Hows your team doing today?

As someone who leads the team, we somewhere forget that teams are made up of individuals who have their down times as well. They cannot perform to their best always.

When your teams down what can you really do? Pushing harder might end up creating more mess, instead why not help them go through this.

I work with a small team of 3-4 people and an extended team of some more and like all of you I always know when they are down. You can feel it- in their work, the way they respond, how easily they loose their cool…..

You cannot sort out their problem, however you can help them to overcome it in your own way- is that not what leaders do? You inspire to bring out the best in others.

I simply start with the basics and work upwards-

  • Is everything alright? Most people don’t want to come up with their problems at work and will rarely confide when asked first.
  • Help them with more breaks, a partner to work with or some time to cool off. If is still persists, dig deeper.
  • Ask them if they like what they do. Do they want to try out something else? Have they been doing the same thing over a long period of time that work doesn’t interest them anymore- no thrills, no challenges, same drab work. No one likes that.
  • Thankfully I work in an environment which is flexible and we try to be happy with our work, create challenges and keep up to them. I encourage learning something new, delegating a new work to break the monotony and give a chance to think about something new. This helps them love their job not because of the paycheck but something more.
  • They don’t suddenly become experts in their chosen new trial field, however they have the chance to do what they do and try out something new. If they want to change departments after a while, we encourage that as long as you can prove you are good at it and have learned the skills
  • If there’s one thing I ask- it is to come to work every day the way you came in your first day. It not always very realistic, but closer we are to our first day emotions, better we will be.
Now we have the thrill of a newbie and the experience of the oldie- try beating that!

(Pic Courtesy)

0 comments: