How to Motivate 21st Century Team to Outperform
As the CEO of your organization, it is your role to lead, to inspire, and to ensure that your teams are able to execute and execute well – every time. In business, it is not always what you know, but instead, how you execute and how you can lead your teams to produce at their peak level that counts. According to CEO peer groups, here are the top five ways to instantly elevate your team’s performance so you can continually see powerful results.
- Choose the right people for the right roles. Hiring the right people is only one small part of building teams that execute. The key is to ensure that you have the employees performing tasks and doing work that is aligned with their strengths. To effectively do this, your managers must be aware of your employees’ strengths. When you are able to tap into a team members strengths and empower them to do work that leverages these strengths, then performance levels will naturally increase. However, when you neglect to do this, you run the risk of your teams underperforming, simply because team members are assigned to roles and doing work that may be difficult for them or not suited to their strengths. For example, promoting your top salesperson into a supervisory role that requires them to supervise and mentor others, may not be a good fit, especially if the employee lacks the management level skills needed to be successful. In this sense, you lose a top salesperson and gain a mediocre sales manager.
- Invest in professional development. As your business grows and the needs of your business change, you want to ensure your employees have the training they need to perform. Whether you have an in-house training department or invest in sending staff to outside training, making learning a part of your company culture is important. Many times, teams are not performing well because they lack the necessary resources and/or the skills to get the job done. This learning focus also extends to you, as the CEO. You should make your learning a top priority as well and seek out proven options such as CEO peer groups to help you support your leadership development.
- Have clear goals and milestones. Teams, at all levels, need to have some way of measuring their progress or lack thereof. When you give teams a goal or task without clear expectations of results, you inevitably breed a sense of complacency. Tracking success and making it a point to review team progress frequently creates a sense of commitment and urgency to keep your teams performing and performing at their best.
- Be explicit with your expectations. Your teams should always know what they are expected to do. If this is not clear, then inaction will result. As often as possible, outline your expectations along with deadlines and establish consequences if teams underperform. Be committed to enforcing consequences and take the time to review team expectations and address any questions or concerns early in the process. When you wait and assume tasks are clear, you open up the door for confusion derailing your team’s productivity.
- Make yourself available. Teams always perform when they have accountability and a leader that is present and one that is focused on helping them to perform. This does not require you to become a micromanager, however, it does require you to take a hands-on approach with your teams and be on top of what they need to succeed. Having weekly round-up meetings to have your teams share their insights, progress, and concerns is a great way to keep the lines of communication open and help you stay abreast of what everyone is working on.
What other ways have you used to motivate your teams to perform? We welcome your input on what has worked to elevate your teams’ performance and keep them increasing their productivity. Share your thoughts with us on Facebook.
