How to measure this years success

Take a leaf from your kids teachers and create a rubric to setup how you measure your teams performance this year. By now most of us will have set the goals for all our team members, so now is the time to put in writing how we will assess the results. The beauty of doing this now is that the ideas are fresh in our mind and come the end of the year we will have a useful tool to make our assessment.

Typically when a rubric is created, each item under review will have a description of the outcome and demonstrated behaviours. Then three or four columns are used to note down what needs to be demonstrated for an average result, a good result and an excellent result. This will give us a great record for what we want to see completed and to what standard.

Now that we have this as a record we can share this with our team members as we conduct our periodic reviews. This way there will be no mistakes or excuses about the performance of our team members.

As the leaders of our teams it's important that we set the expectations so everyone knows what is expected and has a reference. Why not give it a try and see how it works for you.

Succession planning

As leaders of our teams it's important we plan for the future. Part of this planning needs to be about who takes over the important aspects of our business. While we set the strategic direction we want to take we must carefully look within our teams and outside as to position the next generation of leaders.

Succession planning is all about identifying the right personnel, grooming them and then setting up the framework for their elevation into these positions.

So where to start, this is best done by identifying the crucial roles and attitudes necessary to be successful in the target job. Write each of these down in a matrix and classify each with a priority. Now we know what we need in the future person to hold this role.

Next let's take a good look at your current workforce as there is a reasonable chance you will already have someone who has many of these skills and attributes. Next create another matrix similar to the first one and place each prospective candidate and rate them against each of your criteria you found in the first matrix. This will help you to identify any areas where you need to discount them or opportunities for additional training or mentoring to fill the gaps.

Ideally you will have identified and developed at least two people who would be suitable for the position. This will give you some flexibility should situations change.

Now it's time to test them out! Next time you're on leave or out of the office for an extended period, put them into the position and give them control. Let other groups you interface know that there is someone filling on for you during this period.

Once you come back take some time out with the person and gain their feedback on how they saw things pan out. Don't be too critical if those go wrong take it as an opportunity to mentor them in to a better outcome. Also take time out to gain feedback from team members and upper management on how they went. This may give you some insights on how ready they are to take the next step.

As today's leaders it's important we look for ways to ensure we have succession plans in place for all our critical roles, as this will strengthen our business and have a robust mechanism in place for the future.

Have to tackled succession planning in your business, how did it go?

How to re-organize your Team

As the new year is about to kick-off, now is a good time to look to re-energise and re-organize your team. As leaders it is important for us to continually look at ways to improve our teams and their performance.
Firstly let's look to collect like skills, make a list of all your team members and their skills, then group the like skilled people together. Should all these people be in a group together so their skills can be shared to improve the overall output?
Next let's look at the outputs we need to produce. Do we align our groups in-line with our outputs?
Now make a matrix with our skills down one side and our outputs across the top. Then work through the matrix and assign your team.

Check for any obvious personality clashes and move people around to come up with a best fit.
Brief your functional leaders on why you have formed the team and how they are aligned. By working through the "Why" your functional leaders will fell part of the buy-in and understand your reasoning for creating the teams the way you have them. Spend plenty of time to ensure that everyone gets what you want to achieve and why the groupings are the way they are. It is very important that your senior people are fully aware and are ready to take the task on.

Now look through the team members and identify those that may need some help to move to the new team structure. Book a time with each member and clear your diary.
When you meet with each member, you need to focus on two things: one why you need the team to be structured the way you want and secondly how they will integrate into this to help drive this team to peak performance. Explain how good their work is and how you believe the new structure Will make the whole team perform better.

As the leaders of our teams it is important to continually look at ways to improve our team and strive peak performance.

Create a mid-year review checklist

As we pass through the mid-year many of us in leadership positions will conduct reviews with our direct reports.

Rather than just walk through the process, I believe you need to create an objective review checklist. The checklist will help you identify those performers who are on-track and those that are behind. Of those behind  it is important to understand why they are behind, is it because you have directed their efforts somewhere else or is it because they are not tackling the challenges you set them at the start of the year.

What I find useful is to create a checklist for use at each review. Work through the checklist during the review.

 

 Firstly the checklist should address the formalities of the review.

1.       Why we are here?

2.       Do they feel comfortable to discuss candidly with you how they feel they are going?

3.       How do they rate themselves?

4.       How do you rate their performance to date?

5.       Why is there any delta?

Next look into their individual and team goals.

1.       On they on track to make their targets?

2.       Do the targets need to be revised up or down?

3.       Are there issues blocking progress that you can provide help to free up?

4.       Is there time to take corrective action and get any wayward goals back on track?

 

Assess for business Impact.

 

1.       Which goals are having the maximum impact?  These goals need to be pushed forward, how can we get more traction and better results.

2.       Which goals are having a minimal impact?  These goals should be dropped, save our energy and efforts for the greater impact goals.

Identify risky members

 

1.       Why are these members goals at risk?  Explain why they are at risk and consequences of poor performance.

2.       Have we contributed to the risk position?  If so we must own the issue and re-qualify the goal.

Positive finish

1.       Regardless of performance overall, we must praise all positive work,

2.       Remind team members of their role in an inclusive and cohesive team.

As team leaders it is our responsibility to conduct mid-year reviews. The reviews give us a good time to analyse where the team is and where it is heading. By keeping an eye on the goals we set for the team we can develop action plans to support our team and lead the strong performers to a position of excellence. Don’t be tempted by the leadership conundrum of who to allocate the most time too.  Time and time again it has been proven if we have limited time available we must give it to our top team members as any boost in their output will be more beneficial than the same improvement in our weakest members. It’s our duty as the leaders to manage and lead or teams to the highest performance we can, this way our team will be making the maximum contribution to the company.

Team Bonding

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. 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.

How to keep your team motivated

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

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

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.

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!

Credit the team on their success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.