Are you failing your staff, your coworkers, your team? How do you know? Did you ask them? While most of us will annually reach out to our customers, clients and partners to get their feedback on our performance we often neglect those we work with closely. How often have you asked your coworkers, your staff, your immediate team members about …
Reflecting on the past year
It’s July 17th, and today is my birthday so I have been doing a bit of reflecting on the past year of my life and what I have accomplished (or haven’t, yet) during that time. This is a great process to go through as it helps highlight what you have done thus far and to also assess your progress towards …
Enable people to contribute
As you work with people from different departments, divisions, even different companies you may come to realize that their work may be based on varying levels of quality and expectations. Before getting upset or immediately escalating to their supervisors please try to understand the full picture as to what they may be dealing with. They could be severely understaffed, overworked …
Culture of evidence and collaboration
As you and your team go about your daily responsibilities it is important to create the culture of evidence and collaboration. Each team needs to be able to document their performance, progress, accomplishments and contributions. The value of such resource will continue to grow with time as it begins to serve as a knowledge management databases of source. This resource …
Motivating employees
For teams to be effective and efficient people must be motivated to contribute and do their best. Motivating can take various forms and shapes, but it always comes down to the following fundamental concepts: Comfort – people need to feel comfortable at work Variety – people want variety in their work and responsibilities Contribution & significance – their work must …
Be grateful and say thank you
Be grateful for what you have as your life (both personal and professional) could be a lot worse. Also, make sure you sincerely recognize and appreciate others who help you and contribute to the overall organizational performance and success. Everyone is of equal importance and everyone contributes in their way to the overall state you are in today. Respect others, …
Overworked employees
Overworked employees are unhappy, they make mistakes and they are not contributing at their optimal levels of performance. They are constantly under pressure which has negative impact on their health and lives outside work as well (you do remember that work is only a PART of people’s lives, right?). While I understand that in certain professions and industries one can …
Organizational policies must be communicated
Whether it is a new policy or an update to an existing one, all changes must be clearly communicated across the organization and an official start date needs to be set. Furthermore, enterprise policies needs to be written with your organization, people, culture in mind – don’t simply copy them from other organizations as they won’t make sense in your …
Trust, but verify (quietly)
As you introduce new staff to your team it is essential to verify their skills, quality and performance and ensure that they are a valuable addition to your team. However, when you do this, make sure you do it quietly as you don’t want any “bruised” egos or notions of distrust among employees. This can be done in a variety …
Relaxed and creative environment
One of many leadership responsibilities (both formal and informal) is to create and maintain a relaxed and creative environment for your team as that is a major prerequisite to them performing at their very best. Be professional, courteous and aware of varying needs of your team members, but ensure that each of them enjoys being part of that team.