***Three Strategies to Accelerate Your Team’s Success

Many of you know that I am actively involved on several non-profit boards including past president of an international professional association. After serving, I wrote an article titled Five Key Leadership Lessons I learned from Serving on Non-Profit Boards. The five lessons that were critical to a leader’s success included: have a vision; plan the work, work the plan; get the right people on board; fire poor performers; and make course corrections along the way. Leaders who choose to adhere to these lessons are already on the fast track to success. However, if you want to accelerate your team’s success, here are three additional lessons that I have learned that are critical to sustained success. 1. Provide ongoing training. When was the last time that you developed a proactive, coordinated training plan and made a conscious investment in training your staff? If you’re like most leaders, you probably approve ad hoc requests for staff members to attend seminars and other training events. However, if you want to ensure that your team learns the skills critical to success within your organization then you need to identify what those skills are and then provide the training to ensure that your entire staff receives the training taking into account their experience and role within your organization. 2. Empower your team to make decisions. In the movie Band of Brothers, there is a scene where the narrator states, “Lieutenant Dike wasn’t a bad leader because he made poor decisions. Lieutenant Dike was a bad leader because he didn’t make any decisions.” This was compounded by the fact that Lieutenant Dike could rarely be found, putting the men in his charge at risk during active combat on the battlefield. Don’t make the same mistake. You can’t be available all the time so the key is to empower your team to make decisions. Your job is to be clear on the kinds of decisions they can make without you and to provide the tools they need to make good decisions. 3. Inspect what you expect. When you delegate tasks you don’t delegate responsibility for the task. This is a common mistake that many leaders make. It is still your job to ensure that the work gets completed on-time and within budget. What does this mean for you? It means you need to measure progress at key milestones. This will enable you to do two things: ensure that tasks are completed timely as well as to celebrate and reward success along the way. Invest your resources into these three strategies and watch your team’s energy and success soar along with your company’s ROI (return on investment). The by-product increased retention rates and higher satisfaction for everyone involved including you and your customers. Remember, start small and build on your successes. What are you waiting for?