Are you being asked to achieve more and more with less and less?
Are you under pressure to meet hard-to-achieve goals and targets?
Do you have a queue of employees at your office door wanting you to solve their problems for them and adding to your ever-increasing to-do list?
In today’s business environment, productivity is king, stretching objectives and targets are routine and managers continually need to do more and more with less and less. At times such as these, you need all employees to take full ownership and responsibility for themselves and their actions. You need every single employee to be working towards delivering the vision for the organisation.
These six steps will help your employees become more self-reliant and productive, more energetic and enthusiastic and more willing to commit themselves to achieving personal and business objectives.
1. Don’t take the monkey! We all experience the “monkey on our back” at work, in other words a serious problem that won’t go away. Employees often think that, because managers and leaders are more senior (and more highly paid), it is their responsibility to solve problems and make decisions. So they arrive at your office door all ready to give you the monkeys on their backs too. For leaders there is the strong temptation to help their employees by taking on their problems and solving them for them. But taking their monkeys is nothing more than rescuing them. Instead, invest the little extra time to help them take the initiative and tackle the issue themselves.
2. Reduce the noise. When employees come to their managers with a problem, it is often accompanied by a lot of “noise”. A bit like a poorly tuned radio station, the actual issue is confused by a lot of interference from other issues, other people and other emotions. One of the most helpful things you can do at that point is to help your employee focus on that area that they are able and willing to influence and is likely to have the biggest impact on the situation.
3. Be solutions-focussed in your approach. There is nothing to be gained in analysing what’s wrong, why it’s wrong, who’s to blame and all the things that are going to get in the way of making things better. All that will do is demoralise and drain energy at exactly the time when the opposite is needed. A much more efficient and effective approach is to help your employee to think through what they want instead of the problem or situation as it is. What would be the small and visible signs that the problem is being addressed and that progress is being made?
4. Identify what is already working. However bad the situation might seem at the time, when your employee has really thought through how they would like things to be instead, they are likely to see that there are some things, however small, that are already working in their favour. Helping them think through all those things that they have already done to move things forward, what they already know about how to solve the problem and who else is available to help will build their confidence and encourage them to take action.
5. Express confidence in their ability. Take this opportunity to let your employee know what strengths, skills and positive qualities you see in them that will help them solve this problem for themselves. Recognising and naming these useful qualities helps to build their self-belief, as well as enhancing your relationship with them.
6. Identify small next steps. All your employee needs at this time is small next steps that will allow them to start making progress. They came to you because they were stuck. By them identifying small actions they can take now, they will become unstuck. If these actions are built on what is already working the employee will usually be very motivated to try them out and they are likely to be very effective.
If you can have these kinds of conversations with all of your direct reports, you have the key to unlocking the capacity of every individual in your team and each person taking personal ownership and accountability for carrying out their role and delivering the vision of the organisation.
