Complexity" now note against each task a scale of 1 - 5 with 1 very complex and 5 as simple or run rate. The heading for the next column is business impact and note against each task a score of 1-5 with 1 reasonable impact and a 5 as very large impact. The next column is to be headed up "resources", again allocate a score of 1 - 5 where a 1 is very limited resources available for the task and a 5 is most or all resources are available.

The next phase is to add the totals across the columns and then reorder your list of highest score to lowest score, this simple prioritising mechanism will help you decide what are the tasks that will give you the best impactg with the higest likelihood of success.

Now the task is to set each of these tasks so they have measures we can feedback to our boss, and a timelne so we know what needs to get done at each stage of the year so we can make these goals by December 2010.

Measurement is often a tough one especially if our task is re-active to customers, in this case the best thing to do is usually to look at a measurement linked to meeting demand within a given timeframe and accuracy or quality aspect.

Timelines can also be tricky, especially if the task involves feedback for the call to action, in this case we may need to a lot of early work for later results.

By learning and setting great goals we can ensure our team is always stretching forward to improve business as we progress through the year.

Team Bonding through Social Activities

2009-12-22T18:56:00.003+11:00

Does your team have a social club? Have you considered what having a social club might do for your team?

Lots of work places have a social club that is endorsed by their team leaders, what have they found? Groups that have a social club tend to be strong in that the team members have another avenue for members to bond and share experiences.

Perhaps it is in your interest to financially support a social club maybe on a $1 for $2 ratio or what ever is affordable. By doing this your team members will get to see that you care for them in more ways than simply working at your daily chores.

Social clubs often organise various functions away from the workplace that allow all members to meet in a different setting and experience. The outcome of this is that the workforce becomes better attuned to each other as they see their work friends in a foreign environment.

If your team doesn't have a social club consider what the cost to you would be and think through what the benefits will bring to your team. At the end of the day it is important to us that our teams bond and continue to work well together, maybe a social club is just what we need.

Celebrations with your team are so important

2009-12-09T21:01:00.006+11:00

It's that time of year depending where you are in the world, Thanksgiving, Deepavali, Hari Raya just past and Christmas around the corner. Have you taken time out to celebrate with your team.

Celebrating with your team is an important activity, as it helps everyone feel connected and appreciated, sure we may come from different backgrounds and the like but we can all celebrate these occasions together. The reward for putting a celebration together will be well received and maintains the spirit of the team.

Most people don't mind what the reason is behind the celebration, they really get a buzz from the group celebrating together. The benefits far outweigh an hour off work and the cost of a lunch or picnic. Most teams respond very positively to these events. it gives everyone a chance to meet as equals in a different environment, the bond can be quite incredible.

Maybe your team just completed a big project, if so take the opportunity to celebrate, you will be soon notice the team morale lift, this will keep the team going as you settle back into the normal run-rate.

As leaders it is important for us to take these annual opportunities and create a celebration for our teams.

How's your end of year looking?

2009-11-29T19:50:00.004+11:00

Almost year end, some of us will be really happy about that and some will go into a small panic. Which are you? How are your goals shaping up? How is the bottom-line looking? As the leaders of our teams we need to get things in order and get set for the new year.

With a month left to close out the year, perhaps its time to move through a quick check-list to ensure your in good shape for the new year.

Close out any final deals.
Ensure all collectibles are sent to customers early.
Invoices are all cleared.
Tax on incomings and outgoings are noted and actioned.
Personnel matters are in line, leave liabilities, final year performance interviews.

Be sure to check your forecast for Q1, do you have sufficient:

cash-flow
skilled and unskilled labour
forward orders.

With some planning now, leaders can be sure to finish off the year in fine style and you'll know your team is ready to hit the ground running as the new year kicks off.

Make Your Team Feel Secure

2009-11-07T15:37:00.003+11:00

We have talked about keeping your team in loop and keeping them up-to-date with what's going on and giving them feedback on their performance. Have you stopped and considered their security?

Security means different things to different people, do you have an answer for the security of your team? Do you know what makes them feel insecure? Perhaps it's time for some subtle questioning here and there to determine the answer to these two questions.

Next time you talk with your team as a whole it is appropriate for you to touch on the subject of security. Is their job secure? Do we have enough on-going work to ensure they are not about to be let go. Do we have enough cash flow to ensure everyone's pay is guaranteed to be in the bank next week. As individuals are they each doing their job to a good standard so there is no pressure to replace them.

For our high performers do they know we have the confidence in their abilities, skills and knowledge that we will allow them to take on special roles which may or may not fail and they can be secure knowing their position is secure.

As leaders of our teams it is vitally important that we make each and every member of our team as secure as we can, because without this worry they can focus on being the best they can.

Leaders enforce quality for success

2009-10-24T12:09:00.003+11:00

I have been travelling again working with a company and visited two of their customer reference sites. At one site the customer was very positive and co-operative, working as a team with the main contractor. At the other site the customer was suspicious and constantly calling the company in to explain one choice or another.

At both locations I was lucky enough to witness the companies work and several of the deliverables. What I found was scary, the same company to me looked and acted like two different teams with very different attitudes and styles.

Interestingly at the "happy" site all the workers had a great sense of motivation and spent a lot of time with their customers working through the project plan, consulting when decisions had to made. At this site it was not surprising to find all the guys working late to fine tune the system. On inspection of the work-site the quality of the finished product and its documentation was absolutely flawless.

While at the site where the customer was less than happy, the workers were not acting as a team, they made decisions for their customer without consultation. This lack of consultation then prompted the customer to demand a "white" paper explaining every decision and why the final outcome was adopted. At this site many of the workings had a very flexible approach to work - almost to the point of the team not knowing when members would turn up each day. On inspection of the worksite the finished product was poorly presented and there was no documentation.

So on pondering this I went back and analysed why this situation had developed, both worksites had similarly qualified teams, both sites worked from the same process and equipment policies and manuals. This prompted me to examine the project team leaders, this produced a stark difference. One was a team player who was resolute about providing the highest quality in everything and constantly spending time with the customer to ensure the customer was satisfied with what they were to gain from the project. The other leader was stand-offish and driven by delegation usually by email, he also spent plenty of time with the customer, he appeared to be driven by completion and financial goals.

What did I take away from this week on the road, by focusing on a quality outcome, one leader had developed a co-operative and happy customer. we can learn from this and make it our quest to build and deliver high quality outcomes from our teams.

Time for some Team Maintenance

2009-10-17T17:43:00.004+11:00

When is the last time you spent some serious time on your team members. As the leaders of our teams it's important we take some time out of our schedule to look at team maintenance.

So what is team maintenance? Team maintenance, just like other forms of maintenance - it is looking over our team with a fine-tooth comb and applying any maintenance fixes now before we have any breakdowns.

Lets analyse each member of our team and give them a rating on:

performances, such as output and creativity,

behaviours, such as team cohesiveness, happy disposition, involvement, and motivation.

What we need to look for are any marked signals of improvement or falling standards.

By looking to see how our team members are performing and behaving we can spot any changes, once changes are identified we need to drill in and consider what is/was the cause and effect.

As good leaders with this early analyse we can spot these changes up and we can take decisive action to address any issue to bring our team back on track.

With some regions in the world starting to see signs of recovery, now is an important time to ensure our teams are happy and motivated. If we fail to take action we risk our team members walking out the door as opportunities arise.

Leaders, Let them get on with it!

2009-09-28T20:58:00.003+10:00

One of the major challenges for many leaders is, how much do you need to supervise your team? Lots of us have had that overpowering and micro-managing boss, and I bet most of us hated it. So how do we avoid this situation.

As the leader of our team it is important we set the goals and give our team members all the information they need. Then comes the hard part for us, how do we carefully step back and let them get on with doing the job?

One effective way to do this is to brief your team of the goal and expectations, then we need to set the team to work. Next look at the time allocated to the task and split it into three. These three time periods are for you, to check back with your team and the progress towards the goal.

After the first period has expired, casually check back with the team and its overall progress, check to see if anyone is completely lost or doing the task in an inappropriate way. If the task is coming along then maybe a few words of encouragement but other than that leave them alone to complete the task.

After the second period is up again quick check in to see that time and quality are on your side, again address any under-performers. At this check it is critical to assess that the team will make the goal.

At the final time period, check the task is done to your satisfaction and give praise to those who have done a great job.

By being careful about our supervision, we as leaders can ensure that our teams meet their goals and we aren't in our teams face and allow them the space to get on and do their jobs. Our teams will appreciate we take the time to check and correct any early problems without micro-managing our teams.

Keeping your goals on track

2009-09-06T22:26:00.003+10:00

So September has just rolled in, time to go back and study this years' goals.
What I like about doing this as the third quarter closes, is we can get a really good idea how our run-rate is going and yet we still have three months to redress any areas that slipped away.

So lets get to work, firstly take a trip down memory lane and revise your mission statement - what is it that I'm to do!

Now take each goal and analyse your progress are you on-target ahead or sadly in arrears. Put those that are on target or ahead aside and lets look at those that are amiss.

Pull this goal apart one bit at a time, try to find out why it is in such a state, were some of our assumptions wrong? was expected support sadly missing? Did we push it aside as it was a bit to tough?

Once you have a list of deficiencies, now address each one with an action plan, how can you drum up the support you need, how can you get some more sales/prospects in front of you. These actions plans are what's going to get you back on track to accomplish your years plan. Make them detailed, put dates on them for a finish!

Reviewing your yearly plan is a job every good leader must do, not only does it help you keep track of your goals it gives momentum to get in and correct things before the end of the year.

Leaders plan and prepare for success

2009-08-31T20:15:00.003+10:00

Today I want to talk about planning and preparation. I was travelling again and visited an old work friend who over dinner expressed a high level of frustration as he was preparing for a big project and most of his requirements to start his task hadn't been met. He spoke with his team leader, who didn't seem to understand that my friend couldn't start his portion of the work, until the other teams completed their efforts.

Do you take the time to truly understand what your team members need? Do you understand what is involved in their preparation?

What had happen to my friend was he was to give a technical presentation on a piece of complicated software. The software engineers were having issues and finished their portion of the project at midnight the night before my friend was to present. Surprisingly he had to go in blind and some aspects didn't work. The end result the customer was not happy, they hadn't got the outcome they were looking for. My friend was upset as it looked like he didn't know his subject as he had trouble with all the customised aspects of the presentation. I wonder what the outcome would have been if the project had finished on time and my friend had the couple of days preparation he had requested. My friend confronted his team leader to express why there were so many issues, his reply, well they finished before your presentation so what was the trouble, my friend exploded when was he to be briefed on these changes, when was he to practice the demonstrations. His boss simply shrugged and said I can't tell the engineers what to do.

When you set up your plan do you allow for slippage, do you have a stop/go plan in place depending on the progress of the work leading up to each event. Often its better to cancel early and get the whole thing right rather than fly be the seat of your pants and then look less than average because you team has to cuff their part of the operation. If you talk to the professional project managers they will all tell you it is important to build in some periods of no new work to allow all the prerequisite work to be completed and documented.

As leaders it's important the we are meticulous plan and prepare for our team's work. nothing will damage our credibility faster than asking your team to do their work when they don't have all the things they need.

Keeping your team in the loop

2009-08-25T19:55:00.000+10:00

Good leaders keep their teams in the loop

Do you brief your team? Do you talk with them on a regular basis so they know what's going on. Do they know how you are feeling about the team performance? Part of being a great leader is taking the time to talk with your team and explain the things that need some action, the things that are producing great results and especially to share any victories the team has achieved. By taking this time the team will feel more cohesive and in-tune with what you have to say about your vision and your strategic plans.

Easy said than done, do you have a method for moving from start through all the aspects you want to cover and concluding on a high note. Her is a simple strategy you can adopt to suit the situation.

Start with today's current situation, where are we in the big picture, what's recently happened since the last brief. Next consider any big win's be sure to share these with the whole team and if you wish to single people out for outstanding work be sure you mention all the players. From here consider the team progress on the run-rate activities, are we behind, on or ahead of plan.

Next move onto what is the objective for the next period, be sure to touch all departments and their various groups, single out any special deals we are working on, so the team can feel they are including in maintaining the current position and they are assisting the next phase or deal.

Form here we need to move onto execution, how are we going to deliver our promise to the team, how are we looking to make improvements that could see our group move to a point of excellence.

Lastly are their any routine admin or logistics that need to be highlighted to the team.

An old coach of mine always said to me a good briefing starts on a high note, address one or two points that need correcting and ends on a high note, if you structure your brief this way your team members will feel motivated to continue working well and producing great results for the team.

