Mastering Leadership - audio
Leadership is rewarding and demanding, especially when faced with limited resources and support while juggling numerous tasks and responsibilities. Balancing executive projects, meetings, client reports, prospecting, and deals while providing adequate support to your team can be an uphill battle. Today, we’ll explore the challenges that can arise from such circumstances and present three practical actions to help you overcome these obstacles.
Prioritize and Delegate Effectively:
This topic is one of the hardest for many leaders. First, you already have so much on your plate that deciding what to delegate can seem overwhelming. The other side of the coin is that someone else will do things differently than you. Yet, if you don’t, everything will stay the same, and you’ll fall behind further, so taking the time to prioritize what tasks you can delegate becomes even more urgent.
The beauty of strengths assessments is that they help identify talents within your team that you may have missed. Take paperwork like reading through reports, contracts, or similar, something many in or with a sales background prefer to avoid. What if you could identify people on your team that loved these types of details, and what if that person could review the details and provide you with a summary of the content? Would that not be a win-win for both of you?
Start by assessing the urgency and importance of each task. Create a prioritization matrix, categorizing tasks as urgent (A), important (B), or less time-sensitive (C). Focus on the A tasks that contribute directly to organizational goals and delegate the rest. Delegating what others can handle ensures you utilize each team member’s strengths and capabilities. Effective delegation empowers your team, fosters growth, and allows you to focus on critical tasks that require your attention.
Keep in mind what their workload is at the same time. Ask yourself if they’re already taking on more and more from others, and if so, is there something that you can take off their plate or maybe even recreate their current role if they’re a recurrent resource to others? Something that works for them and you even better? Maybe there’s something you can take off their plate that someone else can do with ease? Trading tasks with people who are not even direct reports build engagement in the company. They’re being seen and validated for their expertise. Pretty cool, huh?
Establish clear communication channels and give your team the resources and authority to handle delegated tasks effectively. Regularly check in with your team members to provide guidance and support and address any challenges they may face. By effectively prioritizing and trusting your team, you can maximize productivity, achieve better outcomes, and alleviate some time constraints that impede supporting your sales team.
Streamline Processes and Leverage Technology:
Streamlining processes and leveraging technology can significantly enhance efficiency and effectiveness in a resource-constrained environment. Take the time to evaluate existing workflows, identify bottlenecks, and eliminate unnecessary steps.
Make investments in customer relationship management (CRM) systems a priority. With a great CRM, you can track trends and monitor sales, communication, and new opportunities. It also helps the client success team work with tools that make it easy to place, edit and manage orders so that they can provide stellar support to your clients.
While your presence is important, and you need to interact with people in person, creating a digital internal training platform can help with onboarding and ongoing training. Adding a section that includes your and other team members’ shortcuts to success, i.e., lessons learned of what works is gold and will have your new hires up and running faster while also building confidence. Again, include pearls from everyone in the company and create categories for each topic.
Ask everyone in your company for suggestions, create a contest, and ask that if anyone feels passionate about the topic to connect with you to volunteer for project research—then give them a monetary bonus and recognition after successful completion. Identify your super users and utilize the talent you already have employed before searching for third-party solutions. An employee has a vested interest and knows your products and services like no other.
Cultivate a Supportive and Engaged Team Culture:
Creating an engaged team is the priceless part that attracts and retains talents and is an issue many companies face today. By identifying talent in your company, delegating, and providing your team with tools that are easy and effective to use, you’re on your way and might already start seeing the fruits of your actions. Leadership is not just about directing others but also about creating a supportive and engaged team culture. When resources are limited, building a strong sense of camaraderie and trust within the team becomes even more critical.
Reaching out to your team weekly for informal chats with open and transparent communications where team members feel comfortable sharing their challenges, ideas, and feedback will create a company vibe of engaged employees where ideas flourish. Encourage collaboration and teamwork, facilitating cross-functional interactions and knowledge sharing. By promoting a culture of continuous learning, you can empower your team to grow and develop independently, reducing their dependence on your support.
Regularly schedule one-on-one meetings with team members to provide personalized guidance and support. Actively listen to their concerns, offer advice, and provide the necessary resources to address any obstacles they encounter. Celebrate achievements and recognize exceptional performance by individuals with the entire company. Don’t just focus on the achievements of your sales team include the people that help them win with limited resources.
If you need guidance to make this all happen, book a call with me here.
