Team creativity a path to success

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!

Introduce coaching into your leadership

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

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.

A Logical approach to planning your year's goals

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.

Make Your Team Feel Secure

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, Let them get on with it!

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.

6 Action Steps for Performance Oriented Leaders

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.

Moving forward with your Strategic Leadership

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.

Improving Conversations with your Team

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?

Good leaders don't over promise

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

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

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.

Co-ordinating your Team

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 Growth - Understand the four phases

Why is it that sometimes we're very comfortable leading a task and yet at other times we feel we are floundering along. The theorists will tell us there are four phases of Leadership growth and we must be able to recognise each and the steps we need to take to move to the next state.

These states are commonly known as:

1. I don't know What I don't know,
2. I know what I don't know,
3. I grow and know and it starts to show, and
4. I go because of what I know.

I don't know What I don't know.

This stage of leadership usually occurs when we take on a new series of tasks, the tasks are unfamiliar and we're not sure what is the right direction to move. When we're at this stage we feel uncomfortable and it is important we get busy to understand what the task is and how it gets done and then appraise the situation for the best effect.

I know what I don't know.

Having recognised the first stage and spent some time to learn the task and current process, now is the time to set up a path to learn all the missing information on product process and people. We need to leverage those in the current job to map a course to bridge this missing knowledge gap.

I Grow I know and it starts to show.

Now we have spent the time to fill our knowledge gap, now we can start to do an analysis to see what is the best way to move forward. As this analysis gains momentum we can start to make changes with the processes and people to lead the team in our way. Often at this stage the team start to feel that everything is coming together, people know what to do and the process is running smoothly with few problems.

I Go because I know.

Now I'm quite comfortable with the task and the people and processes I've adjusted along the way. I have a good understanding of all of the factors, so now when problems arise I can call on my knowledge and easily and quickly adjust the team to complete my tasks.

Understanding these four stages helps us to focus on the steps to move from the first stage through to the competent stage, the better we identify where we are placed tells us what is required to move forward so our leadership at its optimum.

Take the time to do an assessment, can you recognise where you are in this cycle. Once you have reached this understanding, now allocate the time to move to the next stage. If you do the time your leadership will improve.