Knowing the proper way to deal with employees can be tough, especially with so many different personalities and talent levels involved. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to learn what it takes to keep your employees motivated, understand their individual interests, strengths and weaknesses, and what levels of empowerment each one should be given. But how do you go about doing all that effectively and without disturbing the cohesiveness and hierarchy in your working environment?
Here are three techniques you can use to evaluate your leadership skills and become the most effective leader and motivator you can be.
1. Ask Yourself the Tough Questions
If you want to evaluate your leadership skills, you will need to begin by asking yourself some questions to determine where your efforts might be lacking or where they could be enhanced. Ask yourself the following questions:
Do I Empower My Employees to Do Their Best Work?
Assess each employee’s skill level, match them with the right project, thoroughly explain the objectives, offer tools and resources to get the job done, set reasonable deadlines then give them 100 percent responsibility for the task at hand. You shouldn’t hover or be a dictator after you’ve delegated the project. However, you should let the employee know they can consult with you if they need to. Additionally, you should check on them periodically and ask for updates and status reports for the project.
Do I Know What Each Member of My Team Is Most Interested In?
You should observe your employees and dedicate some time to learning which areas each employee is most interested in. If you are already doing this, ask yourself what you are doing to help them pursue those interests and if there is anything else you could be doing to further help them expand and grow. If you’re not, start with the initial question and take your cues from there.
Do I Provide Coaching to Help My Employees Grow?
You should always try to find new ways to help your employees grow both personally and professionally. This can often be done by using the right coaching systems that will help take your team to the next level. You can also achieve this by hiring a professional coach and implementer to setup a foundation that you can build on to help you and your employees reach that next level and future levels going forward.
How Do I Handle Employee Conflicts?
How you handle employee conflicts will contribute in large part as to how effective a leader you are and will continue to be. When an employee conflict arises, and they will, are you the first one to step in and try to resolve the problem? Or do you step back and hope everything will resolve itself? You must lead by example. And as a leader your employees will look to you for guidance and assistance in resolving conflicts. If you maintain an environment of fairness and level-headed, commonsense conflict resolution, they will respect what you have to say and will use your advice to resolve the conflict while learning to work through it based on your recommendations. If you don’t know how to handle any given situation, don’t guess; contact a professional business coach for assistance.
Also see: 10 Ways to Know You Have the Right Person On Your Leadership Team
2. Use an Anonymous Survey Platform to Collect Employee Feedback
It’s sometimes hard to get your employees to provide you with honest feedback about how they really feel when it comes to their job and how happy or unhappy they are regarding that job. The best way to receive true and honest feedback is to use a survey tool such as Qualtrics for collecting the type of honest, constructive feedback that will help you identify and correct problems before they become disruptive. Problems you might not have known existed and might have never known had you not performed an employee survey. Additionally, you can also use this tool to gather ideas from your frontline about what they think would help your company grow. And not only that, but a survey tool will give your team the anonymity to make them feel more comfortable about being honest and not have to worry about being fired, reprimanded or anything else for speaking out.
3. Bring In an Expert
Never hesitate to bring in an expert when it comes to helping you and your team grow. This will help prevent everyone involved from becoming stagnant and never being able to get past your company’s current level of success or otherwise. Small business coaches can provide you with valuable insight and objective feedback from a third-party aspect; an overview that you might not readily see from the inside. Also, a small business coach can help you setup better employee goals and restore employee confidence if things have gone awry. Additionally, small business coaches have generally worked with many different companies and usually in many different industries; therefore, they can provide you with successful ideas and insight from other companies and industries that could work for you as well. This perspective is priceless as it brings you practical experiences you might not otherwise have experienced had you not brought in a small business coach.
Remember, there is no “I” in team. Yep, we know that’s a huge cliché and one that’s extremely overused; however, it really does make the point. But the bottom line is that even though every team member serves a different role, their opinions are equally as important and are vital to the leadership of your company. However, with that being said, it’s possible that not every leader you have in place is essential or necessary to your company’s success. And you might only need to keep the team members who have shown that they’ve taken ownership in their given roles.
You can refer to the entrepreneurial operating system (EOS) to learn more about how this works. And the more you use it, the more successful you will be. You can also explore our free guide about how to grow a successful business where you will learn how to find your differentiator, how to have a clear focus and vision and how important it is to create a culture of accountability, and more. This valuable guide is free, but will quickly become your go-to guide for growing your business the right way.
The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) was created by Gino Wickman (Author of Traction-get a grip on your business) and is a registered trademark of EOS Worldwide. Chris Hallberg of Traction Inc. is a Certified EOS Implementer(tm) that helps business owners and their leadership teams get more of what they want from their business.
