Take Time to Re-Align
By Leanne Crain
With the New Year almost upon us, it is a great time to sit back, take stock of our teams, and do the necessary steps to ensure everyone is on track and where they should be. This is often called the "inner view". Different from the interviews you go through to get a new job, an inner view is done to make sure you are in tune with your team.
To conduct an inner view, you may want to ask your team a series of questions in advance to allow them time to really think about what is important to them. These questions can involve where they are now in the team, where they want to go, and what they feel they need to get there.
After they have had time to consider these questions, sit down with each team member separately and discuss their answers, as well as your views on each point. Together, you can come up with their personal goals for next year, a list of training or equipment requirements for them to do their jobs even better, and a general overview of how they are feeling.
With this information, you have the opportunity to assess the whole team, focus on their strengths, make any necessary changes, and then help them grow. Remember, you want your team to learn to be self sufficient. Like the child who must eventually learn to tie his own shoe, the team must learn to assess themselves, grow themselves, and ask for help when they need it.
Of course, a critical factor to the success of the inner view is the level of trust your team has. If you are finding that your team is filtering the information they give you, or not very open to changing things, you may want to focus on building the trust levels up a bit as part of your goals.
Seek out those on your team with the most potential, and spend time nurturing them and developing them into great leaders. Spend the time now, at the beginning of the year, to re-assess and re-align your team, invest in them, and then reap the benefits all the way through 2010.
For more ideas on leadership, please contact Gary Gzik at ggzik@bizxcel.com
Leanne Crain is a Marketing Assistant for BizXcel. Her background is marketing and tourism, and she has over 12 years experience in the sales and marketing field.
