As a leader, how can you ensure your overall approach is effective for both your intended consumer and for your team? While the clients’ needs are what drives the mission, and rightfully so, you also have to pay close attention to your team’s morale, focus, and productivity in order for all to work together to meet your organization’s goals.
This can be a delicate balance, to be sure, as you’re being pulled in multiple directions at once while also trying to be the leader. You want your team to function at the highest level possible, but how do you get them there? Consider the following advice:
1. Empower Staff
Trust is a valuable asset in any organization – perhaps the most valuable of them all. If your employees do not feel trust coming from their leadership and team, productivity will suffer. In order to truly inspire your staff to get creative, start solving problems, and get things done, you need to empower them (and therefore trust them) to make decisions, to brainstorm, and to take calculated risks. This doesn’t mean total freedom without structure, but it does mean clarity of expectation, feedback on projects, and encouraging individuals to take on added responsibility on a regular basis.
2. Communication
There are ways to assert yourself as the leader of your organization, but it also goes a long way with your team, on a psychological and emotional level, to express that when it comes to the common mission and overall goals, you’re all equally invested. You’re all equal in your interest to ensure the clients’ needs are met. You’re all equal in caring about what your organization does to help people and communities. Communicate that on the regular basis.
3. Set Accountability Goals
Put in place measures to track goals, and then keep your team accountable to them. You, as the leader, should set some of these, as should your managers and other leaders in the organization, but perhaps most importantly, you should work to create an environment in which individual are encouraged to state and work towards personal career goals within the organization. Be sure your new system tracks these goals and communicates results.