The effectiveness of your team reflects positively or negatively on their manager. This makes team building and leadership very important to managers tasked with accomplishing departmental goals. This article will help you set your team up for success this year so that they—and you—show your true value to the organization.
Here are seven tips to help your team perform their best in 2021.
Get to know your team
When was the last time you sat down with your workers to get to know them? Have you ever asked the individual members of your team what their goals are? Where do they see themselves in three years? What matters to them? You will build loyalty among your staff if you take the time to find out their goals and then help them achieve them.
Create work/life balance
Encourage your team to find a work/life balance. Streamline their processes to help them work smarter. If you can, let them go home a little earlier on a Friday night. Support your workers in finding a balance between their home and work life and you will engage them and build their trust.
Define roles and responsibilities
Sometimes our teams are ineffective, not because the individual members aren't hard workers. Sometimes the roles and responsibilities of what is required are ill-defined. As a manager, you should spend some time considering the job descriptions of each employee. Do you have the right seats defined well, and do you have the right people in those seats?
Set attainable small goals
Departments usually have annual and quarterly goals to achieve. But it is the individual employee that helps you reach them. A good way to keep your employees motivated day in and day out is to break up these big goals into incremental goals achievable by day, week, or month. These smaller goals are more achievable for frontline staff.
Set goals with your team
However, you need to seek employee buy-in on all of the goals for your department. Are those goals linked to a mission for the organization? Will your employees see the result of their hard work? Be careful not to set goals without talking with your employees about the benefits of achieving them.
Reward and praise your employees
If you’ve broken your goals into manageable bite-sized pieces, the next step is to set up a rewards system so that you can praise and support your workforce at each step in the process. Even small rewards can keep employees motivated and keep them moving forward.
Provide frequent feedback
Employees perform well with regular feedback that is positive and supportive. Your goal should be to help teams set goals and then create an environment that supports them in achieving them. By providing frequent feedback, you can help motivate your teams toward the success you want to achieve.
If you’re a manager in an environment that doesn’t support you in these seven critical steps toward engaging your teams, perhaps it’s time to speak with People Plus. We specialize in helping businesses succeed by matching the best people to the right jobs. Talk with us to find out more.