By now you have your targets and vision for this year, have you communicated it? Not just the revenue targets but your soft targets for yourself and your team members? You already know how crucial it is to invest in people to create a successful business. You also understand how important it is to build trust and inspire your team. No matter what your business is about, it starts and ends with the people on your team.
Having a clear purpose and vision for the future for both short-term and long-term targets can mean the difference between success and failure. Without it, it’s hard to motivate others and take responsibility for what happens next.
Why do so many leaders miss the boat and focus on revenue alone when the magic happens when you create an environment that brings out the best in people?
It’s easy to focus on numbers but it’s only one part of the truth when looking at why performance targets are hit, or not.
Leadership
Leadership is sometimes made harder than it needs to be. From my experience, great leadership happens when you take on the responsibility to be a leader and communicate a clear vision, and then allow your team to contribute.
Some of the best leaders I’ve worked with cared deeply about their people, they have their back, maybe you’re one of them? Great leaders will share success stories with their “boss” — there’s always someone to report to or be accountable to after all — to create a broader picture than what the numbers provided.
To build a company successfully, you need to be aware of your team’s skills and talents. The success of any organization depends on its ability to place people in roles where they can thrive and perform, and sometimes, it means letting them go. High performers don’t want to be the only ones to carry the pressure of performance while low performers don’t step up their game.
What if I said that your biggest role as a leader was to inspire and build trust with your team, would you agree?
The foundation of that trust is based on four key areas:
1. Inspirational Leadership — Communicating Your Vision
As a leader, you are the foundation. Your ability to communicate your vision clearly and openly to your team is one of the most important aspects in creating trust, motivation, and inspiration. Be yourself, be open, honest and create a safe space for your team to express their opinions.
Help people see what’s possible, why it’s important and a clear path on how they each will create success with confidence.
Allow your team to contribute and ask for feedback and ideas from everyone in the company, and I mean everyone signals that you care. Many great ideas originate from people you didn’t necessarily think to ask. Hitting revenue targets is a group effort after all.
2. Empowered Leadership — Show That You Care
Check-in with your team weekly and encourage your leaders to do the same with their teams. Keep it short and flexible. Ask about what’s working or not working, if help is needed, or if they simply need to talk.
- Set and celebrate milestones
- Acknowledge people along the way — weekly!
- Let people shine and never take them for granted.
Having open team meetings monthly where sharing is encouraged provides people with the opportunity to learn from one another by sharing their experiences, failures, and successes with each other on a regular basis.
Assign different people to lead the meetings to empower and develop the leadership styles of each person. There are always different opinions and ideas of what leadership is. When the leadership baton is shared with everyone it gets harder to judge others, and new leaders may emerge where you didn’t see it before.
3. Building Trust with Employees – Invest in Your People
When you create a team environment where people feel heard, valued, and respected new ideas flourish and inspiration flows.
While company culture is a team effort, it’s up to you to build a team that shares your vision. Placing people in roles where they thrive will help you create a culture where people feel that they can work together toward a common target.
People want to know that you are on their side and have their back helping to guide them to achieve their own goals.
That will in turn create an environment where people want to want to come to work each day — where everyone on your team is engaged.
Support your team by sponsoring courses that each individual feel passionate about, whether it’s related to their current role or not. Either way, it will build loyalty and contribute to the workplace.
4. Having Fun at Work
Now, this one is really the most important one. When people have space to play and laugh together, they connect and build trust and loyalty more easily.
Whether it’s an investment in courses, a remote happy hour where people share their wins — find something that helps your team bond.
When you leave your ego at the door and bring forward your fun side you show your team that you’re human they’ll trust you more and relax.
Ask your team to contribute to what they think would be fun. You don’t always have to have the solutions, open-ended questions work great. Creating contests with prizes for a nominal investment for some friendly competition works great in sales.
What fun team activity would your team enjoy participating in to create a powerful 2022?
