Changing Your Team’s Direction

If you think you can change your team’s behavior, direction, and course in thirty days and have them executing on that change – you need to reset your goals.

Leadership is a long game, the more members on your team, the harder it becomes to implement the change you know that the team needs but that the team cannot reliably implement because there are more variables in the mix.

Coming in with a list of demands for behavior and direction change will only serve to confuse your team if you don’t have the actions to back them up.

You need to start small and focus on incremental growth and adjustment.  If the team is not delivering, your efforts should be focused on the behaviors and attitudes that shape that delivery.

• Are there internal or external threats that are preventing them from being successful?
• If so, what small investments can you make that can yield larger gains in the next thirty days to precipitate those bigger changes?

If your Goal is for the Team to “Deliver Better” the first step is to work with the team to identify what delivering betters means to them and everyone on the team.

At that initial discussion, there should be zero discussion on the solution to that goal.

Why?

Because this is the first time you are discussing it with your team.  The first opportunity they have to respond, to come up with a suggestion or ideas on how that problem can be solved.

You need to hear what they have to say because this will affect the solution that together you will implement.

In holding that first meeting, you will have accomplished the goal towards getting your team to understand the problem and begin the task of owning it.

If done right, over the coming week while you are working with your team on potential solutions, team members should be coming to you with additional questions on the final goal – i.e., can we do this as well?

You want this, you want their involvement, you want their ownership.

While fielding these questions, this is an excellent opportunity to bounce ideas off of your team members on how to solve your team’s problem and what steps you can take to get there.

When you circle back with your team the goal of that second session should not be about timelines it should be about the steps needed to be taken to achieve the goal.  This is key to the success of your plan as not everyone will understand the steps that go into achieving a goal and the timelines will be dictated by that understanding.

Once enunciated to your team, the path that you and your team are going to take will then be clear, who will be responsible for what and how the final goal will be achieved – the conversation can now switch to how you and your team will achieve this goal and on a what schedule.

We are constantly bombarded with news and information that teams need to keep changing now and to meet that demand as quickly as possible.

Even during the development of a short-term project, say four to seven months, the pressure is just as great to “produce results” and “show change”.

History has always proven that the team that manages by Ownership and Adoption and treat Change as a marathon are more likely to succeed in that endeavour.

Don’t be the Leader that “hopes” the change gets implemented, be the Leader that knows when it will be implemented.