Three Ways to Make Your Team Shine
Posted on September 04, 2017 by Jacqueline House, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
As a leader it's your job to make your team shine. Making the team shine is not about telling them what to do but about successful collaboration.
Leading a team can be daunting. Especially if you are a newly promoted leader who must now direct the work of your former co-workers. The skills you used to do well as an individual, won’t sustain you as a leader. Successful leaders collaborate with their followers to get the desired results. Here are three ways to make your team shine and drastically improve your leadership skills. When your team shines, you will shine.
1. Coach team members instead of directing them. Ask probing questions when they come to you for answers. In this way you help them to exercise their leadership skills instead of always giving them the answer that you think fits the problem. Collectively you may discover something that neither of you alone would have uncovered.
2. Use the sandwich method when you are coaching your team members. Team members will inevitably come to you for approval of their projects, because you are the leader. Always take the time to share with them the parts of the project that has met your high standards, coach them through the parts of the project that needs improvement, and then point out another piece of the project that they did well. That’s the sandwich – praise, improvement, praise.
3. Remember that coaching team members through projects should never be personal. Hopefully you have collected or inherited team members who have the skills to do the job. This should have been settled when they were hired. Now, it’s just a matter of meshing your professional style with the team member’s style. Avoid using an accusatory tone when pointing out those areas that need improvement and remember to focus on the project and not the person.
Following these three ways to make your team shine will put you on the path to having a successful team.
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