Water Your Garden - 4 Tips to Develop Your Team
Early in my career, I was lucky enough to work for a terrific manager. His actions demonstrated that my opinions mattered. Not only would he listen, but when we disagreed, if I was right he’d change his mind. He was generous with his time, flexible, and focused on results (not hours).
If I needed to take care of the occasional personal issue during normal work time, it was never a problem – he trusted that I would deliver on my commitments (and that inspired me to rise to each occasion to demonstrate that his trust was not misplaced).
Some managers get so involved in their own projects and initiatives that they ignore their team. Managing people is analogous to taking care of a garden – you need to spend time watering the plants to help them grow. If you ignore them, they will wilt. Don’t let your team wilt (become disengaged, progress too slowly). Don’t be the kind of manager who is too busy to spend time with their people. A combination of flexibility, attention, and setting high expectations forms the foundation for success.
In summary, to help develop your team, follow these tips:
- Be open to your team’s feedback and ideas
- Allow flexibility, don’t count hours but results
- Stay engaged with the team members and nurture their personal development
- Set high expectations, and encourage team members to flourish!
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Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
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