Hi this The Leadership Boost with your host Shaun Smit
Title: Leaders Engage Your Team: Know Your Team
I am Shaun Smit Leadership Mentor
Boosting your leadership into high performance.
This is Episode 29
The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. Phil Jackson
To do their jobs effectively, leaders must prioritize the people on their team.
Your staff is your greatest asset, and as a manager you should know as much as possible about each person and how they contribute to the overall success of the business.
Many executives and managers say: “I know their names, and their job titles. What more do I need to know?”
But a team or a staff is not made up of a random "them", your team are individuals each with an individual journey, individual hopes dreams and aspirations, stresses and mechanisms for coping.
Each is engaged at a different level with varying levels of potential.
As a leader, you need to know what it is to engage them effectively.
Get to know your team members as people. When you take the time and effort to reveal your humanity and get to know others as more than a worker, you build trust. When you do that it also has a wonderful leveling effect. Simon Coleman
The bottom line you have to your people as more then a tool or a mechanism in your system. They are your greatest asset, and to build trust with them makes you a leader. When you have built that relationship of trust, that what makes you a good leader. It means that you will have to reveal some of your humanity. That’s what will engage them effectively.
I sat with a CEO one and he said to me after I asked him “What do you see in your team?”: “You know”, he said, “I see the capacity for greater performance. I see at least 30% more performance in my team!” I asked: “What will it take?” He answered: “They need to …” and he began to rattle off several things they need to do. But immediately I said: “Let’s begin with you.” As the CEO he needed to engage his team and bring them to that level of performance that he wanted. You need to sit down, list your staff or employees or team members, and begin to know them. At what level are they functioning? How committed are they? How engaged are they? What is their potential? You need to begin there, and understand each individual where they are, so that you can begin to engage them effectively.
Thank you for listening.
