12 Mar 2019 Boss! Is it your responsibility?
One of my main functions as an executive coach is to help my clients build high-performing teams.
In our first or second session, I ask my clients the following questions. If you are interested in building a high-performing team, I invite you to take a moment to contemplate these questions.
- Are you doing everything you can to help your team members to be the best they can be?
- Do you prioritize spending time coaching them over spending time on your emails and to-do list?
- Do you know what is blocking your team members from performing at their best?
- Have you figured out how to address these challenges?
In this article, I share six tips that leaders can use to identify their team members’ “performance blockers” and help them address these hurdles.
The tone of the article may be “a little too directive”, but it comes with the best intentions in mind.
Also, I refer to your team members as “her/him”, putting the ladies first. I do not intend to offend anyone with this representation.
Beware that the ideas presented herein will require time, energy, courage, and compassion. You have to be willing to take other things off your plate in order to practice these ideas successfully.
If the ideas below resonate with you, you may wish to consider holding a training workshop for you and your team to learn how to practice these concepts and become a high-performing team.
- Be a coach leader
Consider your primary role as being a coach to your team members. Attend coach leader training and make it your goal to attain the highest level of proficiency as a coach to your team.
The more you cultivate your coaching skills, the more effective and successful you’ll become as a leader.
Coaching can only be effective if it is done on a regular basis. Spend a minimum of one hour every two weeks with each team member you are coaching.
Together with your team member, set clear coaching objectives, strategies for achieving them, and metrics for measuring the progress. Provide your team members constructive feedback on their progress and praise them when credit is due.
- Create good chemistry
Poor chemistry between the boss and her/his employee can be devastating to the employee and will result in her/his unsatisfactory performance. Poor chemistry often manifests itself in poor communication, misunderstood expectations, diminished motivation, and ultimately poor performance. Although chemistry is often outside of our control, there are actions we can take to alleviate the effects of poor chemistry.
As a leader, it is your responsibility to establish relationships based on trust and respect. This requires you to constantly ask yourself the following questions:
- What does trusting my team members mean to me?
- How does trust manifest itself in my behavior and in theirs?
- Does each of my team members trust me?
- Do I trust each one of them?
- What qualities and capabilities do I respect my team members for, and what qualities am I less respectful of?
- What can I do to help my team members develop the qualities and capabilities which will benefit them?
Once you have clear answers to these questions, you should figure out what actions you should take to build even stronger relationships with your team members, based on trust and respect.
- Align strategy and expectations
Another root cause of poor performance is a misalignment of the goals, strategy, and expectations which the boss has for the team member. Employees, especially experienced ones, may have their own ideas regarding the best strategy for the organization. Absent clear communication from the boss, they may decide to go their own way, and find out all too late that they have been flying in the wrong direction.
Sometimes the boss is just too busy to clearly communicate her/his expectations. Sometimes she/he assumes that everyone knows the strategy and direction they should follow. Sometimes the expectations were communicated but were not understood or accepted by the employee.
Do not assume that your team members understand and accept your strategy and expectations. Take the time to have repeated and detailed conversations with your team members regarding your strategy and expectations. Ask her/him to state their interpretation of the strategy they should pursue and correct any misunderstandings.
- Identify and alleviate stress
Stress intolerance is the number one cause of behaviors that are inconsistent with good performance. In their study, Dr. Sumner Starrfield and his colleagues found that a certain amount of stress is necessary for us to perform at our best, but when the stress level increases above that optimal point, our effectiveness decreases dramatically.
The neurological reason for this is rooted in the brain’s fight or flight response, in which our brain’s main goal is survival of the self. So under excessive stress, we either withdraw from our responsibilities (flight response), or we become more aggressive, intolerant, egocentric, or arrogant (fight response).
As a leader, you should be attuned to the stresses that your team members are facing and help them alleviate unnecessary stress. Beware of any stressors you may be imposing on her/him and find ways to communicate the same goals (revenue, margins, timeliness, quality, etc.) in the least stressful manner.
Observe your team member’s inappropriate responses to stress, such as withdrawal, aggression, arrogance, insensitivity, irrational decisions or actions. Communicate your observations and exercise your coaching skills to help her/him address these inappropriate responses to stress.
- Be a better listener
I was generally successful in my career, but I also had failures. The main reason for my failures was my inability to listen. I was not able to hear what my peers, my boss, my team members, and even my customers were communicating to me. I was deafened by my own perception of the world and by my expectations of how it should respond to me.
As I progressed in my executive coaching work I learned that inability to listen, understand, and respond to the people we interact with, is one of the main reasons for career failures.
Learn how to observe your team members’ capacity to listen, to understand, and to act upon what the others are communicating to them. Point out to your team members the signals they may be missing and how they should respond to these signals.
Developing your ability to observe how others listen (or not) will help you become a better listener yourself, and a highly effective leader.
- Set them up for success
Even the most talented individuals are sometimes asked to take on responsibilities in which they not likely to succeed. It could be due to external constraints such as lack of resources or unrealistic timelines, or due to lack of skills, experience, or professional qualities.
Sadly, we sometimes do not see (or believe) that we are set up to fail. We take on the task, only to experience frustrations, setbacks, and ultimately failure. But with support from our boss, these failures can be avoided.
Make sure that you give your team members missions that are within their capabilities. You may set stretch goals for them, but be sure not to stretch them to their break-point.
Beware of the hurdles that may hinder your team members’ ability to succeed, and help them remove these hurdles. Be there to support them, and at the same time give them enough space to experience, make (non-fatal) mistakes, and grow.
If the above approach to being a coach leader resonates with you, I invite you to send me any comments or questions you may have (Uri@thewilltochange.com).
Also, if you are interested in holding a Leadership Workshop with your team, based on these concepts, I’d be glad to discuss with you.
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