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 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!

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.

Provide strategic direction to your team

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

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.

Team stressed - release the pressure

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

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.

How to conduct a mid-year review

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.