We learned a lot in 2020. It’s time to lean on what we learned.
We came across a very helpful article that articulates just how we can put the hardships we’ve gone through to work for us to produce even greater levels of results, proactive efforts, and team satisfaction.
Here’s the juice I squeezed out of it, distilled into 10 must-read points:
- Understand and appreciate the effort (not just results) of your team members. It’s good for you and even better for them. And it leads to praise-worthy results.
- Individuals are 12 times more likely to engage with a leader they trust vs a leader they don’t. Be a trusted source. Do you give enough thought to what makes you trusted, or not?
- Leaders who genuinely care extract the most productivity from their people. Employees will not honor apathy.
- Create room for dialogue in meetings. Don’t reduce workflow to tasks and duties. Information-only meetings are a lousy use of your group’s time and talents.
- Prioritize what you can do to boost your team’s effectiveness. What tasks improve effectiveness? Focus on them. Which tasks steal from it? Eliminate them. Keep asking, what’s getting in our way?
- Focus on the practices that are most essential to your team’s ability to perform well. Pause to reflect on what attitudes+actions lead to success in achieving goals. Ask your team to help you experiment with innovating new practices that really work.
- ASK, What does success look like for our team over the course of the next year considering all the controllable/uncontrollable factors? What are the top three to five priorities most important to achieving that success? Taking into account today’s obstacles and hard realities doesn’t make you pessimistic, it makes you a clever strategist.
- Don’t tackle change solo. Develop a plan to improve, adapt and overcome as a team. If 2020 happens again, you’ll be far more prepared. And you’ll be a stronger, more agile, and cohesive team by doing change together. Link arms and don’t let go.
- Lead on purpose with purpose. Short on joy, energy, and passion? You may have drifted from your true purpose. This article offers some good questions to help you identify and recenter on your purpose.
- “Hard work is a prison cell only if the work has no meaning.” (Malcomb Gladwell). Make sure your asks and efforts tie to a clear meaning that doesn’t get lost in busy-busy.
I encourage you to check out the full article for all the nuggets I didn’t have room to include!
Coach Faith
Three Things The Most Effective Leaders Will Do In 2021
“While this pandemic will not last forever, the lesson is clear: recognizing effort matters as much as recognizing outcomes when it comes to building a highly engaged, high-performing team. When leaders take time to both understand and appreciate the effort of their team members, they are showing they care about their team members as much as they care about the outcomes they are producing. When leaders focus on the effort by demonstrating curiosity for what it takes to achieve the outcomes, they strengthen dialogue and collaboration, shared learning, and innovation.”
“One of the many things this past year made clear is that the world of work has been forever changed, and it is especially evident in the way leaders must now lead if they want the very best from their people. Through my work and research with teams this year, and through my many interviews with thought leaders, it is abundantly clear that those teams who have been able to thrive more than struggle during this pandemic are those that are being led by leaders who prioritize their people. Empathy, vulnerability, and flexibility, for example, are leadership qualities that have always been important but are now non-negotiable table-stakes thanks to 2020.”