Chart your leadership career path

2009-08-15T18:33:00.001+10:00

As a Leader we are always thinking about how to improve our team, through maintaining the morale, offering challenging work, looking for opportunities to grow your team members. But have you stopped to take a look at your own path. You need to take control and through careful planning achieve your career goals too. As you grow you become more valuable and your career opportunities will blossom.

This may sound a little corny but you need to come up with a plan so you always know what the next step is and what you should be doing to get there. Here's a simple three step plan to get you started.

Step One. What's my current situation? Sometimes this is hard to gauge. Sit down and pretend you met a guy at the bar and you hit it off. At the end of the night he says " Hey I'm really glad we met I'd like you to come and work for my company"! with that he gives you his business card and says send me you CV by the end of the week I'm sure we have an opening for you". Get over the shock and sit down and write you CV. Be sure to be honest and draft away.

Step two. What's the future for me? Again this is tough but lots of people just wander through life and have no real goal they are aspiring towards. Well how do we start this one? This time pretend you're at a different bar and you meet someone who is a prospective partner. Tell me about yourself and where you'll be in five and ten years time? By stepping back from today and focusing on an interim and a long term goal it will help to clarify the "End Point" for our exercise.

Step three. Stand up your CV against your interim and long term goal, take note of the Delta areas. Maybe some of the following questions might fall out at you.

Should I look for work experience in another function, industry to round out my skills?

Should I attend some retraining or upskilling of my professional qualifications?

Should I transfer - even at a lower rate - to get into the area I want to be in?

Should I find a mentor to provide some advice from a different perspective?

There maybe lots of other questions and areas you need to focus on to get onto or turbo charge your path to your goals.

Some tips to help you along the way.
Every job you ever have is an opportunity for you to increase the value of your work for yourself and your boss, as you add more value your worth will skyrocket alongside.
Take calculated risks - this will ensure your you expand your knowledge and skills and demonstrates your ability to move outside your defined role.
Beware of becoming stale, regularly monitor your progress, if you stay too long you risk losing momentum and falling behind.
Take responsibility for your career path - no one cares as much as you so you should be vigilant to ensure you are always moving in the right direction.

While we are always looking to do the best for our team we also have to include time to do the best for ourselves. As the leaders its important that we are moving forward so we can also move our teams along on our journey.

Feedback the key to improving your leadership

2009-08-02T20:47:00.003+10:00

So we all want to become better leaders. If only it was as simple as giving it a few moments thought. What are your strategies to improving your leadership? What do you have in your arsenal, that makes you the leader your team wants to follow?

Feedback is by far the best method you can employ to identify your strong points and your points that need some work. Feedback is often given when mid and end of year reviews are done, however these periods are often filled with other discussions, such bonuses, extra duties and so on.

Recently a friend of mine was invited to a group chat with his boss. At first my friend was a little taken back, why would his boss want to talk with him, as he rarely paid him the time of day. On investigation some colleagues said this happened a few times a year and that the boss was seeking feedback on the state of the company and would throw around some ideas on what might improve any perceived issues.

Have you set aside some time to have your team members speak candidly to you about how your team is performing, what's the morale like, are people feeling empowered, what can be done to make work a better and more productive place, what can you do better to help the team.

Seeking feedback can be a very enlightening time and it can also make you feel pretty lousy. The trick is to stand back and not take offense to anything said. Be sure to take notes. Particularly if your told some things you don't want to hear. It may take some time for you to adopt the right frame of mind and consider how to address the issue.

If you can work out how to obtain honest and candid feedback, you will be presented with a fantastic opportunity to take steps to improve your leadership. After all the stronger you are as a leader the more likely it is that your team will perform strongly.

Maintaining your team through Inclusiveness

2009-07-26T14:15:00.004+10:00

Have you considered how you maintain your team. We have discussed before about the various leadership traits and particularly how to maintain your team morale.
I was travelling again recently and in this workplace the people seems totally polarised, they were either very enthusiastic or were in a state of doom and gloom.

This got me thinking, what has happened or how is it that workers from the same organisation seems to have such vastly different opinions about the workplace and what was going on.

On further investigation I think I stumbled onto what had happened. One section of the workplace were sent off for a series of team building activities - that for all intents and purpose sounded very successful. These members came back to the workplace suitably revved up and ready to get stuck into another tough year.

The other group of people simply got to hear all about what a wonderful activity the first team enjoyed. The second team, then developed an 'us and them' attitude almost to the point of resentment.

Interestingly the management team didn't offer the second team any way of joining the first team or providing an alternative activity.

Consider the writings of every leadership pro in history and they will all tell you that one of "Man's" basic requirements after Food Shelter, warmth etc is to feel included in the group.

I look forward to visiting this team next year and see if there is any long term effect.

As leaders it is important that we find a mechanism to embrace inclusiveness into our dealings with our teams. By not taking a view to ensure all members are included we run the risk of our team running at less than optimal. The pay off for us, is when we are inclusive, our members will feel a better sense of belonging, and more willing to go the extra mile to make the team a winner.

Practical Project Management for Leaders

2009-07-09T19:18:00.002+10:00

As the leaders of our teams it is important for us to carefully plan out our projects to ensure the start on time and are successfully completed.

Many of us are used to managing a to-do list, prioritising the events and working our way through the list. Project management is quite similar, with a few small changes. Lets go through the basic steps.

Project management requires us to look at the overall project and break it down into all its major steps. Once you have these steps look to see if there is an obvious sequence to complete these. If there is a path then arrange these in this order.

Take these tasks and examine them one at a time. Look at each step within each of these major tasks, and insert any interrim tasks to make each of these major tasks complete. This will leave you with list of all the small steps you need to manage to get your project completed.

Next task is to now look at each one of these tasks and assign a time for the task. If you don't know then find someone who knows how to do the task and ask them for an estimate of the time required.

Now lets look at this list, we should have a list of every task and an estimate of the time it will take. Between each major task insert some time as a buffer, this will give you some breathing space for those inevitable little dramas.

Next take your list and add two further columns, one for personal resources required. Can this task be done by one personal or are several required. Does this task need someone with special skills. This column is going to help us identify who will be doing the task. The next column is a space for you to list out all the materials you need to get this task done.

Common errors people tend to under-estimate are:

Preparation time
Materials shortages
Skilled personnel.

Re-examine you list, have you got all the steps, have you identified all the skills, materials and resource for the job. Are there any obvious bottle-necks? What can you do to clear the way?

With some time spent in the planning stage your project management will lead to a successful project and this will ensure your team comes out on top.

Keeping the Communication lines open

2009-07-02T20:30:00.003+10:00

As leaders it's important to maintain communication with our team members. Have you considered what its like for your team members if they don't feel that your communicating with them. How do you feel when your boss keeps you in the loop, doe it make you feel empowered, of course it's no different for your own team.

Recently I caught up with an old work colleague, he was pretty down in the mouth about his current work situation. Apparently he has a new boss of almost one year. His new boss never shares his thoughts on the business or how well my friend is doing. Because of this lack of communication my friend is feeling very insecure.

How do we avoid creating a situation like this?

Keep your year goals in the front of your mind, how are we as a team coming along with these, what can we do to make a bigger impact, how is each team member contributing. With these few ideas updated regularly we have a ready stream of big picture views to share with our team.

Moving down a step, make sure we understand the various roles that our team members perform, this allows us to personalise by asking our team members to share their views on their most loved or hated part or their role. What is important in this step is to take the person view of how each member is enjoying their work.

If we can take the time to keep communicating with our team members they will feel more connected to us, their leaders and feel more valued as a team member.

Lifting Team Performance at Mid Year

2009-06-24T19:04:00.000+10:00

As it's mid-way through the year and many of us have had to commit to goals raising our team's performance. Do you have a plan how you're going to achieve this? Try this simple approach and see how it works for your team and its ability to meeting the new and higher goals.

Step one stand back from the team and identify who your best performers are. Now also categorise those members you consider average and those who are weakest. We will work with these three groups to derive our improvement goals.

Step two identify the four top jobs that need the most performance improvement. Look at each of these jobs and develop four questions you can ask to develop a good understanding of how each person does this series of tasks.

At this stage you should have developed a matrix with four job tasks, and corresponding four questions for each task to gauge the performance, skill, knowledge and actions that each member takes to complete these tasks.

Armed with these questions spend some time with your top performers and ask them your questions.

Take these responses and your own ideas and draft a plan how any mid-year corrections need to be applied.

Schedule time with each of your team members, spend some time to understand how they see their performance to date. Does their view match yours? maybe some options need to be placed on the table. Be sure each of your team members know they are on-track, ahead or behind. Also be sure to plant the tasks you want to see completed by the end of the year.

With candid feedback your team will continue to understand where they are heading and will know what is required of them to get the team to the finish line.

Delivering Criticism

2009-06-11T14:51:00.000+10:00

In my last post we discussed dispute resolution. Moving on from this, is a short discussion on delivering criticism. Through criticism we give our team members an opportunity to further develop and improve. However the art of delivering criticism is an area where many of us struggle to deliver in the most appropriate manner.

Leaders who resolve incidents require a method to criticise in an ingrained and diplomatic way addressing the problem. This must be delivered so the recipient does not feel that it is antagonistic, insulting, attacking or punitive, because if this is the case we will have failed as leaders to these team members.

How can you know if your criticism is is being effective? Well in the medium to long term you will see this in observing the positive results. Your team members make fewer mistakes and any negative behaviours vanish from their attitude.

Criticising our team members can be difficult and uncomfortable, but it is an inevitable result of leading a team to producing great results.

Look to balance the importance of the message, with the importance of delivering the criticism in a way that does not undermine the feedback, but encourages its acceptance and generates motivation to achieve the correction.

Resist rash and impulsive demeaning attacks. Be sure to approach the criticism in a thoughtful and not a reactive manner. This way those observing can see you have considered the options and are not shooting from the hip.

Start with a positive statement, then layer in how things may have been improved, and finish with an affirming statement that blends the good idea moving to a great idea with the adjustments.

Some ideas to consider:
Get the facts straight.
Timing - when should it be delivered.
Don't criticise in public.
Use open-ended questions to establish all the information.
Control the situation.
Don't criticise the person - rather focus on the action.
Don't use You or I to much.
Tackle the main points - don't sweat the small stuff.

A tough subject to get right, but one that done properly will ensure your team continues to develop to the point of excellence and beyond.

How to Arbitrate a Dispute

2009-06-04T14:28:00.003+10:00

As leaders we have to deal with our teams, and invariably every so often there is areas of conflict and disputes that need to be resolved. No one enjoys resolving disputes but when you adopt a common process and treat members fairly, they will come to appreciate you for maintaining the teams harmony.

When we need to arbitrate a dispute, it is usually through a two-phased approach that we can achieve a good level of result for all involved.

Phase one requires a clarification focused phase, followed by a resolution phase, by ensuring you complete phase one before tackling phase two you will gather all the appropriate information and not "jump the Gun".

In phase one you need to discuss separately with each party to:

Develop a clear understanding of the differences each party holds,

Gain mutual acceptance that all parties have legitimate positions, though not necessarily agreeable.

In phase two you need to help move the parties toward an agreeable common understanding:

Encourage movement toward integrating the differing positions to find common ground,

Ensuring each party is contributing and no-one is giving more than the other.

By breaking down disputes so each party can develop an understanding of the other parties view we can bring the groups together and the dispute will die into a common understanding from the given original standing.
It is important as leaders to keep on top of dispute and resolve in a timely manner so that it does not get out of control and damage the groups output and cohesion.

6 Action Steps for Performance Oriented Leaders

2009-05-25T18:47:00.005+10:00

How do you align yourself as a performance oriented leader? How do you ensure your actions assist your goal of improving the performance of your team? The following six steps are a general blueprint for what you need to do on a consistent basis to move your leadership along.

1. Give your team members regular, specific, observable behaviour feedback.

Feedback is one of the fundamental activities you can do to interact with your team and gently guide them down a development line to gradually improve. Care needs to be taken to ensure you observe the behaviours you wish to reinforce and those that you wish to correct, you cannot use generalisations as then the recipient will not identify with the behaviour. As such it is important to observe and note exactly the behaviours you want to comment about. While this will take a big effort on your behalf because the comments are specific to the recipient they will be able to relate to the action, it then is up to us put together a development action plan to improve the situation.

