How to properly develop your team.
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In a recent training program, my client Samira started to vent.
“My team is too “green”, she said. “They lack the skills they need to be really effective. This is so frustrating for me as I can’t get any of my work done. I’m too busy doing their jobs as well as mine.”
She went on and on in this vein for quite a while.
While I do empathize with Samira that a “green” team can be both frustrating and labour intensive, to be honest, I felt like she needed to look at the situation from a different perspective.
As a leader, you have two choices:
- Complain that your team lacks key skills and that you are too busy to develop them.
- Identify the gaps in skills, knowledge or behaviour for each person on your team. Create a development plan for each person and make it your top priority to provide the training, coaching and mentorship required.
In my opinion, choice one is very short-sighted.
Yes, we are all super busy. However, the longer you ignore the need to develop the people on your team, the longer the status quo will endure. You will continue to be like a hamster running in a wheel.
Plus, investing in your people and taking the time to develop them has many benefits for you and for your organization. These benefits include:
- Delegation: With a fully developed team, you then have the time to focus on more strategic tasks.
- Retention: People leave organizations when they are bored and have stopped learning and growing. They want to be doing interesting work.
- Succession Planning: If you want to move into a new role or new job, you need to have your successor ready to take over.
If you resonate with Samira’s perspective, I promise that you are not alone.
So, what can you do to move from feeling frustrated to feeling in control?
I would suggest you start by creating a solid development plan for each team member.
This can be done by applying just three steps:
- Step 1: Write down all the tasks that each person needs to accomplish
- Step 2: Give each task an “A” or “B” rating. “A” are tasks they are doing well. “B” are tasks that require further development
- Step 3: In your next one-on-one, focus on helping to develop all “B” tasks
Be strategic with how you spend your time with your team.
Focussing on high-value areas that require development, benefits both you, your team members, and the organization.
Now that is a win-win!
In other news
Oh boy! Do I have the best opportunity for you to learn how to properly coach and develop your people!
On September 30th, the Leading Your People Program will begin.
In this six-module program you will learn:
- To create a simple and effective development plan
- A step-by-step process to move your people from developing to fully developed
- How to give constructive feedback to develop high performance
…And this is just one of the 6 modules in the program!
Registration closes in just 2 days. There are only a few spots left.
Go here to read about the other 5 modules and to register.
