Not managing the personalities and relationships in your team risks not developing the motivation and commitment the team needs to achieve its goals.
Performance management is hard, getting the most from our teams is hard; how do we “do” performance management?
There are many strands to good performance management but I want to focus on one specific area – managing ourselves and our relationships with our team members.
Why Risk Management?
Why did I head this article Risk Management in Team Performance? Because if you do not manage the relationships and the personalities in your team you are taking a big risk, a risk that you won’t develop the motivation and commitment the team needs to achieve its goals.
What Are Human Resources?
In business we tend to hide behind terrible phrases like “human resource management” as if the “human resource” is something we can tweak and improve like a machine. Our human resource is people. And as a manager or a team leader, your job is to create the systems, processes and atmosphere that let your team members do their jobs in the greatest possible way.
Consider all the people you have worked with, all the stories you have heard about workplaces from others. Where do people produce their very best results? Always in a place that gives them what they want. If people want a lot of money they become bankers, they start their own companies or become criminals. If they want to serve, they become doctors, nurses, teachers etc. If they want excitement they join the forces or become pilots.
However often, when people are starting out, they do not know what they want and they end up where they are through a series of accidents. What do you do to motivate and engage them then?
There are many aspects to this but a key one is that youhave to take care of them, show them that you care about them and how things go with them.
How Do You Create an Engaged Team?
How do you create that sense of caring, of belonging in your team, of enjoying what they do? One way is to have a (very) short team meeting first thing every day. Spend 10 minutes setting the mood for the day and the whole day will go much better.
You do not have to do all the thinking on this. Ask the team to come up with ideas to get the day off to a good start.
Once you have that great start, you can discuss anything that needs discussing, plan anything that needs planning or just pass on news, quickly of course.
Do not make the mistake of thinking you are too busy to do this. The short time reinforcing relationships, clearing up misunderstandings and strengthening communications between team members will save 100s of hours in terms of problems down the line.
Have You Got More Suggestions?
This is just one way of creating that family feeling in your team that will produce fantastic performances. I would love to hear more from you about what you think and ideas you have tried (or even just thought about).
Performance management is hard, getting the most from our teams is hard; how do we “do” performance management?
There are many strands to good performance management but I want to focus on one specific area – managing ourselves and our relationships with our team members.
Why Risk Management?
Why did I head this article Risk Management in Team Performance? Because if you do not manage the relationships and the personalities in your team you are taking a big risk, a risk that you won’t develop the motivation and commitment the team needs to achieve its goals.
What Are Human Resources?
In business we tend to hide behind terrible phrases like “human resource management” as if the “human resource” is something we can tweak and improve like a machine. Our human resource is people. And as a manager or a team leader, your job is to create the systems, processes and atmosphere that let your team members do their jobs in the greatest possible way.
Consider all the people you have worked with, all the stories you have heard about workplaces from others. Where do people produce their very best results? Always in a place that gives them what they want. If people want a lot of money they become bankers, they start their own companies or become criminals. If they want to serve, they become doctors, nurses, teachers etc. If they want excitement they join the forces or become pilots.
However often, when people are starting out, they do not know what they want and they end up where they are through a series of accidents. What do you do to motivate and engage them then?
There are many aspects to this but a key one is that youhave to take care of them, show them that you care about them and how things go with them.
How Do You Create an Engaged Team?
How do you create that sense of caring, of belonging in your team, of enjoying what they do? One way is to have a (very) short team meeting first thing every day. Spend 10 minutes setting the mood for the day and the whole day will go much better.
Start the meeting with something uplifting, for example getting everyone to say out loud something they are grateful for in their lives, or something great that has happened to them or what is going really well with their work. If this sounds too pink and fluffy, do the research and see what the difference is between a highly stressed person who focuses on all the negatives in their lives and one who is enjoyably wired and really loves what they do. Without doing too much thinking, we all know that the person who is in a good mood, seeing things positively, is much more likely to turn out the kind of performance we are looking for. Oh, and is much more fun to work with as well.
You do not have to do all the thinking on this. Ask the team to come up with ideas to get the day off to a good start.
Once you have that great start, you can discuss anything that needs discussing, plan anything that needs planning or just pass on news, quickly of course.
Do not make the mistake of thinking you are too busy to do this. The short time reinforcing relationships, clearing up misunderstandings and strengthening communications between team members will save 100s of hours in terms of problems down the line.
Have You Got More Suggestions?
This is just one way of creating that family feeling in your team that will produce fantastic performances. I would love to hear more from you about what you think and ideas you have tried (or even just thought about).
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