2. Make Timely decisions.

Leaders need to make decisions to keep the team moving along in the right direction, it's important as a performance oriented leader to continually adjust the plan and the actions to keep the team focused on the big picture - the output of the team. Without timely decisions the team will get stale and loose its edge, as things go up and down it is up to the leader to make the decisions needed at that time, not after a period of procrastination or in the spur of the moment without considering all the factors.

3. Encourage creative ideas.

With the implementation of new and creative ideas, our team's can lift their performance to new levels, Why restrict the teams thinking to just yourself, embrace creative ideas from the team members, you may find some real gems. Setup a process where new and creative ideas can be aired and tested to see what results can be gain by implementing these ideas.

4. Reinforce the lines of command and authority.

Does your workplace have a hierarchy, do you have formal lines of command and authority? Nothing will upset the whole organisation more than people who ignore these established protocols. Take care to demonstrate your fitting and willingness to work in this system and demand your team also work through these established chains.

5. Be accessible to your work circle of acquaintances.

Are you accessible for your team to approach when they need to discuss issues with you. It is often quite intimidating for members to approach their leader/manager/boss, you need to identify this and drop what your doing and make yourself available to handle the issue there and then. If you can do this your team members will respect you as a proactive and caring leader.

6. Provide personal support.

We all have problems from time to time, it's important that you support your team members, a kind ear when things are tough will be remembered by your team members. This is because your team will see this as a personal association, as such you need to keep the tone at an appropriate level. However team members often complain my boss doesn't take the time to help me and understand my problems, by ensuring you provide this personal support to your team they will feel they have a leader who genuinely cares for them. If you can gain this feeling within your team they will be willing to go the extra mile for you when the team needs a special effort.

Take some time to examine your work practices and see how you can include these six steps into your regime and watch the performance of your team improve.

Leadership's vital Attributes

2009-05-18T20:04:00.001+10:00

All great leaders have several typical attributes that they have developed along their leadership journey. I like to refer to them as the four A's of great leadership. These common factors are: Appearance, Attitude, Aggressiveness and Action.

Appearance is vital many people sum up their business partners, clients and friends on the first impression. Take a look at most great leaders and in their own way you will see they have the appearance of looking good and importantly looking as they are in control.

Attitude, have you got the right attitude, focusing in on the outcome and working steadily until you get there. Do you spread your attitude to your team to stay positive and keep working through all the issues to get the product and service just right.

Aggressiveness, are you ready to move forward as soon as you can see some advantage, with this type of aggressiveness you can seize the moment and maximize your output.

Action, of all the leadership traits taking action is the one that gets you the best value, people around you can see your action and will want to follow you to be part of the action.

Although it seems simple if you can maintain and improve your four A's of leadership, you will find that your team members will be keen to improve their efforts and be part of the winning combination.

Leaders develop Followers

2009-05-11T22:18:00.004+10:00

As a leader is it critical you have followers. A leader with no followers is unable to harness the power of teamwork to amplify their ideas and elevate the cause.

Maybe its time for you to take stock, for some cultures this is hard to do as we have been brought up to be modest about our own ideas and achievements yet lavish in the praise we dish out to those around us.

But lets see through this for a moment, have you sat down and taken a personal inventory of your strengths as a leader? Have you critically looked at the members of your team and worked out why they continue to follow you. Sure, some are forced too because the work hierarchy have placed them under you, but when you look carefully you will see the other members around who follow your lead.

Take each of these people and consider what it is that you bring to the table to keep them in your team. Perhaps its your abilities in planning, delegation, decision making, technical competence, communication just as a small sample list. One of the most sort after skills is a leaders ability to deal with people, you hear of it time and time again, we wish we had a leader who could deal with the people in the team to keep their focus and lead them through tough times while continually developing them to meet tomorrow's challenges.

By taking stock of your great leadership abilities it allows you some observations, firstly you have a list of skills that others see in you, and also it gives you some ideas on areas for improvement.

With luck this simple exercise will show you some of your strengths as a leader that you can be proud of!

So how can we work further on this? your strengths are areas you should identify to develop in the people around you. If you are strong in these areas then chances are you have a great skill that you can share to develop in your followers. By giving freely of your skills, you will further strengthen and develop these relationships as your team members will quickly see there is something extra in it for them - learning a valuable skill from their leader.

How to improve your priority setting

2009-04-28T20:26:00.003+10:00

Priority setting is a skill needed by all leaders, choosing a course of action and then ensuring each task gets done in the order and way you want is critical for your
success, you can only do this by setting the right priority for each of these tasks.

So much to do; so little time in which to do it. Finite resources; infinite needs. People to see, places to go, things to do. No time to say hello, good-bye, I'm late for a very important meeting. Sound familiar? That's life. Everyone has more to do than they can. Organizations have more opportunities than they have the resources to address. The higher up you go in the organization, the more you have to do and the less time you have to do it. Nobody can do it all. It's critical you have to set priorities to survive and prosper.

Be clear about your goals and objectives. What exactly is it you need to accomplish? Use your annual plan and the team strategic plan to understand the mission-critical things that must happen.

Using your goals, separate what you need to do into mission-critical, important to get done, nice to do if time permits, and not central to our goals we are striving to achieve. When faced with choices or multiple things to do, apply the scale and always choose the highest level.

Write down the pros and cons for each option. Check what effect each would have both on the short and long term. Are there cost differences? Is one resource more efficient than the other? Is one apt to be more successful than the other? Think about the interaction of both short- and long-term goals.

Sometimes what you decide to do today will hurt you or the organization later. When making either a short-term or long-term choice, stop and ask what effect this might have on the other.

Be time sensitive. Taking time to plan and set priorities actually frees up more time later. If you just go diving into things hoping that you can get it done on time and find you can't you may wind up in a bad situation. Often you here the cry failing to plan is like planning to fail.

Avoiding making choices often leads to more choices later on, to correct issues that should have been considered up front. Avoiding making choices actually makes life more difficult, as your always in uncharted waters, once a direction is set and you have a priority you know where you're headed.

Be effective rather than busy. Watch out for the activity trap. Effective managers spend about half their time working on one or two key priorities — priorities they described in their own terms, not in terms of what the business/organizational plan said. Further, they made no attempt to work as much on small but related issues that tend to add up to lots of activity. So rather than consuming themselves and others on 97 seemingly urgent and related smaller activities, they always returned to the few issues that would gain the most mileage long term.

Get help from others. When faced with multiple good things to do, pass them by your mentor or a few trusted others around you for their opinion. You don't have to do what they say but having other perspectives is always better than having only your opinion. What tasks can you easily outsource, to you team members or even outside. Perhaps outsourcing some tasks can free up crucial skills.

Setting and operating on priorities isn't a reflective task. Most of life's choices have to be made on the spot, without all of the data. Nobody is ever right all the time under that kind of pressure. Perfectionists have a problem with this. Wait as long as you can and then shoot your best shot.

Take care not to be guided by just what you like and what you don't like. That method of selecting priorities will not be successful over time. Use data, intuition and even feelings, but not feelings alone.

Be sensitive to the time of others. Generally, the higher up you go or the higher up the person you are interacting with is, the less time you and he/she have. Be time efficient with others. Use as little of their time as possible. Get to it and get done with it. Give them an opportunity to open new avenues for discussion or to continue, but if they don't, say your good-byes and leave.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas on how to improve setting priorities for your team. By improving this area our leadership will also improve as we can more effectively get the right tasks done in the best time.

Moving forward with your Strategic Leadership

2009-04-19T20:36:00.004+10:00

Strategic leadership is often described as a leader who always communicates their vision and the path forward. This leader is focused and uncomplicated, they gain their reputation for big picture clarity.

So what are the attributes you need to keep in mind to improve your ability to develop this strategic leadership.

Step one is to develop your own short and crystal clear vision of what your team is all about. You need to practice this so that you can articulate the vision - you may have heard of this as developing your elevator speech.

Step two, take your vision and apply it to the most common issues you know that effect your team. This should lead you to developing a number of scenarios of why and how your vision fits to each of these situations.

Step three, when the opportunity exists fit your scenario to the situation just experienced to show how you vision supports this situation. This will prepare you for being prepared to demonstrate and articulate how your strategic vision applies to your team.

The ability to be a strategic Leader is important in that we need to be able to convey our vision, its times like this when we need to be able to be adopt the strategic leadership to keep our team focused on the big picture and continue to work towards the common goal.

Leaders and their Self-Transformation

2009-04-13T20:29:00.003+10:00

Take a look through history and name any great leader you like, one of the traits your find as you explore their life will be their ability to transform themselves as they learnt new aspects and put them to action within their leadership roles.

By taking a look at our life, our skills, our knowledge, we need to assess where we want to improve and build our own transformation. You may decide that there are many things you want to improve in your life, and that's fine then take a look and choose the topic that will give you the best bang for your buck. Work on this area and then move on to the next.

The seeds of failure show us some areas that we can examine, to look at the reasons for the poor result and take stock of what could have helped us put in a better result next time. We must continually improve your knowledge base and behavioral assets, so that the same error is not made again.

The attitude of continual learning is a characteristic we often see associated with the great leaders throughout history, and it should be one we aspire too.

You must develop a way to identify the content for your self-transformation, your training and coaching is paramount to your long-term success. Maintaining a positive action plan will see your self-transformation slowly develop along with leadership skills.

Improving your judgement

2009-04-01T03:52:00.003+11:00

Have you ever stopped to consider your ability at making judgements? Perhaps today is the day to take some time and consider your ability to make great judgement calls.

Learning to make smart judgement calls takes most of us years of personal development to get to an acceptable state. Our judgement calls are grounded by our honesty and our integrity.

So how do we speed up the process and get better earlier at make these judgement calls? A few times I've talked about developing some close relationships with some mentors. You mentors are the best people who can objectively look at your judgement calls and give you honest advice, why some were great calls and some less than perfect.

Firstly we need to be in the right frame of mind to accept the advice of our mentors - remember why you chose them? their skills in a variety of different areas, their honesty with you, their desire to help you achieve and so on. Then we need to think through why did I make the judgement I did? Did I consider the issues my mentor highlighted to me? We need to connect the dots. Why were some calls better than others? Was it my mood, the stress I was under at the time, were there any preferences I held.

Take some personal time to reflect on how your judgement calls are made.

Next take some quality time to think through a series of these calls, weigh up the advice from your mentors and see if you can develop your own personal strategy how to make more great judgement calls and see if you can isolate the factors that affect you and cause you to make poor calls.

Only through dedicated time directed at improving your judgement calls will you develop your ideas and methods at making better judgement calls and leading your team to more success. Take a break today and make a start at improving this important skill.

Take your Leadership to the next level

2009-03-18T18:32:00.004+11:00

As Leaders we encourage our teams to continually improve their skills and knowledge in the workplace. We do this because we know that as they improve, they will draw the team after them and slowly their improvement will lift the team as a whole. When was the last time you took a step back and considered what actions you should be taking to improve your own leadership skills? The following is a quick list of simple steps you can take every day to steadily improve your leadership.

Develop an insatiable curiosity about everything you touch. Do you know everything about the materials in your workplace? Are there new and improved materials? Are there new and better ways to handle these materials? What about your team members, do you know what makes each one of them tick, why are they working in your team? What their hopes and aspirations? By developing your curiosity you will spark new insights from your team and the surrounds.

Learn and practice creative thinking, have you considered learning about DeBono and his many ideas to creativity? If you don't want to go down the formal path, have you allocated time to daydream and consider what possibilities exist for your team and its tasks? Creative thinking may open some new doors to help you stay ahead of the competition.

Gather some like forces and partners, you can't know everything about everything so find people who have complementary skills they can catapult your team further ahead.

Adopt a culture of allowing your team members to take responsibility and accept any failures as learning experiences, maybe your learning for not setting the goals clearly or maybe learning by your team members in a better way for handling a situation. This will only work if you are open and honest with the team and accept mistakes as part of the learning and growing process.

While on the topic of being honest and open with your team members don't confuse respect with fear or distance, you need the lines of communication open and receptive to candid discussion, If your team members talk to you through fear - odds on you will only get to hear what they think you want to hear or disasters that have gone so far they are not able to be corrected.

Be sure to look for positive behaviours every day, when you openly encourage your team for doing the great things they will respond by trying to do this more often.

Find an opportunity to give a member of your team some enthusiastic feedback, as this will promote their feeling of being uplifted and help them maintain their confidence.

If we can maintain our edge, slowly improving our leadership, our team will grow and be more productive and promote a happier environment. Do you think you can take these steps to move yourself forward?

