Avoid
the items below to move your team towards success:
1. Making a distinction between work
and life.
You are one person and
have one life. Work is part of
life. Team members experience in the
workplace does impact them outside of the workplace and vice versa. It is exhausting being one person in the
workplace and another outside of the workplace.
I suggest learning to prioritize, having great stress relieving
routines, and be yourself.
2. Assuming
If there is any doubt,
get clear. Doubt is like a fog. If you are unable to see where you are going,
the risk of taking a more treacherous path is high. Make a habit of setting clear expectations up
front and this will keep the "assuming" fog away.
3. Putting the team’s needs after
theirs
You lead people and
manage process. Leaders are responsible for bringing out the best in their team
members. When the team does well, this
reflects on the leader. The best leaders
empower team members while ensuring the best processes are in place to ensure
the team succeeds. Believe me, if you
have your team’s back, they will have yours.
A great book that discusses this in depth is “Leaders Eat Last” by Simon
Sinek.
4. Trying
Please get rid of this
word from your vocabulary. If you “try”,
you fail to commit. If someone tells me
“I will try to .....”, I immediately ask him or her to commit. The process is to “commit and succeed” or
“commit, fail, learn, and do again”.
5. Berating team members for their
failures
All humans will make
mistakes or fail. One of the best ways
to learn is to fail. Encourage team
members to own the failure (with any consequences) and take responsibility for
coming up with a plan to correct the failure.
One thing I have learned is that people are very forgiving when you own
the mistake rather than covering it up or playing the blame game.
