Lead your team right to years end

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

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.