Today we’re talking about whether you’ve got a high-performance team or… perhaps need to get one.
Now, we know that as our businesses grow, we have to upgrade. We have to upgrade our processes, our systems, our equipment, sometimes our location, and our people, right?
As the business grows, not everybody’s going to be able to keep up with the demands of growth. The business requirement may outstrip their capabilities, and then their performance is going to slip, and the whole team’s performance is going to slide, and so the business results are going to be diminished.
So you can tell that’s happening on your end because you might be compensating for somebody.
You might have one or more people on your team that haven’t been able to keep up with the growth and you compensate for them by taking on some of their responsibilities which means you have less time for what’s important, you’re busier than you’d like to be, you’ve got more on your plate, more frustration, and more stress. Which means that you can’t lead the rest of your team as effectively.
You need to have this people decision correct. You need to have the right people “on the bus”.
What are some of the hallmarks of great team members? Well, first of all, they’re solution centric.
There’s always going to be challenges in business, but you want your team members to bring you not only the challenge but solutions, right?
So they’re not just dumping more problems on your desk.
Instead, they’re saying, “Hey, we’ve got this challenge. I think we should do this, this, or this. What do you think?” So you can make those decisions and get things moving along quickly.
Next up is that you want them to be forward-thinking.
You want them to anticipate your needs as a leader, the needs of their department, the needs of their team, the needs of your customers, and the other stakeholders in the operation. They need to be forward-looking. They need to be goal-oriented as well.
You want team members that like to get things done, that are ambitious. They want to demonstrate that they’re high performers that want to move up within the company, and that they lead their teams the same way; they’re hiring high performers for their team as well.
Next up, living the values of the company. It’s great to have high performers, but if they’re not living the values of the company, they’re going to cause discord within the organization. So they truly need to embrace and live every day your core values.
Now here’s a little litmus test for you: think about the members of your leadership team and your management teams. If you had to or if you could, if you could start fresh again, would you hire back each and every person on your team?
It’s a tough question.
For the ones that you wouldn’t hire back, maybe you do need to upgrade those individuals, and maybe they’re suffering in the role; they may be frustrated as well if they’re not able to keep up.
You can have a performance improvement plan conversation and review with them. But it could be that they need to be “released to pursue success elsewhere” in environments better suited for their abilities, and what they want to do with their lives, and their career as well.
That’s it for this week, just giving some thought to, “Have you got the right team members in place? Or is it time for a bit of an upgrade?”
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