Management

Don’t Be Too Rehearsed Before a Critical Talk…

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Before a critical presentation, the best thing you can do is rehearse – a lot. That doesn’t mean you need to memorize every line (which will make you sound too rehearsed). Your goal should be to feel confident in what you’re saying while leaving room for spontaneity. 

The trick is to spend extra time practicing the beginning and the end of your talk, including your first and last slides. The introduction sets the stage for your message and gives your audience a reason to care. Your conclusion determines which ideas people will walk away with. If you nail these two sections of the talk, you’ll probably do well no matter what happens. 

You should also repeatedly practice any sections that have complex or technical content. While you rehearse, consider recording yourself on your phone; play it back to watch for distracting habits (fidgeting, avoiding eye contact) and areas where you seem unsure of yourself. Rehearse those sections a few more times.

Make your Team Work Smarter — Not Harder

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At times, we’ve all spent too much time and effort working on the wrong things, whether it’s putting hours into status updates that never get read, or prioritizing a presentation’s design over the message. As a manager, you can help your team avoid these pitfalls and prioritize the tasks that matter the most. 

First, set clear end dates for large initiatives, assign approximate hours for key project milestones, and coach people if they’re spending too much time on a specific task. At the same time, avoid crossing the line into micromanaging. 

Emphasize that perfect is often the enemy of good. Encourage team members to set timers for smaller tasks, like crafting emails or searching for images for presentations. Also, remind them that it’s okay to make mistakes; the typo in the newsletter or the file that wasn’t attached to the email will not make or break their career. 

Finally, help them make connections across the organization so they know who can help them and answer questions when necessary. Emphasize that you don’t expect them to go it alone and that collaborating with others can make sure that you all are collectively working on the right things on behalf of the organization.

In the end, focusing on these will help you and your team work smarter rather than harder.

Build Learning into Team’s Culture…

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How can you help your team learn in the flow of work? Here are three strategies to try. 

Build constructive feedback.

To start, build constructive feedback into your team’s regular workflows. Allot time in meeting agendas and project calendars to consider what worked well and what would make the process and outcomes even better. Proactively showing your team what they’re doing well will increase confidence and prompt people to continue stretching their potential. 

Normalise making mistakes.

Next, normalize making mistakes so employees fear them less and learn from them more. Encourage them to quickly share with someone else when they mess up, focusing on the question: What did you learn from that mistake? To model this behavior, you might start your monthly team meeting by sharing an insight you learned from a mistake you made. 

Encourage experimentation.

Finally, encourage experimentation. Show your team that you’re open to their pitches and willing to prototype and pilot good ideas. You might ask: What is one idea for improvement that would support you in achieving your objectives for this quarter? To make that idea happen, what would you need to start, stop, or change? And how could you test that idea quickly? Asking your employees to think outside the box will stoke learning and development on your team.

How to build trust as a Leader…

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To be effective, leaders need their team’s trust. But how do you get that trust — and how do you get it back if you’ve lost it? Three behaviors are essential. 

Demonstrate expertise and judgment.

The first behavior is to demonstrate expertise and judgment. People are more likely to trust you if they believe you have the technical know-how and the experience to make good decisions about the team’s work. 

Create positive relationships.

The second is to create positive relationships with your team. There are a number of ways to do this, including helping employees cooperate, resolving conflicts between others, giving honest feedback, and checking in with people about their concerns. 

Be consistent.

The last behavior is to be consistent. You must do what you say you will do. Follow through on your commitments and keep any promises you make. You don’t need to be perfect at these three behaviors to be a trusted leader — but you do need to be good at them.

Re-energize Your Team…

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If your team is depleted, demotivated, and drained, you can deploy a few strategies to re-energize them. 

Proactively initiate purpose-driven career conversations.

And make them routine. People want to know they’re on a path of growth and opportunity for a more significant impact. Include caring feedback on areas to improve so that your employees are ready to take on new opportunities when they arise. 

Create team rituals that foster relationships and a sense of belonging. 

When people feel deeply connected to their peers, it energizes work and makes it more fun. You might open team meetings with various prompts—for example, asking people to share something they’re grateful for that day or one word that describes how they’re feeling. The idea is that, over time, the team becomes a place of collective refuge and trust. 

Swap productivity paranoia for helpful prioritization.

Finally, rather than worrying about whether or not people are working enough, spend time helping people prioritize what’s most important. Help them eliminate non-value-added activities and connect each person’s work to the organization’s most important priorities. This will help create a sense of positive productivity as people engage in purposeful work rather than work for work’s sake.

Challenging people to grow is ultimately an act of kindness…

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When someone’s reporting to you already doing well, you might fear that pushing them to do more could be discouraging or demotivating. 

Instead of shying away from these uncomfortable conversations, reframe them as an indication of true care. 

Stretch people to see their potential. Later in life, they will be thanking you to make them what they are by stretching and getting out of their comfort zone.

Want to Create a High-Performing Employee?

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Every leader wants to create or convert a low-performing employee into high performing. One piece that’s often missing is the importance of social connections. If you’re trying to supercharge a person, here are research-backed ways you can foster greater connectedness:

Invest time in bonding over non-work topics. 

The best way to instill trust and emotional attachment is to bond over personal topics. In fact, discussing things not related to work — sports, books, and family, for example — reveals shared interests, and allows connecting in genuine ways, which yields closer friendships and better relationships.

Openly appreciate expressiveness.

Recognition is often a more powerful motivating force than monetary incentives. And an acknowledgment of being expressive not just work should be the norm. It allows her the open up with you and the team boosting her self-confidence and trust.

Put a premium on authenticity. 

It’s important to create an environment where employees feel comfortable candidly expressing both positive and negative emotions — as well as complimenting and joking with teammates. This kind of environment has an inductive effect on lower-performing employees and they start performing well. 

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