From the desk of Skye Barbour.
Oxford, United Kingdom.
Creator of Leadership Design™️
We work with business owners and their teams to enhance people's performance that directly grows your bottom line.
‘They aren’t performing, It’s costing me a bomb, it would be easier to do it myself - I need to speak to an HR professional!’
…general themes of the conversations I have had with many clients before they signed up to work with me and revolutionise their team and leadership!!
It is really important to note that there are times when an HR professional is needed, absolutely.
But how would you feel if I told you there are 4 telltale signs I look for that show me it is actually a lack of clarity in leadership causing the performance issues??
Would you be willing to address them?
(learn some great lessons for the future and save yourself loads of money and heartache in the process?!?!)
If the answer is YES then keep reading this blog and why not book a call to connect further?!
Ok, so first I have to be really clear that this is not your fault. So many of us are not taught about leadership or creating high performing teams - you pick bits up along the way and hope for the best! It is only when you are in the thick of it, fed up with accepting average performance and feel like you could do a better job yourself AND save a salary in the process that you pay real attention.
Let me be clear for a second time:
.....say it on repeat 5 or 6 times!
Sign 1:
Your method of delegation is reactive and completion driven.
If your team is having to wait for you to ‘hand out’ tasks you have a reactionary delegation style. And if you do not communicate the measure of success linked to the task, it is completion driven…..ie the task being done is good enough!
Not only does this mean your team is dependent on you having the time to instruct, but they fall into the trap of being spoon fed vs being able to think, predict and use their initiative. PLUS they normally miss the mark with the outcome you want because it hasn’t been communicated to them!
Leadership tip:
Ensure your team knows exactly the tasks they should be doing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and have this populated somewhere everyone can see (like a task management system) so they can think for themselves and only have to wait for adhoc project work vs always waiting for your lead!
When you do delegate a task ensure you talk about the end result and measure of success, this will help them benchmark their output against something eg ‘Please could you create a sales page for the upcoming masterclass following our usual template, it needs to be ready to go live by Thursday and we want 100 people registered’.
Sign 2
There are no Job descriptions linked to KPIs
It’s a bit corporatey, I get it. But without the specifics of what a role includes and how success is measured, we create grey. With grey we create frustration and confusion! And as I see time and time again, you as the business owner end up taking on more tasks and building resentment for those in your team that could be supporting you better. Let’s get the facts and feel really good about who should be doing what in your business.
Leadership tip:
Time track a week of your work. Anything that doesn’t need to be you needs to be assigned to one of your team and populated in a job description WITH a corresponding KPI. EG inbox to 0 every day with emailed to be actioned added to my task list.
Sign 3
No one knows what ‘good’ looks like!!
We all have an idea, picture, plan in our heads about how something looks etc and they are all different. It is the beauty of us all being individuals. But if you tell me your team never produce work to the standard you want, but you can’t tell me what ‘good looks like’, how are they meant to know?!?
Leadership tip:
Communication is key. You need to have as close to an idea of what good looks like and be able to explain to people why it is good to you. Going into details to help them get in your head and understand why it is you are seeing. People are not mind readers unless we train them to be!
Sign 4
You ask for one thing and get another!
It’s a translation error.
You have yet to work out how your team members receive information and so have no idea how best to communicate with them to get the result you actually want. It’s complicated and takes investment in understanding your own style to better understand your teams!
Leadership tip:
Take our free Quiz and see what profile you get - if this brings you endless ‘ah-ha’ moments we have a team version we can share with you and together you can all ‘ah-ha’ your way into better communication that gets the job done!
Your People Dynamics are one of the most important things to invest in understanding to create a small but mighty team!!
If you have found this blog useful and you want to know more about your own Leadership Design, your protector patterns or your People Dynamics - let’s get on a call!
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