Good leaders develop and motivate their Specialist staff

2009-03-01T13:46:00.003+11:00

As good leaders in our respective businesses, its important for us to retain great staff. We all know that money only talks so much especially for the specialists. for the specialists they will tell us time and time again that they are held to a job because of other reasons. It maybe the environment, how much they feel valued, technical opportunities within their area and so on.

Because of these varied reasons behind keeping the best staff, we need to come up with a balanced plan identifying and offering some opportunities for our people to grow and feel better about working in our team.

If the guys are specialists in some field, help them to stay at the cutting edge of their discipline. Find some seminars or an extension course. Talk it over with them and get their feel on what it would offer to them. Show you are prepared to commit either with time away from normal work to attend and even pay for the tuition. You may be very surprised how much these type of worker appreciate being the "Keeper" of the technology.

When discussing how this special worker can assist the overall team help focus on the teams critical needs rather than than those topics of their special interest. If you can show them a problem or need in the business that they can solve and explain how much this will aid the whole team, many people will respond very positively to being seen as the person who can solve problems for the common good.

Often specialists are very tunnel visioned to their particular are, gradually expose them to other functions within the team environment, guide them to see how their part of the work is part of the "Big Picture". Many people respond to being a part of the whole thing and feel more connected to the company goal rather than their island of special talents.

We seek out the specialist for our businesses to get those difficult tasks done, and we choose them for their aptitude to get these tasks done. Consider how they will stagnate if they continue in their area and never get any updates on new techniques styles and such. Help them to develop internal and external networks within their fields of expertise, this way they will bring new and improved ideas back to your business and better develop that area. Also many workers feel an added sense of being connected to the group of specialists and they are representing your business. So take an active role and spend some time to see how the networks are developing and what ideas they are generating.

Often our specialists often talk in jargon and rarely consider our customers view help them to acquire interpersonal and influencing skills, give them opportunities to talk to customers, then give them some feedback. Many specialists are afraid of public speaking so you may need to find them a course to go on to establish some basic rules and skills. Then give them some more opportunities to talk with your customers. Customer with problems love to speak to technical people who can explain the issues and solutions to customer problems.

Ask them to coach others, lots of technical specialists love to pass on their knowledge to others so develop some opportunities for them to coach another member of staff or perhaps give a talk on how their particular area contributes to the business.

Assign them some leadership roles to gain experience in working with small teams. This needs to be done very gently as many people find this very daunting. Perhaps start with them sitting in some teams gradually move their role from member delivering specialist perspective, through to a secretary type role to eventually you are at the point where they are in a position and confident enough to lead the team.

If we develop a pathway of drawing our specialists more into our general business, we'll see our people grow and our team will benefit by having a more rounded view and some new creative ideas flowing. If we develop an open and candid dialogue as we expose our specialists to these new avenues I'm sure you will find more of your team members will feel more connected to the group as a whole.

Eight steps to improving your team's performance

2009-02-22T20:16:00.001+11:00

As it's early in the year and many of us have had to commit to goals raising our team's performance. Do you have a plan how you're going to achieve this? Try this simple approach and see how it works for your team and its ability to meeting the new and higher goals.

Step one stand back from the team and identify who your best performers are. Now also categorise those members you consider average and those who are weakest. We will work with these three groups to derive our improvement goals.

Step two identify the four top jobs that need the most performance improvement. Look at each of these jobs and develop four questions you can ask to develop a good understanding of how each person does this series of tasks.

At this stage you should have developed a matrix with four job tasks, and corersponding four questions for each task to gauge the performance, skill, knowledge, attitude and actions that each member takes to complete these tasks.

Step three Armed with these questions spend some time with your top performers and ask them your questions. After you have visited each of your top preformers, look through their answers and group them around common themes. I expect you will get quite a few similarities in their responses. You now have a good reference for what your best workers do to achieve their goals.

Step four talk with your average and poorer performers and gain their insight on how they do these same tasks. Again I'm sure you will get plenty of answers and odds-on some will be quite similar.

Step five analyse the two sets of responses and identify the gaps. It is critical to not jump to a solution at this stage and just look at the data your team has given you.

Step six identify the four biggest gaps between the groups of performers.

Step seven now you have the gaps, group these if possible. Work out a plan to bridge the gaps, some will need formal training, some will need mentoring, some may just need to be shown the big picture. Arrange pee rworkshops where your best performers can share their winning ways with the rest of the team. Next tackle and gaps you can personally address and lastly look to the formal training. Given the current market conditions, this could be a tough ask, so see what you can address within the team.

Step eight work out a mechanism to guage the improvement in your teams performance. Be sure to test this in a short-term and also for the longer term, this will show you the effectiveness of your performance improvement actions.

Give it a try and see how your team responds.

Networking your way to success

2009-02-10T13:01:00.004+11:00

As the leader of your team it's important you have other people from outside who you can turn to and bounce ideas off. How do you find such springboards? Networking is the answer and while many of us dread to do it, it can payoff handsomely and improve our leadership immensely.

Some people seem very natural at networking while most of us find it quite intimidating. take some time to consider the benefits and you will see that this is a skill you must develop.

Establishing a professional set set of acquaintances involves a complex set of variables. You want to meet the amount of positive attention without seeming to be over the top. Consider these ides and see if it can help you along in networking to find your group.

Make your first minute count. It is less important in how you dress as to how you express yourself. In this case the non-verbal signs will be adding more than what you say, ensure your facial expressions, posture and willingness to launch into a conversation all convey a positive attitude and delight in meeting the other person.

Start with a pleasant greeting and an outstretched hand and confidently introducing yourself. This maybe a bit scary the first few times you do this - however the more you try it out and maintain the positive action the more likely you are of success, and if turns out this person ignores you - so what?, at the worst you have wasted 30 seconds.

To get your self into the right frame of mind, consider your ideas as you begin the conversation:
What can I learn from this person?
Am I making this person comfortable so they'll chat with me? and
Am I demonstrating enthusiasm for the chance to know them?
Once you have the conversation happening maintain a positive stance by standing on both feet pointing to the person talking. Look at them directly while talking to them and continue to communicate in warm and genuine manner.

Give it a try and see how you go. If you're new to this then set yourself a modest goal of finding two or three new contacts each week and see how it works out.

The strength you gain from having a strong network of professional contacts will stand you in good stead for many years and as you develop your relationships with them they will be happy to help you improve in your leadership.

How do you find networking? Is it a labour or love? Why not share your results and tell me what works best for you.

Step up to the job like the Sports Stars

2009-02-01T20:38:00.003+11:00

Do you step up to your job as leader like a sports star? It's a big week in sports as I sit here watching Nadal and Federer slugging it out, and waiting for the superbowl to start just 12 hours later. I paused to think, do we take our role as a leader like our sports stars? Do we come out with a strategic plan but are quick to change to a tactical one if things are going against us?

Like the sports stars we should have done our homework and understand our strengths and weaknesses and those of our opponents. We have mappped out our strategy on how we want to achieve our goals this year. We know what is in reserve that we can use, should the need arise.

Mentally we hopefully are prepared to take some shots to the body and come back out on the offensive.

Are we ready to make the calls that need to be made? Are we taking the risk? Are we watching for the opposition to intercept our play? Are we directing our team and resources to get the maximum angle.

By looking outside our normal sphere, sometimes we can take lessons from those around us to improve our leadership and our ultimate goals.

How are you going stepping up to the line and leading from the front? Let me know how your results panned out?

Improving Conversations with your Team

2009-01-27T10:29:00.004+11:00

Communicating with your team is a fundamental skill that can make or break the effectiveness of your team. Have you thought about how you deliver the messages to your team? Have you considered how the content of these messages is put together? Follow these simple rules to improve your messages and your team will get the picture in a clear and succinct way.

To ensure your team understands and retains what you say, tie your messages to what they've told you about this subject. by doing this the messages will have a ring of familiarity to it, this will make it more accepting.

When putting forward an idea think of three supporting points, this will show your team that you have considered the matter and given it some detailed analysis. These points must substantiate your position. Don't ramble on just present the three supporting points and allow the team to consider their merits.

During your conversation pause frequently to avoid stringing to many words together. Project your voice clearly, consider the volume you need for the furthermost person to hear your message.

Avoid multiple qualifiers that weaken your message, as this needlessly shows you have lingering doubts about the validity of your message.

When you need to persuade your employees, limit your speaking to a quarter of the time and allow the person receiving the message to speak the rest of the time. This allows the person to air their views, it also forces you to choose your words carefully.

If you end with opposing views, take care to not blatantly contradict your employee, perhaps rephrase your position and take another tack - "Consider looking at it from this angle"

By taking the time to carefully plan our messages to our team and adopting a clear manner, our teams will be know what we need of them. How do you prepare for discussions with your team? Do you use any of these pointers to plan out your discussions?

Improving your Political Intelligence

2009-01-17T21:18:00.004+11:00

As leaders we need to be very aware of the political road we travel. Many naive leaders assume if they work hard and are honest then people will understand and respect the leader and his team.

Leaders need to know who may oppose them and who will support them, it is very important to know as we set off on a new mission or project. Effective leaders will keep their ear to the ground and consider who will line up in which camp.

As we announce a new project we must have considered if anyones' territory may feel threatened, and who will see the project as an aid to their domain. When we declare the project we are bound to attract some supporters and some detractors.

The success of our project and how the rest or the surrounding team's view the project and its' results will be heavily influenced by people on both sides of the camp.

Take care to identify any detractors and counter their negativity with a raising of awareness of the positive outcomes for the project, be sure to have a ready supply of reasons to support your project. when thinking through this opposition take a few moments to consider the angle the detractor will take and reason through a counter , for how this project is not stealing their thunder or their position but is beneficial for everyone in the organisation.

By identifying and taking action to counter any negative aspects as seen by our peers we will strengthen our position and improve our overall leadership.

Motivate Smarter - not Harder!

2009-01-11T16:59:00.004+11:00

One of the continuous tasks of all good leaders is to motivate the team, keep them moving in the right direction. The leader needs to take care to maintain a constant effort in effective motivation, so look to motivate smarter not harder!

As the leader it's not always possible to motivate every team member once our team gets bigger than a dozen or so. In this situation the smart way to make your motivation work is to look at the popular folks and keep them well motivated as they will in turn motivate those who look to them.

Try this, size up your team and choose the 10-20% who have the most influence across your team, maybe the guy who organises the social functions, another maybe the receptionist who chats to everyone as the come in and out, look to the union rep and so on. If this 10% of the team pass the message to another 6-7 people then the message is gaining access across the team to reach a critical mass position, in that most people have heard the story/reason/resolution of why things are happening as they are.

Once you have identified these people you need to target your motivation towards these guys, as they will pass on the important points to their friends and colleagues keeping the whole team motivated and moving towards the team goals.

Develop a routine to closely interact with your selected personnel passing on your motivation pitch. A little more effort on these 10% will reap rewards from the greater team.

By following this simple strategy you will have more precious time and your team will be helping to maintain their own position. Give it a try I'm sure you'll find you get better results for your team with this small step to improve your leadership skills.

Plan to succeed with the new year

2009-01-04T21:07:00.005+11:00

With the new year just ushered in, it's time to take stock and plan out how we want the new year to pan out.

While we may see some doom and gloom around the globe, we should also look for the positives to help drive us forward. By focussing on the positives we can get in the right frame of mind to tackle our own plan for this year.

We all hear about people who make their New-Year vow - get fit, spend more time with the family and so on. lots of these plans are quickly forgotten and we bumble our way through another year. However this is precisely the time for us to sit back and make a rational plan about how to tackle the new year, what we want to achieve and when we want to get to each milestone along the way. we have spoken at length several times about taking the team's goals and breaking them down into manageable pieces. The next step was to pace some time limits onto to each task so we cannot continue to ignore a call to action and finally getting on and making each small step count towards the achievement of the years' goal.

It is important this week to take some time and set out the years goals, so we can start persuading our team-members to align and work towards these common goals. get the goals written down, develop your rational for each. you don't want to waste the whole January waiting for some guidance on where to be by the end of the year else you may have almost lost a tenth of your time to get on your way to achieving them.

Preparation for succession

2008-12-28T19:44:00.003+11:00

Ever heard the saying, "we're all expendable" or "everyones' replaceable"? I'm sure you have heard this or something similar, and like it or not it's pretty true.

As leaders of our teams it is up top us to ensure the team will survive even if we are not the one leading the team. Are you prepared? Has someone been acting as your second in command.

If all of this is something you haven't put much thought into, perhaps it should be one of your goals for 2009.

