Do you want to get the best out of your team this year? If you do, then follow these five simple steps and you will have the best year yet with your team.
One of the things that we can all be guilty of doing is being on this sort of treadmill.
When we go from one project to the next, from one thing to the next, we’re always looking forward. Now, don’t get me wrong – looking forward is essential. We need to look forward. That’s where the future lies, but sometimes more often than we do, we need to pause. We need to stop and we need to celebrate.
I encourage you to pause before moving onto the next thing with your team. I would like to encourage you to pause in such a way that you celebrate everything that has gone before and all that is coming up.
I want you to find some time to meet with your team, whether that’s virtually online or face-to-face depending on the structure of your team. But I want you to take time to meet with your team. Organize it as if it is a celebration, a celebration of being together, a celebration of what you have accomplished, a celebration of what you are going to accomplish. Then I want you to talk about these five things.
- Talk about successes
Go round the room and one by one, talk about what it is that has worked really well. What it is that you as an individual and also as a team have had success with. I want you to make sure that these are not just the big things, but also the small things. I want you to go around the team with every single person saying something.
What I want you to do is to go around the team at least twice because the first time you go around, everybody will come up with what’s already top of mind, when you go around a second time and even a third time, if you’ve had an amazing year, then people will have to start to really dig deep, to think about what are the little things that have been successful. What are the little things that they’re proud of?
If people are only talking about the big things, talk about some of the small ones to give permission to everybody in the room to do that.
This doesn’t have to be just mentioning what it is that went well. What I want you to do is encourage everybody to say what the success was, what made it a success and what you have learnt from it, which then means what are you going to take forward?
Those are four things.
What the success was, what made it a success? What did you learn from it? And what are you going to take forward?
2. Talk about failures and mistakes
And here it’s really important that you go fast. Why?
Because if you go first and you are really vulnerable, you are really honest. And you talk about the failures that you’ve had, the mistakes that you’ve made, not only the mistakes of the team, then you give permission to everybody else to be just as vulnerable. This is going to mean that you’re going to start to generate that trust, that acceptance, that permission to talk about things that go wrong. That is critical because the foundation of any team is trust. And this is what you’re going to be building.
So in the same way, I want you to talk about what went wrong, big and small and go around the room. What was it that contributed to that mistake or to that failure? What did you learn and what are you going to take forward? Those are the four things.
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3. Talk about fears
I want you to talk about what it is that you’re afraid of. So what am I afraid of? What are we also afraid of collectively, where do those fears come from and what can we do collectively to allay those fears?
It may be that, first of all, you talk about what your fears are. And everybody then talks about it and goes one by one and says what it is that they’re afraid of. Where does that fear come from? And then have a discussion about what you can do collectively about it. And this will allow you to talk about it from an individual personal perspective, but also as a team and collectively.
So you’re starting to really get to understand things that go beyond the surface.
4. Talk about struggles
What am I struggling with? What is that struggle stopping me from doing or achieving and who can help?
Go around the room again but this is one that you need to go first. You need to go first because that will then give permission to everybody else in the team to be really honest.
5. Talk about hopes and dreams
By framing them as hopes and dreams, you allow people to talk about their own personal hopes and dreams as well as those for the team. Rather than you going first, I want you to let the rest of the team go first, because otherwise you risk everybody just copying you. If you talk about the business part of it, then they’re just going to want the same thing, or there’s a risk of that.
If you decide that you’re going to go first, because nobody’s really talking about it, then I want you, first of all, to focus on your own personal hopes and dreams, what is it that you want for this coming year? That will enable everybody else to do the same and that’s when you start planning for the future, but you start planning with all of that knowledge and that information about what’s gone before.
And then it’s the case of having a conversation. So what was useful? What are you going to take forward? And who’s going to be responsible for what. I’d encourage you to do this more than once a year. I’d encourage you to do this at the beginning of every quarter, maybe you want to do it at the end of a big project so that you can really look at what you learned together, what you need to do going forward and what are the things that you’re going to put in place.
As I’ve said, this is not just a process to review a project or review a year even, or quarter. It’s a process that is going to enable you to engage your team and enable you to generate innovation, creativity, and above all trust with your team.
On these 5 things, what do you think will generate the most response for your team?
Comment below as well as if you have a question for me. I personally look at all the comments and will do my very best to respond.
