4 Ways to Effectively Guide Your Team

In our last installment of this series, we discussed setting the vision for your organization and developing SOPs. At least, that’s what the series list says.

When I started writing this series, it was more like unconnected braingoo than a series of linear thinking. I did some scaffold-assisted planning and saw that some structure would make the series make more sense. That said, I discussed setting the vision last time because all of the suggestions below require that your team knows what you want them to do.

Okay, you’ve set your vision. Great! Here are some suggestions on how to help them execute your vision:

• Use the 4/5s Rule

No one likes getting handed the project that someone’s been sitting on until the last minute. The 4/5s rule states you should give your team 4/5 of the time allotted for the project to complete it.

For example, if you have ten working days to complete a project, you should have the rough details of the project in their hands within two working days. You can’t always do this - urgency strikes and things have to happen now - but it’s a good rule to work by. But the only way you can actually use this one is to…

• Give Them Enough Guidance to Get the Job Done and No More

If you try to plan everything down to the minute detail, you are mis-allocating your time and taking execution time away from your team. You are their leader - they need guidance on what you want done, not on how to do it. You’ve already set your vision and approved SOPs, so all they need is the critical requirements to get the job done.

An easy way to ask yourself whether you’re giving them too much information is to ask yourself if you’re telling them what to do or if you’re telling them how to do it. If you’re telling them how they should do the job, either they aren’t trained for the job or you’re wasting everyone’s time.

If they don’t know how to do it, get them trained. If they already know how to do it, get out of the way and let them do it. The goal is to get your operators better at doing their jobs in the company than you are - you make decisions, they execute those decisions.

In my experience, you make better, more adaptable teammates by giving them as much latitude as possible and they often do a better job than you could have estimated if you leave them alone and let them do what you pay and train them to do. This is hard to do because you have to learn that…

• How They’ll Do It Is Different Than How You’d Do It, but That’s (Usually) Okay

You probably think you know exactly how to get something done. Stop right now and get over yourself. You can’t do everything, and it’s not your job - learn to accept that people are going to do things different than you would and to look at the end result objectively.

As long as they’re doing the job within legal, ethical, and procedural parameters, they’ve gotten the job done. If they go outside of those parameters, it’s your job to push them back in them.

The key thing here is for you to take note of the process. Their way may be significantly slower than your way, in which case you’ll probably want to step in and show them a more efficient way. Their way may be significantly faster than your way, in which case you’ll need to learn from them, praise them for their efforts, and make that part of your organization’s standard operating procedures.

• Use Their Time Wisely

People hate to have their time wasted, and as their leader, it is your responsibility to ensure that people have enough to do to justify their being away from their families and free time.

As a general rule, give them more than you think they can do - people complain more fervently about not having anything to do than about having more to do than they can do. You can always triage tasks for them if they need it, but it’s pretty apparent when you’re just trying to find something for them to do to fill time.

If you’ve set the vision for the organization and you encourage initiative, your junior leaders will start to make things happen. Think about how Google does business: 20% of their employees’ time can be spent on side projects that interest them. I don’t think the G-team will ever have to worry about their employees watching the clock and being unproductive. But they’ve set a vision for innovation…

You’ve no doubt noticed that I continually use the words “guide” and “lead” rather than stronger words like “direct”. This is intentional: people don’t like someone looking over their shoulder while they work while constantly telling them how to do what they’re doing. It’s unproductive and generally demoralizing - they are trained adults that show up to do what they know how to do.

The next installation in this series is about spreading teamthink throughout your organization. If you’d like to learn more about the Art of Leadership, get FREE updates by Email or by RSS.

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