Make an action plan so that by the end of the year you will have a a replacement for yourself, someone who knows the team's strengths and weaknesses, understands all the processes. Someone who can help develop the strategy and continue to steer the team towards the goals.

Like all good project plans set up some general goals and timelines maybe along these lines:

1. Identify likely candidates,
2. Document all processes,
3. Select final candidate, - End Q1
4. Develop a mentoring relationship with candidate to work through the processes,
5. Allow some responsibilities to transfer to candidate, - End Q2
6. Involve candidate with strategy plans for the following year, - Q3
7. Take leave and allow candidate to run team - end Q3
8. Evaluate result

Hopefully by the end of the year you will have a new team leader in place and ready to fill your role. Perhaps it will be for nothing but then again maybe it will ensure your team can survive the turmoil of change of leadership.

While this may seem a strange topic it is important for a leader to prepare a legacy so the team can continue to perform strongly well into the future.

Delegation as a Leadership Tool

2008-12-19T20:29:00.004+11:00

How do you view delegation? Is delegation a tool you use every day to ensure your team gets the results you need? Delegation is the art of directing someone to do tasks for you.

The chances are you can do most jobs and tasks within your team, however that doesn't mean you should do them. By carefully delegating appropriate tasks to your team members, you will leverage their skills and time to complete the tasks your team need to meet.

When tasks are delegated it is important that you follow some basic rules:

1. Explain exactly what the task's outcome is,
2. Outline any limitations placed on how the task is to be completed,
3. Specify the timeline for specific milestones and the completion date,
4. Highlight any progress reports, their details, and period, and
5. Explain to the person doing the task how they are suitably empowered.

It is often assumed that once you have delegated the task your job is done, this is very wrong now is the time for mentoring as required and some subtle supervision.

When I say subtle supervision allow the person some freedom in how they complete the task and only step-in if asked to, or to stop a pending disaster. When we are new at tasks we may head in the wrong direction for sometime before correcting the issue and getting back on course, the lesson will be much better learnt if corrected by one-self rather than from an over-protective leader.

One important thing to remember, while we can delegate the task to others, we as good leaders cannot delegate the responsibility to a team member. The eventual outcome belongs to us, not our team members.

By leveraging the skills and efforts of our team-members we will have a more productive team.

Good leaders keep an eye on Quality

2008-12-13T06:58:00.003+11:00

Invariably around the world at present we see the fallout from the financial crisis. With much of this, have been the inevitable job cuts. While it's one thing to be losing members from your team, it's another for your product and services to be diminished due to this loss of a member.

When the crunch time happens you need to be in a position to know what is going to suffer, will it be people have to work longer hours to fill the other role, will it be less products are produced - what will it be in your case?

Take a view from the customer side and be sure that the quality the customer experiences is absolutely perfect, as is dealing with your company and team. The odds are they too are struggling with less people while trying to maintain the same level of their services, so they want to find what they want easily and they want the transaction and the product to be flawless - because they don't have any time to deal with you and your team if it's not perfect.

Don't be tempted to cut corners as it will damage your team's future. Take the time to address what the impact will be and to find a way to mitigate it.

You're the leader for a reason and now is the time to make sure you show true leadership for your product and the chance for your team to prosper into the future.

Your Leadership Communications

2008-12-07T10:25:00.001+11:00

One of the skills great leaders master is the ability to be accepted by their team members, their customers and their suppliers, yet how many of us work on making these communications better than they are today? Think back to the last time you were in a group meeting when your boss addresses you as a group, how did you feel and how did you respond, contrast this with the last time your boss addressed you by name. Why did you feel different? More than likely it was because this was at a more personal level.

When we are meeting people and maintaining our friendships and acquaintances we should follow some basic rules, these will help us to remember the person and also will make the person we are talking to connect at a more personal level with us.

What are these basic rules? Always say hello and always say goodbye, if this is combined with using the persons’ first name it has the most affect. By doing this, you have established a connection to the person, and by them acknowledging it, they understand you want to talk with them.

Now you are in communication with this person you must concentrate to listen to the message the person is conveying, this includes the words, their body language, their actions etc are they engaging you 100%. Wait for your turn to speak and maintain the thread of the conversation don’t be too quick to turn it to your topic as this will appear to the person as if you don’t care for their views.

When you are in a conversation, do your best to remain positive to the theme, people get sick of the person who comes to them constantly complaining, so maintain a positive air about the topic. Add in responses to the conversations to show you are listening and evaluating the ideas flowing back and forth, put forward your considerations in an open manner to allow the person to further contribute and so build more on the topic.

Use time carefully, make sure you turn up on time to meetings, be neat and calm and most of all be as prepared as you can. Don’t make meetings drag on as it shows a lack of respect for the other person’s time. Think before you speak and be sure to communicate your thoughts in a clear an unambiguous manner.

If you can follow these basic steps, your communications with your team will improve and this will improve the overall operation of your team.

The leaders' inner strength

2008-11-30T09:05:00.003+11:00

We have spoken at length over the last few months about being the best leader we can by using all our skills to energise and enthuse our teams. Your skills depend on your strength, the strength to evaluate, the strength to communicate in a clear and unambiguous manner. The strength to maintain your vision for the team is paramount to your success rather than follow the pack.

When you determine your vision for the team, you will find many times that you'll need to test your inner strength to remain focused. Do you have the strength to paint this vision, to remind your team why they are important, how the team contributes to the goals. When people disagree are you strong to argue your case and support it with facts and your vision of success.

When morale in your team wanes due to internal or external pressures are you available to your team members to help them see that what they are doing is positive and helps the whole team to move forward. Are you there to create some team building ideas and maintain the morale. Obviously this can be tough, if you looked at the current gloom and doom from the financial fallout many of our team members will be effected and their morale will be dented, again we need to draw on our strength to examine the facts and maintain the team morale.

When communicating with your team are you careful to deliver your messages in a positive manner, do you draw on your inner strength to raise your team up. Should your team members argue and fight, do you stand strong and fair to ensure issues are dealt with the animosity is arrested.

When tough decisions need to be taken are you fair and consistent in reaching your decision, when you need to deliver bad news are you straight and honest with your team members. You will need every once of inner strength to work through these issues, however if you stay strong, true and honest with your team they will respect you for your strength in dealing with them.

Great leaders are strong people who rely on their strength for the good of their teams. As you develop as a leader take the time to look and develop your inner strength and your team will appreciate it and follow you willingly.

The leader's Passion

2008-11-22T05:16:00.003+11:00

Are you passionate about what your team does? With lots of doom and gloom in the press, it's important that we as leaders stand up and demonstrate our passion for our team, our job and especially our people.

The more you demonstrate your passion for the team's efforts the more this will rub off onto your team members and help them maintain their passion. It's too easy for everyone in the team to pickup the negative vibes and start believing they apply to them. This will have a serious impact, as once the passion is gone, then the desire to work hard and push through any challenges is also eroded away.

Take some time to assess your product, your output levels, the quality of your products and services. Be sure to rekindle your passion for all the aspects in your workplace and then most importantly share that passion among your team. Remember to be genuine in how you demonstrate your passion and don't give the impression of just blowing smoke or you risk some damage as you may be seen as being less than honest.

As leaders we need to be passionate about our team's jobs and we need to show this passion to inspire the team to greater results.

Good leaders don't over promise

2008-11-15T11:42:00.003+11:00

Guess we've all seen the press in the last six months, and notice there have been quite a few countries running elections. Now the financial mess is starting to be better understood it will be interesting to see who made promises they cannot possibly keep. The voters of many countries in the next year may reflect and wonder what happened to some of these promises.

But more importantly as leaders of our own teams, are we vigilant when we make promises to our team members??

Before we make any promises, we need to check, do I really need to offer this? Am I absolutely certain I can fulfill my side of the bargain? What would be the difference in the outcome if I didn't make this promise? When we stop and assess the impact before we make any promises it will allow us to appreciate what it is that we are proposing.

Personally I know over the years many of my previous managers have promised certain things, yet as it transpired they did not have control to make the promises good. What was the result? Obviously some frustration, but the more damaging outcome was that their credibility was eroded. The next time such a promise was offered I was in no way as obliging to accept the challenge.

As good leaders we need to be sure that we can deliver on what we offer, because failure to do so will damage us greatly in the long term.

So next time you start to promise something take a moment and think - will this be a positive experience for all involved.

Goals and Roles within your team

2008-11-08T08:22:00.010+11:00

We have talked about setting a vision over the last few posts, today I want to move on to what do we do with this vision. You may recall I suggested that its a good practice to write your vision out so it's straight forward and succinct.

Given you have the vision for your team what's the next step?

Next we need to define the roles each team member plays within our team, some members will naturally fall into various roles - some productive and some not so productive.
Roles relate to the position or major task and often different roles maybe allocated to the same person. Don't be afraid to recognise some roles that are not strictly job related, such as the person who is the organiser, the person who explores their environment looking at the way things are done and so on.

There is a great chance that as the leader for this team you will have several roles, you need to ensure you recognise these. Perhaps in addition to leading the team you also have to ensure the invoices and receipts are done. Another of your roles is to maintain and promote morale within the group.

Now you have defined all the roles each member in your team plays you can start to look at assigning goals to each role so that the team can move in line with the vision.

Take care with people who have multi-faceted roles to not over-burden them with to many corresponding sets of goals. Aim for the main points. If you can get each role within your team aligned towards your vision you will have a great team result.

Set goals for yourself and your team members, it is OK to openly relate your goals to your team members as this way they will feel that they are aiding in the accomplishment of these higher order goals.

Some goals will be personal whilst other will apply to the team, it tends to be best to concentrate on the team goals and only have 1-2 individual goals. If the team feel they are all pulling together then they will respond in a more cohesive way.

Now we have taken our vision and extrapolated it out to a set of goals for each team member and all the business roles your team needs to support. Take stock and look at what the cost is for each member to fulfill their goals, take a moment to have a sanity check on:

time it will take - particularly the individual goals,
effort on their behalf - is this within their capabilities,
productivity effects when you ask members to concentrate on a goal, and
how will it affect the team morale when viewed by the other members going about their efforts towards their goals.

Goals and roles are a critical area for us to consider as we move to better align our team towards achieving the vision.

Have you been through this process with your team, its a lot harder than it sounds, but definitely worthwhile, maybe you have some tricks and tips to share?

Improve your leadership, improve your business

2008-11-02T10:04:00.002+11:00

Some interesting times ahead as we watch the outfall of the financial crisis spread around the globe. I hope you've taken to time to see if you are future proofed or if you need to turn your hand to a new job or even a new career. We have all heard for years that it is important for us to invest in our own skills so we can be versatile and in a position to take on whatever life throws at us.

An area that appears to be catching a lot of attention at the moment are those people who have been laid off and have decided to build their own business, some have opted for a bricks and mortar business while many have moved to a web based business. So we spent some hard time, effort and money to get things up and running, now it comes down to our leadership and business skills to keep it moving and generating cash.

One of the critical areas to consider is our leadership skills. I hope you have been spending some time over the last year to consider your skills and to work on areas of deficiency.

On top of the list for your skills should be you ability to create, develop, maintain and especially articulate your vision. You may have heard of the term your elevator pitch. Only with this vision will the small tasks fall out at you to gain the momentum and move things along in line with this vision.

Where would we be if Bill Gates hadn't envisioned a PC on every desk and every home?

If you can formulate a great vision, then write it down, hopefully one sentence says it all, because the clearer the vision the easier it is to focus.

Now your vision is set it's time to consider what are the steps you need to take to get there. These steps need some time restraints and maybe there needs to be some interim steps along the way. Such as obtain 100 repeat customers within twelve months, so this will translate to a sub task that should be in the order of get ten customers each month. From this the support task will fall out such as marketing, business process - how do I quote? how do I invoice etc.

Allocate the jobs you're expert at to yourself and delegate the other tasks to those around you who have the most appropriate skills.

While running a business is all about selling the products and services to customers who want your products, it's your leadership skills that will keep the focus while building and maintaining your business.

Is your team built for Speed

2008-10-27T10:49:00.002+11:00

I was just reflecting on how business has changed over the last 30 years. I would have to say the major change in all things is the speed we do things. Think of the last time you contacted a supplier and asked them a question about their product. Some time ago we would have to wait for some info to be sent by post, then a few years later we got the info by Fax, now its info by email or the web. We expect this, and so do our customers.

Now consider your team and all the ways it interacts with your customers. Do you offer the speed that everyone craves? Can you offer the product description the moment the customer asks? Can you accept their purchase order and validate it? Once the purchase order is accepted, are the goods and services scheduled and programmed for delivery? I sure hope the answer of these types of questions is a resounding YES.

If you are like the rest of us there's a fair chance that some areas of your product cycle could do with an increase in speed. Lets look at how our team interacts with our customers, suppliers and our own team. Which areas could do with some streamlining? Lets list them all and then prioritise.

My rule of thumb in this area, is all tasks that touch people need to be given a high priority especially your customers and your own team members, don't let these very important people ever be in doubt. Set up your systems so you can act with speed.

If you can concentrate and improve the speed with which you act, people will see your leadership flow through and want to continue to do business with you.

Spend some quality time to build your team's Morale

2008-10-19T22:19:00.002+11:00

In the last post we looked at maintaining your team's profile. Building on from that, now is the time to spend some serious time maintaining morale. Just stop and consider for a few minutes all the bad press of late. It's enough to get you down, so think on the effect on your team members.

The time's right for you to take some pro-active action and boost up your teams morale. Have your ear to the ground and get a feel for how the group mood is.

You can't afford for the morale of you team to get too bad, so i suggest when you hear the first grumblings you take some affirmative action. Now is the time to consider some ideas before it gets to desperate stakes.

Why not consider a family Bar-B-Cue on Friday after work, you don't loose any work time and all you have to come up with a venue and some food. But consider the outcome the families and your workers will feel how much you value their efforts. Maybe its an afternoon at the bowling alley.

The venue and activity is not important, what is important is that every member of your team knows they are a valued member and that they belong.

The morale of your team is a very important factor in your team's performance. It can take a deep blow and destroy you if you allow it to wallow. As a good leader it is important to keep an eye on the team and act swiftly to keep morale high it will certainly pay-off in the future.

Have you been through this either as a leader or a team member? How did it go?

Maintaining your team's profile

2008-10-12T20:46:00.003+11:00

I guess we've all been keeping an eye on the financial situation around the world. I hope you've stopped and taken some time to consider what is the implication to you and your team.
As the leader you need to take some steps to protect your team the best you can.

A few weeks ago we talked about maintaining a scorecard, I hope you have been on top of this. With the knowledge from your scorecard you know what your team is doing well at. Be sure that your boss knows about these high points.

As the leader your job is to keep the profile of your team in the mind of the work hierarchy, the better your team is understood the better they will be justified should the dreaded layoff discussion begins.

The economic phases of business dictate that the company is looking to protect itself for the long haul and at some stage, particularly if this financial crisis is prolonged cuts will happen.

Like it or not there are lots of people feeling stress about their job situation. As the leaders of these teams we need to do our best for each member. Be positive and talk-up your team's strengths, work hard to minimize any errors all this will help to maintain your team's morale.

Do your best to keep your team productive and be sure to feedback your team's performance so the team get a fair hearing if things get worse.

Time Management within your Leadership

2008-10-05T21:01:00.002+11:00

Your leadership requires you to have a fine understanding and skills in the area of time management. At the different stages of your business you will be the pre-sales, sales, post-sales, production and financial person doing the work in all these areas of your business.

Many books will espouse the value of multi-tasking, personally I find it doesn't work except for completing the most mundane chores. When it comes to serious thinking and decision making it is so much better to fully immerse your self into the problem and issue and work it all the way through to its conclusion.

The use of some tools may help you, some people love "To Do lists" while others hate them. Some of my friends have great success with Mind-Maps, while others like the fish bone diagrams based on the "why" or "so what" questions to explore all avenues.

So if you can come to a fully considered solution minding all angles, then you can consider that problems solved and move onto the next. Should you try to do ten or twenty things at the same time, odds on none of them will be well done at all.

I've found the best way to do this is set up a schedule, so that you set time aside to do the admin things, time for briefing and supporting the team, and time for strategic thoughts and actions.

Be mindful of interruptions and consider:

Does you team need some directions right now?
Can I afford the time?
Can I ask the person to come back at a better time?

Maybe you should set some times up when your free, and advise your team that is the best time to meet with you for routine matters.

If you're still the one-man show then you need to allocate time for each of the various functions such as pre-production, production and marketing. Make your plans and be sure to follow-through.

With the efficient use of your time you will be able to spend more time leading your team and improving your leadership skills to better empower you and your team.

What do find to be the most beneficial idea with your time management?

What's your favorite time management tool?

Co-ordinating your Team

2008-09-28T19:48:00.003+10:00

Spent some time travelling this week and had the joy of observing a number of teams in action. These teams all belong to a large organization with great leaders who had their teams working against tight schedules. Each team leader had a good grip on where all their members were, the projects they were working on and when the next milestones were due.

I was lucky enough to spend time with each leader as they talked about their teams. They both had a vision for what was considered a good outcome for their own group and each had a great understanding of their team member's strengths and weaknesses.

I then moved on with each team leader and probed them about how the teams worked together. Here we detected some differences, each team leader had a different set of priorities. This showed up when it came to the sharing of resources across the two groups. The two groups often shared specialists between the various projects. When we discussed this in more depth I got the impression they both shared resources when it suited them.

Later with the two leaders I popped the question, do you sit down and plan the priorities of the projects across both your teams. Do you throw the priority setting up the food chain when clashes are obvious?

As a leader who needs to work across groups do you make part of your planning a section on co-ordination between the other teams you interface too. By doing this you'll keep a lot more people informed about your team and how your resources can and are shared to meet the companies goals.

Leadership and knowing your team

2008-09-23T20:21:00.004+10:00

How well do you know your team? When was the last time you spent some quality time with each member? Do you know and understand their motivations, their anxieties, their goals.

As the team leader it's time to put a plan together or revisit your previous plan.
Work through your schedule and find some times you can set aside to spend with each member of your team. Some people like to do this in a formal setting others may do it over lunch, the how and when is not important. What is important is to focus solely on the person and get to know them more fully.

Do you know:

Why they work for your team,
What they want to achieve this year,
Where do they think they will be in two years time,
Do they aspire to take your position when you get your promotion,
What are their ideas to improve the workplace, and
Do they expect a raise this year.

As a leader it is our responsibility to counsel and mentor our team members, when we know each member better we can understand why we all act the way we do. We can make our position known. While we may not have things to say they want to hear if you deliver the message in an honest and supported way, at least it's all out in the open and neither party is set-up for a surprise.

Together you and each team member can set out your individual and combined goals and plot your course to achieve them. Now with a good understanding of what makes each of us tick, you can see what will motivate and what will deter all your members.

If you've taken the time to do this, how did it go? I know it's always worked for me.

Leaders need Creativity

2008-09-14T21:01:00.003+10:00

As leaders of our teams, we need to devote time to planning out the future and looking at issues we need to solve. To achieve this we need to utilize our creativity. Being creative involves:

a. Immersing yourself in a problem;
b. Looking broadly for connections—in the past, what other organizations do, brainstorming with others;
c. Letting your ideas incubate;
d. The breakthrough which usually occurs when you are distracted or in a relaxed state;
e. Picking one or more to pilot.

We are all capable of being more creative than we demonstrate. Many of us are or have been taught to be restrained, narrow, focused, hesitant, cautious, conservative, afraid to make errors, and unwilling to make a fool of ourselves. This background often stifles the creativity inside us. There are research-based and experience-tested techniques that will produce a more creative process from a person. Creativity is a valued skill because our organizations need innovation in our products and services to succeed.

Defining the problem. Studies show that defining the problem and taking action occur almost simultaneously for most people, so the more effort you apply on the front end, the easier it is to come up with a breakthrough solution. Stop and first define what the problem is and isn't. Since providing answers and solutions is so easy for everyone, it would be nice if they were offering solutions to the right problem. Keep asking why, see how many causes you can come up with and how many organizing buckets you can put them in. This increases the chance of a more creative solution because you can see more connections. Look for patterns in your data, don't just collect information. Put it in categories that make sense to you. Ask lots of questions. Allot at least 50% of the time to defining the problem. Once you've defined the problem, studies have shown that on average, the most creative solution is somewhere between the second and third one generated. So if you tend to grab the first one, slow down. Discipline yourself to pause for enough time to define the problem better and always think of three solutions before you pick one.

Remove the restraints. What's preventing you from being more creative? Being creative operates at well below having everything perfect. Worried about what people may think? Afraid you won't be able to defend your idea? Being creative means throwing uncertain ideas up for review and critique. Being creative is looking everywhere for a solution. Are you too busy to reflect and ruminate? Being creative takes time. Get out of your comfort zone. Many busy people rely on solutions from their own history, they rely on what has happened to them in the past.

Value added approaches. To be more personally creative, immerse yourself in the problem. Dedicated time—study the problem deeply, talk with others, look for parallels in other organizations and in remote areas totally outside your field. Think out loud. Many people don't know what they know until they say it out loud. Find a good sounding board and talk to him/her to increase your understanding of a problem or a technical area. Talk to an expert in an unrelated field. Talk to the most irreverent person you know. Your goal is not to get his/her input, but rather his/her help in figuring out what you know—what your principles and rules of thumb are. Creative people are more likely to think in opposite cases when confronted with a problem. Turn the problem upside down:

Unearthing creative ideas. Creative thought processes do not follow the formal rules of logic, where one uses cause and effect to prove or solve something. Some rules of creative thought are:

Not using concepts but changing them;
Imagining this were something else
Move from one concept or way of looking at things to another, such as from economic to political
Generate ideas without judging them initially
Use information to restructure and come up with new patterns
Jump from one idea to another without justifying the jump
Look for the least likely and odd
Looking for parallels far from the problem, such as, how is an organization like a river?
Ask what's missing or what's not here

Apply some standard problem-solving skills. There are many different ways to think through and solve a problem more creatively.

Ask more questions. In one study of problem solving, about 10% of comments were questions and about half were answers. We jump to solutions based on what has worked in the past.
Complex problems are hard to visualize. They tend to be either oversimplified or too complex to solve unless they are put in a visual format. Cut it up into its component pieces. Examine the pieces to see if a different order would help, or how you could combine three pieces into one.
Another technique is a pictorial chart called a storyboard where a problem is illustrated by its components being depicted as pictures.
A variation of this is to illustrate the +'s and –'s of a problem, then flow chart those according to what's working and not working.
Create a fishbone diagram
Sleep on it. Take periodic breaks, whether stuck or not. This allows the brain to continue to work on the issue. Most breakthroughs come when we're "not thinking about it." Put it away; give it to someone else; sleep on it. Once you've come up with every idea you can think of, throw them all out and wait for more to occur to you. Force yourself to forget about the issue.
A straightforward technique to enable creativity is brainstorming. Anything goes for an agreed upon time. Throw out ideas, record them all, no evaluation allowed. Many people have had bad experiences with brainstorming.

Selecting a cross-functional group. During World War II it was discovered that teams of people with the widest diversity of backgrounds produced the most creative solutions to problems. The teams included people who knew absolutely nothing about the area (i.e., an English major working on a costing problem). When attacking a tough problem which has eluded attempts to solve it, get the broadest group you can. Involve different functions, levels, and disciplines. Pull in customers and colleagues from other organizations. Remember that you're looking for fresh approaches; you're not convening a work task force expected to implement or judge the practicality of the notions. Believe it or not, it doesn't matter if they know anything about the problem or the technology required to deal with it. That's your job.

Experiment and learn. Whether the ideas come from you or a brainstorming session, encourage yourself to do quick experiments and trials. Studies show that most innovations occur in the wrong place, are created by the wrong people (dye makers developed detergent, Post-it® Notes was a failed glue experiment, Teflon® was created by mistake) and 30-50% of technical innovations fail in tests within the company. Even among those that make it to the marketplace, 70-90% fail. The bottom line on change is a 95% failure rate, and the most successful innovators try lots of quick inexpensive experiments to increase the chances of success.

The Bottom Line on creativity. Creativity relies on freedom early, but structure later. Once you come up with your best notion of what to do, subject it to all the logical tests and criticism that any other alternative is treated to. Testing out creative ideas is no different than any other problem-solving/evaluation process. The difference is in how the ideas originate.

The more we can stop and employ creativity into our teams and their challenges the more we will see our teams moving forward with innovation ideas for products and our services. Have you tried this with any success? What approach was most successful for you?

The art of Team Building

2008-09-07T21:17:00.002+10:00

As Leaders we need to be able to bring our team together and strengthen the teamwork to improve the whole team output. As the leader it is important for us to drive the team building to ensure the dynamics of the team keep moving towards the common goal. Employees look to their leaders for basic company goals. By clearly laying out goals, everyone begins in the same place and understands where the business is going.

