“Let me know how I can support you”, “what support do you need”. These messages from leaders, although given with the best of intentions, can leave team members speechless. Some team members will be able to think of resources they need, and possibly what support they might need from other departments, or time they need. If they have done a similar task before they will have a good idea of what it takes and what support they might need from their leader.
But if they haven’t, they might not even know where to start, let alone know what support they need. In these situations they really need their leader to offer some suggestions of what support they might need, possible risks to be wary of, and key stakeholders. All this information gives the team member a good head start on the task, and the support they might need.
Give them Challenges
As a leader, part of your job is to draw on your experience from the same or similar tasks, and use that experience to help the team. Handing over a task to someone, and viewing it as some sort of test to see if they ‘have what it takes’ really isn’t a good idea. The goal is to help the team member learn these skills, and as a leader, you’re in a great position to help them learn. It is a good idea to give them challenges that will stretch them a bit, and develop their skills, knowledge and even get them out of their comfort zone a bit.
Help Them Define Their Goals
To help feel ownership, your team member should be able to define the goal. Maybe you gave them the task,or the task was given to you to give to someone in the team, but ultimately it will be the team member who will complete it.
If the team member has come up with the goal themselves, then even better! Perhaps they want to develop their presentation or facilitation skills, or learn negotiation skills. It is good to help them define exactly what that means for them – what ‘success’ looks like for them. And then help them define what they think are the steps they should take to get there, and how to how if they have ‘finished’ a step. One important point is to understand that there is a whole journey to go on to achieve a goal, and it isn’t a binary pass or fail, in fact there isn’t a complete pass, nor is there a complete fail.
A popular goal definition framework is SMART. It is popular for a reason – it helps to really explore different facets of a goal, and can provide clarity to something that starts out as an idea.
SMART is an acronym that stands for:
- Specific: you should be able to define the goal clearly. If you can’t define it, you can’t achieve it.
- Measurable: how will you know if you have achieved the goal? What measure will you use to determine this?
- Achievable: it really doesn’t help to set a goal that isn’t achievable, given the measure, and the time you have.
- Relevant: the goal needs to matter to the person trying to achieve it.
- Time bound: having a target date to work towards is important, even if there are no real consequences if you don’t meet that date.
Help Them Learn From Failure
Don’t let them fail horribly, but maybe just enough to learn lessons. Remember to watch out for repercussions or blame if they do ‘fail’, and not just from other people. The team member might blame themselves for the failure, so be sure that they learn a good lesson from it, and don’t dwell on the negative feelings of failure. Often it is good to share a story of your own failures to let them know that you have made mistakes and have grown from them.
Help The Celebrate the Small (and the big) Wins
A successful step forward on the path to achieving a goal demands a celebration, even if it is only a brief ‘well done’, a coffee break, and even cake, lunch with the team, or a short break to play a game. All these things help the team understand that it is just as good to talk about small wins and it is to talk about big wins, and that the path should not just be about the struggle.
Use Your Position to Help Them
Often, you as the leaders have insights or knowledge about the bigger picture, more so than your team might. You can use this to help guide your team members in achieving their goals, for example, to help them be part of a bigger initiative, connect them with other people in the organisation who have similar goals, or set them up with a mentor who can help them.
Make Them Accountable
Goals can, unfortunately, get pushed to the side by other work deemed to be a high priority, and some people are just not good at making sure they spend time on their personal development. I am certainly guilty of that one! So, making them accountable to their goals helps – it shows that you’re interested in their development, that you actually are available if they need help, and it also gives them a bit of a nudge for them to spend some time on the goals. Ultimately, they are accountable for achieving their goal.
A way to do this is to schedule regular one-on-one meetings with them. Having a regular event in the calendar will make them feel like they need to achieve some progress to talk about at the meeting. It is much better at the meeting to discuss progress, rather than rescheduling because there hasn’t been any progress.
