Results!
It’s exciting and scary. You’ve been promoted and now you are responsible for the performance of others. It’s a challenge and regardless of any natural ability, there will be scars. Here is the first of 5 Leadership Lessons to give you the best chance of success as a new Manager.
Lesson One: Results! Results! Results!
Regardless of how you cut it, it is about Results. Achieving outcomes and objectives. There is an unlimited supply of articles, books, and videos on leadership and management, some clearly better than others.
However… no matter how much you can absorb, whether it’s on communication, motivation, or inspiration remember they are ideas, theories, and tools to help you do one thing: get a successful result. If you want to test this, name a famous leader who didn’t achieve anything significant (some politicians aside).
Since it’s about results here are three things you need to do.
1. Establish Black and White Objectives or Goals.
First, develop black and white goals for your team. Meet with your boss, sit down and make sure you establish 3 to 5 Measurable Goals. Don’t leave until you have a crystal clear picture of exactly what success looks like.
You might think this step is obvious, and that you already know what the objectives are. It doesn’t matter… make that meeting happen anyway. We can’t count the number of times we have met with managers who either didn’t have black and white goals or didn’t have them aligned with their leader.
2. Focus your effort.
Once you have clarity on goals, focus your team’s entire effort squarely on them. The most valuable resource you have is that team. You cannot afford to squander their time, talent, and effort.
Focused effort means you and the team need to identify those actions that will have the greatest impact on success. Remove distractions: anything that is stopping your team focusing on the right things. Sometimes success is more about what you STOP doing rather than what you do. If it’s not going to help you achieve your goal, kill it!
3. Get Visibility.
Finally, get visibility on performance. As a leader, you need to know precisely how your team is performing daily. This means knowing:
• Where your team is relative to their goals.
• How each individual team member is progressing relative to their individual goals.
• What the Road Blocks are. Those things that are either stopping the team or blocking progress.
Visibility on performance is critical because it allows you to make good decisions. Without visibility on performance, it is almost impossible to give guidance to the team collectively and to team members individually.
Secondly, visibility brings with it the high level of accountability you need for your team to perform at it’s best.
Summary – Lesson 1: Results! Results! Results!
1. Establish Black and White Goals. Make sure they are measurable.
2. Focus your effort. Know what to focus on, identify what to STOP doing.
3. Get Visibility. Visibility on performance ensures better decisions and higher levels of accountability.