Allow Power to the group. Give decision-making power to the people working in the team. Ensure they have the authority necessary to get their job done, observe the process to make sure they're using this power for the good of the group outcome. Great team members can make decisions without fearing consequences, and good employees will value that trust and seek to make the best decisions.

Responsibility. Teams operate best when everyone clearly understands their responsibilities. Ensure each employee has a clear definition of his or her own responsibilities, both individually and as it relates to group projects. This eliminates confusion over who is accountable for what, and allows employees to relate without struggling over responsibilities.

Feedback. Don’t make your team second-guess your opinion of its work. Be clear not only in your initial expectations and assignments. Take time to give your opinion of the work. Clear and open feedback, where employees are clear on where they stand, will help them feel more secure and willing to work together.

Deadlines. Reasonable deadlines are often subjective, and timelines vary based on need. But you can build team spirit by dividing assignments equally, providing compensation to employees who are working additional hours, and reworking less important deadlines to allow for a little more time.

Regularly meetings. Whether it’s a lunch meeting or an organized meeting with specific agenda items, it's critical to keep the lines of communication open. The best way to understand your team and to let them know they're not alone is to meet regularly with them. This allows you to gauge not only their needs and productivity, but will also help you assess any further team-building concerns that need to be addressed.

Rewards. Provide rewards to the whole team. Whether it's an award, a luncheon, or some other treat, providing the team and a group with an encouraging reward for hard work will build team spirit and bring your employees back in with renewed enthusiasm for their jobs.

Take some time to look at each of these aspects and see how you can incorporate these into your workplace. By implementing these ideas your leadership will move your team in the right direction.

Customers the center of your universe

2008-08-26T17:05:00.001+10:00

In our free-enterprise system, we say the customer is king. Those who satisfy the customer best win. This is true with external and internal customers. Those who satisfy their customers most will win. Great teams are always customer-oriented and responsive.

Maintain a touch. First you need to know what your customers want and expect. The best way to do this is to ask them. Then deliver what they want in a timely way at a price/value that’s justified. Find ways to keep in touch with a broad spectrum of your customers to get a balanced view: face-to-face, phone surveys, questionnaires, response cards with the products and services. Pleasing the reasonable needs of customers is fairly straightforward now we know what they are after. When customers contact us get them to the right person in the minimum number of steps.

Customers complain; it's your opportunity to delight them. Customers will usually complain more than compliment; you need to not get overwhelmed by the negative comments; people who have positive opinions speak up less. Be ready for the good news and the bad news; don't be defensive; just listen and respond to legitimate criticisms and note the rest as this is you opportunity to please them and make your self standout from the crowd.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes. If you were a customer of yours, what would you expect; what kind of turnaround time would you tolerate; what price would you be willing to pay for the quality of product or service you provide; what would be the top three things you would complain about? Answer all calls from customers in a timely way; if you promise a response, do it; if the time frame stretches, inform them immediately; after you have responded, ask them if the problem is fixed.

Design your work and manage your time from the customer view. Your best will always be determined by your customers, not you; try not to design and arrange what you do only from your own view; try to always know and take the viewpoint of your customer first; you will always win following that rule. Can you sell an experience, not just a product or service? A small firm took on larger firms through its easy access to no-charge expert information. Customers could turn to internal sources for free consulting, taking from a few minutes up to an hour.

Anticipate customer needs. Make a habit of meeting with your customers on a regular basis. Customers need to feel free to contact you about problems and you need to be able to contact them for essential information. Use this understanding to get in front of your customers; try to anticipate their needs for your products and services before they even know about them; provide your customers with positive surprises; features they weren’t expecting; delivery in a shorter time; more than they ordered. Show your customer you’re in it for the long run.

Plan to Succeed. Consider your business from the customer viewpoint – what are the three best things about dealing with you, now consider what are the three worst things. Now develop a plan to be rid of these poor performance issues and see if you can turn them into advantages.

If you can centralize your business experience in line with your customer’s expectations you will improve your business no end.

How to improve your Decision Making

2008-08-17T20:28:00.004+10:00

One of the major attributes of a good leader is our decision making skills. Good decisions are based upon a mixture of data, analysis, intuition, wisdom, experience, and judgment. Making good decisions involves collecting the available information, being able to ask for other people's opinions and thoughts and then making the decision. No one is ever right all the time; it's the percent of good decisions over time that matters.

What can we do to improve our decision making skills?

Do you hesitant to make a decision. Play out the consequences in your head to see how the decision would play in real life. Test out a number of scenarios to support your decision. You may be hesitating because your little voice in your head is telling you something isn't right. Good decisions are usually somewhere between the second and third decision you come to, as you explore the options.

Are you biased. Do you play favorites, deciding quickly in one area, but holding off in another? Do you drag out your favorite solutions to often? Be clear and honest with yourself about your attitudes, beliefs, biases, opinions and prejudices and your favorite solutions. We all have them. The key is not to let them affect your objective and cold decision making. Before making any sizable decision, ask yourself, are any of my biases affecting this decision?

Common mistakes in thinking: ? If sales are down, and we increase advertising and sales go up, this doesn't prove causality. They are simply related. Say we know that the relationship between sales/advertising is about the same as sales/number of employees. Do you state as facts things that are really opinions or assumptions? Are you sure these assertions are facts? State opinions and assumptions as that and don't present them as facts. Do you attribute cause and effect to relationships when you don't know if one causes the other. Do you generalize from a single example without knowing if that single example does generalize?

Analyze the situation? Thoroughly define the problem. Think out loud with others; see how they view the problem. Figure out what causes it. Keep asking why. See how many causes you can come up with and how many organizing buckets you can put them in. This increases the chance of a better solution because you can see more connections. Look for patterns in data, don't just collect information. Put it in categories that make sense to you. Then when a good alternative appears you're likely to recognize it immediately.

Learn from your history. Take an objective look at your past decisions, and what the percentage were good choices. Break the decisions into topics or areas of your life. For most of us, we make better decisions in some areas than others. Maybe your decision-making skills need help in one or two limited areas, like decisions about people, decisions about your career, political decisions, technical, etc.

Slow down. Life is a balance between waiting and doing. Life affords us neither the data nor the time. You may need to try to discipline yourself to wait just a little longer than you usually do for more, but not all, the data to come in. Push yourself to always get one more piece of data than you did before until your correct decision percent becomes more acceptable. Instead of just doing it, ask what questions would need to be answered before we'd know which way to go

Sleep on it. The brain works on things even when you are not thinking about them. Take some time, do something completely different, and get back to the decision later. Let a good night's sleep go by and re-assess the problem in the morning.

Use your network. You’ve taken time to create your network of colleagues, experts and task force, present the problem and all you know about it, and let the group help decide. Delegate the decision. Sometime others above, aside, or below you may be in a better position to make the decision.

Study great decision makers. Which great decision makers do you admire? Steve Jobs? Winston Churchill? Read the biographies and autobiographies of a few people you respect, and pay attention to how they made decisions in their life and careers. Take some notes on ideas they used that you could apply.

With some effort on our behalf we can improve the way we make our decisions to help us better develop as leaders in our environment.

Do you have plenty of Busines Acumen?

2008-08-10T20:47:00.003+10:00

One of the skills we need to have in our pocket is business acumen. Do you know what is expected? Do you know what the business rules are?

As leaders we need to have a good understanding of business, so we can make the right choices with our team.

Below are some ideas how to improve your business acumen.

Read periodicals. These publications will help you for what you need to know about business in general:

Wall Street Journal,
Business Week,
Fortune,
Barron's, and
Harvard Business Review.

Look to see any items in each issue that relate to your business. Then look to find any parallels, trends that affect business now, emerging trends that may have a future impact, and general business savvy about how business works.

Study some business books. Go to any business book store and pick a couple of books on general business principles, one with a financial slant, one with a marketing slant and one about customer service.

Read them through and look for their themes that you can apply.

Watch the right sources. Watch the business channels that carry business news and information full time. They have interviews with business leaders, reviews of industries by business experts, as well as general reviews of companies.

Figure out the rules of the game. Reduce your understanding of how business operates to personal rules of thumb or insights. Write them down in your own words. Use these rules of thumb to analyze a business that you know something about. Then pick two businesses that have pulled off clever strategies—one related to yours and one not. Study what they did; talk to people who know what happened and see what you can learn.

Now apply these rules to your business

Need to know more about your business? Study your annual report and various financial reports. If you don’t know how, the major investment firms have basic documents explaining how to read financial documents. After you’ve done this, consult a a senior person in the company you know and ask him or her what he or she looks at and why. How does your team have an affect?

Broaden your knowledge within the company. Volunteer for task forces that include people outside your area of expertise. Work on some Total Quality Management, Process Re-Engineering, Six Sigma, or ISO projects that cross functional or business unit boundaries to learn more about the business.

Get close to customers. Customer service is the best place to learn about the business. Arrange a meeting with a counterpart in customer service. Have him or her explain the function to you. If you can, listen in to customer service calls or even better handle a couple yourself.

Learn to think as an expert in your business area. Take problems to inside experts or external consultants and ask them, what are the keys they look for; observe what they consider significant and not significant. List your data into categories so you can remember it. Devise five key areas or questions you can consider each time a business issue comes up.

Obviously this is not an easy set of learnings to accumulate. So set yourself a goal to tackle one each month and plan to review your progress in six months and see how well you've done. Do you have the persistence? I'm sure when you stick with this strategy to improve your knowledge you'll start to manage your team in line with the business for great results!

The strength of maintaining a scorecard

2008-08-03T20:20:00.003+10:00

We have all heard lots about the balanced scorecard, for those that have them, however it is quite often so far detached from our day to day work that people find it difficult to understand in the context of what we do.
So what is the real world option - how can we make sense of it? How do we tell if we are leading our team in the right direction?

Try this for a few months and see how you go.

1. List the three major things your team does.
2. List every department internal and external that touch your team.

This should result in list of 7-12 items.

Now write a short statement that reflects perfection for each of these items. This will be your score of 10.
Write another sentence that reflects a fair result/action for each item. This will be your score of 5.
Write another sentence for barely acceptable. This will be your score of 1.

Now you have the framework for your own scorecard.

The next piece is the most difficult, take an hour to reflect on your list and give yourself a score. Look for any low scores and develop an action plan by the end of the week.
By the end of the month you need to solicit feedback against your list of items and confirm your score was realistic.

Next month review your scores and look for areas to improve.

The beauty of maintaining your scorecard is that you will have no surprises. Your scorecard also gives you a ready reckoner to describe the important aspects of what your team's job is all about.

If you can do this and keep it up-to-date with real scores your team and your leadership will flourish.

Is your leadership talk supported by your actions?

2008-07-26T09:42:00.006+10:00

Had lunch with my friend Wilson this week and he recounted what was happening at his workplace that could happen to us and the terrible side effects.
The workplace was doing their annual list of compulsory courses, such as equality, harassment and such. Wilson and his friends sat through the same class as last year and completed the same assessment as last year and were dutifully sent on their way.

The following week coincided with annual salary reviews. The company has been struggling of late and cash-flow was somewhat of a problem. It was no surprise when most employees received a very modest salary increment. I guess we have all been in this situation and are prepared to take it on the chin.

So this week Wilson and his friends were subjected to the final course in their yearly compulsory quota, Ethics - again they went through the usual course and usual assessment and off they went.
Much of this sounds pretty typical and most people went on their way. What the leadership hadn't counted on was the mood of the workplace. Pretty soon the conversation within the workplace got to talking about the leadership's action versus their talk. Soon the questions and statements were flying back and forth, typical of these were:
Why did we put our prices up in line with inflation, yet our salary didn't go up in the same ratio.
Why have we moved so many staff to contract positions but the staff don't have a written contract.
Why do I get asked to constantly do more yet I get no more reward.
Why do we talk about ethics but don't seem to act ethically with our own people.

While many of these questions were a little selfish and short-sighted, the mood of many of the workers was drifting away from the leadership. Funny the leadership team were patting themselves on the back for having completed the new price book and completing the workplace regulatory training.

So my question to you - do you follow your words with supporting actions? Does your team know that you do what you said you would do? Sometimes we need to ask an observer for the feedback to be sure we get the real answer and not the one we want to hear.

Leading Change a Balancing Act

2008-07-16T20:24:00.003+10:00

One common task for us as leaders is to lead change in our workplace. While it may seem that this is a straight forward activity, when done well it will lead to positive changes for our team. However if this is poorly done it can create havoc in our workplace.

The obvious first step is to identify what and why a change needs to be implemented. This is best done through a consultative approach. Take care when raising the situation to also note the parts of the process that are working well and need to be continued in the current way they are done.

In your leadership role it is up to you to drive the changes and engage your team. While this may seem obvious the risk you run if you do not identify the good aspects in the current situation is that the team will feel that their previous efforts have been wasted or not appreciated. So now having identified the good points that need to be continued and where the changes need to be completed. The next steps can be started.

The positioning of yourself towards the team must be one where you are part of the change and not one of the boss pushing the change down to the team. Should you push the change down in an authoritative way, there is some risk of two negative outcomes. Firstly the team may feel very off-side even if they outwardly say yes to the change. Secondly the team may feel dis-engaged in that they have this task thrust on them with no support.

Ideally you will engage with the team and be a large part of the change, when your team see you involved and they see you changing in-line with the change, they will better engage and assist with the change. Take your time to keep the team appraised of the continuation phase along with the changes and their progress.

By working with your team your leadership stands a much better chance of success than pushing a change onto a team and walking away.

Leadership and your self awareness

2008-07-13T20:22:00.002+10:00

One of the aspects we need to address every so often is ourselves and what leadership skills we have at this stage of our leadership journey. This is quite confronting for many of us, however the better we do this the better we can understand ourselves and make good decisions based on this awareness.

Often in business we talk about conducting a SWOT, Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is essentially the same for us when we look at our leadership skills. We need to stop and assess where we stand and how well we are doing in each of the areas of leading our team.

So how should we do this? Not easily, take a list of the main areas we have been concentrating on in the improvement of our leadership. Then we need to work through each skill area on our list..... and the hard part, take a good honest look and evaluate our standing. Let's take a sample.

Engaging: How well are we engaging with our bosses, our critical stakeholders. How well are we engaging with our team? Do we know their strengths and weaknesses, have we worked with them on how to improve one of their areas of opportunity? How do we score our efforts here, should this be considered one of your Strengths, or a Weakness? Are there some opportunities for us to improve in this area? Are we very poor in this area so much so that there is a threat to our leadership position.

Our Leadership is dependent on us doing this every year or so, helping us to focus on what we're doing well and what needs to be better. Sure this will take some time just consider this another step in your leadership journey.

Leadership and the art of Engagement

2008-07-06T19:05:00.005+10:00

We have spent time before about talking with your team. Know your team, their strengths and weaknesses and you can help everyone in the team to meld and become the energised team, ready to work towards the team goals. Our leadership success will depend on it.

So as the leader one of the arts we need to master is the how to engage with the various members of the team. Take the time to ask to initial question and follow it up some small idea of your own then build more questions to probe further. But engaging is more than just asking questions, at times we need to be the counsellor demonstrating apathy and understanding towards our teammates and at other times we need to also show our team members a part of ourselves.

While I've said we need to show part of ourselves when engaging with our team we also still need to maintain a certain distance, this is a very tough line to balance. The main game here is to establish boundaries and not be flexible about crossing these lines. I'm sure you know someone who is a bit too familiar with their boss and all of a sudden its difficult to see who is the leader and who is being manipulated. Leadership requires us to set this line and be firm if people are in danger of crossing the line.

Be sure to maintain the dialogue, set challenges, probe for better solutions and be sure to praise all positive work and actions.

Be firm and fair then you'll hear people comment to the affect you know where you stand . Most people prefer this position with their leader. Can you get yourself into this position?

Leadership requires Authority

2008-07-02T20:41:00.002+10:00

Leaders need authority, When you look internally at your team or externally from a customers perspective, everyone expects the leader to be the authority in their area.
Some people naturally have a great amount of self-confidence and can pull off the act of being the authority figure. The rest of us have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Most of us have to build our authority and our self-confidence through knowledge and skill. Take the time to find out everything about your products, processes and the people who take part in each step. Be sure to ask questions and explore every angle. Put yourself into each persons shoes, from the customer through to the workplace cleaner. Next take some time to understand every cost incurred along the away to production. How much do the raw materials cost, what is the cost of shipping to you and also the shipping to the customer. What the duties and taxes that get added along the way.

Now you know everything about the product and all the influencing factors you need to review these factors so you can recall everything off the top of your head.

The next step in this process is for you to prepare and practice the delivery of short descriptors of the top ten aspects related to your business. Just think about the last time you saw someone who stammered or couldn't answer the seemingly obvious question - I bet you didn't consider them an authority in their area.

Your ability to be, and act as the authority on your subject is a must-have skill to define your leadership.

Leaders questioning the status quo

2008-06-29T21:23:00.003+10:00

We talked before about people in leadership roles and fact that they need to be innovative and pushing new ideas to keep in front of the pack.

How do you approach this task? Have you stopped to consider it as one of your jobs. Now that it's out in the open you need to set aside some time to think through when and how you should approach this important task.

For most people the important thing is to ask many questions, what the process is, how was it set up , what do each of the people think, what could be done to improve the process and so on. As leaders it is up to us to consider do we have enough information to make a valid change, or do we need more information or more time to consider the best course of action to start that innovation. Often we'll stop, look, consider and come to the conclusion there is no obvious way forward.

Time to reconsider how the investigation should move. Remember it is our role as leaders to take the responsibility to keep looking and investigating to find the innovation to drive our business. If not, perhaps leadership is not for us. Because then we will fall to the same lows as so many out there we see, those who run through the process but can't move their team forward.

Leaders know their team

2008-06-22T20:22:00.003+10:00

Good leaders know their team members, they spend time to understand their strengths and weakness, their fears and ambitions. Our leadership success is dependent upon it.

When was the last time you stopped and had a coffee with each of your team members? Sat down and shared your thoughts and asked them about what they think. Seems like the obvious thing to - but how often do you do it? You know you will stop for a break so why not make it more productive? Productive you may ask, the better you know your team, the more they relate to you the more they want to work. Part of your leadership style is how you relate with your team.

A comment often heard when you mention this, is I don't have time. This is an interesting comment is it so tough to allocate a couple of lunch or tea breaks to spend with your team - after all they are YOUR team. The other comment is there are too many people to get around them all. This is an interesting comment as many theorists would tell us that most people can only cope with about ten direct reports, so if your team is bigger than this you should consider is your team a manageable size.

We discussed before that one of the major differences between a management style and Leadership style revolves around the not just the processes of the business but the human or personal factor.

Consider this week, the time to start a new habit. Choose the member of your team you know the least about and make it your goal to find out some positive things about them through casual contact. In time this will strengthen your leadership and ultimately aide you and your team.

Leadership Focusing on Outcomes

2008-06-19T20:38:00.005+10:00

We discussed a few weeks ago about defining outcomes and empowering your team members to get on with the work to get the job done. Last week I had a brush with a team whose manager/leader was very dedicated to achieving his outcomes and those he had set for his team. While working with the team it became apparent that most of the team were less than satisfied with their leader and his way.

We had spent a few days working through some rather complicated scenarios with a group of eight members from the team. Like many teams the members were quite diverse in their skills and attitudes to their work. While I was leading the workshop I was observing each member and their characteristics and as usual there was the guy who asks lots of questions, the guy who looks bored, the guy who always asks why etc. From this point of view this group was pretty typical.

The leader of the team came in to observe his team and two minutes later had singled out two members and sent them packing. Well!! that was a little interesting. Now the team were down two people and the whole team would have to now do extra to achieve their task.

Later I questioned the leader on why he had eject the two members, his response surprised me, these guys weren't paying attention and doing it the way I expected. To this I replied perhaps we could have waited and appraised how these members applied their new skills within the team and did they assist the team reaching the goal.

Does it particularly matter which way a job is done if the team can deliver the outcome. If there are critical issues that must be addressed or a certain way some points must be done, then it is up to us as leaders to explain this when we deliver our vision.

Next time you want to step in and make a move with your team members stop and consider is the outcome in danger, if not allow the team to do things their way, they'll appreciate it!

Good Leadership by Defining Outcomes

2008-06-11T23:15:00.003+10:00

We discussed before that all great leaders share their vision with the team. Why, so everyone knows where we are going and what we are striving for. So what's the intermediate step? Like all good projects the vision needs to be broken down into manageable parcels of work.

Now that we have spent some quality time and research understanding the various tasks the time has come for us to set our team onto achieving the vision - how? by completing the tasks aiding to the long-term completion of the project and attainment of the vision.

Consider the people in your team and decide who should take which portion of work, some members will be very obvious because the task matches their skill-set while other jobs may fall to several members of the team. Take care to ensure the load is balanced and look to see opportunities for people to extend their skills.

Now it comes to the people management portion of this task, don't take this lightly as much of the success in this will depend on how well you work with the people to talk them through the challenge and set their goals by defining the outcome you need. Many of us have seen the acronym SMART it's well known, it works and don't be afraid to use it.

Leadership is about talking to the people and explaining again your vision and piece in how this series of tasks will aid towards the fulfillment of the vision, then carefully work through defining the job and the outcomes, remembering:

Specific - give all the details, ideas hurdles etc about the task,
Measurable - what you expect to be the outcome, how it would look for a successful outcome and how that would differ from a poor outcome,
Attainable - agree between you that the person has the appropriate skills and support and the timeline is reasonable,
Realistic - be fair in your appraisal and agree on how realistic it is to achieve this task and present a great outcome, and
Time-bound - when is this task to be completed, when should we have reviews and what they should consist of.

If you are open, fair and honest with this process, your team members will come away with a sense of urgency, excitement and motivation to make it all happen.

Be warned if you fail to take these steps carefully your team's outcome will not conform to your ideas and may well not aid you in achieving your vision.

If these ideas are new try it out with a small project to get the feel of it and see how your team responds, look carefully for feedback to see how your team accepts challenges when presented this way, then you can adjust your thinking and delivery to strive for bigger results from your leadership.

Leaders - Agents of Change

2008-06-08T20:32:00.002+10:00

Are you an agent of change? We discussed some time back that one of the strengths of good leaders is to be innovative and look for ways to improve the processes and people in our team to achieve better results.

Many people are very resistant to change as they have developed a comfort factor with the status quo. As leaders we need to identify and empathise with these team members. Once we can understand why this resistance is present we can take some time to develop the vision. With a good clear vision our task of helping these guys change will become a lot easier.

With this in mind we need to develop our vision to include several messages to address these areas of change and especially point out the following:

Why the change will benefit the work team,
How the change will improve the team's performance,
What's in it for each of the people within the group,
How the change will be implemented, and
When the change will take affect.

When the vision is clear we need to spend some quality time with each factional leader explaining the vision, answering the questions and gaining buy-in from each of these leaders.

Gaining influence with each of these sub-groups will ensure your change is implemented, should you fail to gain this influence you will struggle to gain momentum and you changes may well flounder.

So next time a change comes to your attention consider the change and be mindful to consider how your planning, vision, influencing all need to be part of the plan. Be sure each one of these areas have been well considered, and be ready to talk about the details and possible objections, the sooner these are addressed and presented to the team the sooner you can get on and see your changes implemented.

Leadership and the Art of Anticipation

2008-06-01T15:10:00.003+10:00

Over lunch last week a good friend was discussing his new boss of some twelve months, he commented he rarely heard much input from his boss until things were going bad and then there would be a flurry of information and directions.

As the story went on it became a story I've heard in quite a few workplaces, the boss was trying to work across so many areas he inevitably ignored some aspects of the business until things were about to explode, then he would come in swinging left and right barking commands at anyone within earshot. At this all the workers would spring off in another direction and busily work towards this new direction. I asked my friend if this had a positive result and the customers were happy with the renewed effort and activity. His reply didn't surprise me when he said the customers ended up confused. Why had there been an effort for the past so many weeks in this direction and now it was focused in another direction.

It was with interest he went on to say that the workers in his section were happy the boss had set some clear direction, although they were not happy about the timing. "We knew this was about to happen" was the cry. We are forced to treat everyone the same and not examine their particular needs and then when a customer clearly states these needs, they feel they have been ignored and things get ugly.

So it seems although there were clear indicators of what the request was, there was a lack of anticipation of when to rally the team and modify the directions to make our customer truly happy and satisfied.

As we have discussed before good leaders need to present a clear vision to their team on what the outcome is and how the team will get there. The really good leaders anticipate any changes or modifications that need to be made along the way. Keep an eye on the situation, your team members and anticipate what would/could go right or wrong and what could be better.

Anticipation is like planning the more we force ourselves to do it the more we can take small steps to correct the work and get the best output.