SOAR Consulting

An experienced business leader had a team he knew could perform at a high level but their performance had dropped off significantly.

Many of the individuals were star performers in their own right but as a group they weren’t motivated to get the jobs done, even after being giving good reasons why.

They were skilled and knowledgeable but lacked enthusiasm. Their lacklustre performance was affecting company profits and the blame was starting to fall on him.

The leader was starting to feel like a failure because he couldn’t work out a solution. He was stressed about keeping his job, which gave him a good income, but was his families only source of income.

When asked how he went about executing team projects, he pointed out that he puts a lot of effort into working out the best strategy, then allocates tasks to team members. He knows the team understand their tasks because he explains in detail, but they are just going through the motions when they execute them.

The worse the team performs, the more effort he puts into spelling out each task in the hope that they will execute the way he wants, and expects.

The business leader was asked some specific questions designed to change his perspective on how he could motivate his team, a perspective which he may have lost sight of in the struggle to achieve results.

These are questions which any team leader could ask occasionally to remind themselves what might inspire their team to achieve the best results:

What is the minimum level of direction you need to give an experienced team (or an inexperienced team)?

If your team is given the freedom to make their own decisions during projects, what is the cost of any mistakes they might make?

What are the long term benefits of allowing them to make their own decisions and learn from their mistakes?

What is going to motivate an EXPERIENCED team more;
being given the opportunity to provide input into the plan and make their own decisions, or being told exactly what they should be doing?

Not enough direction or too much direction, which is worse for your business?

What happens when you don’t give your team enough direction?

Things can start to go wrong very quickly, jobs that you assumed would be done a certain way are done poorly or not done at all.

You inevitably find yourself spending hours of your valuable time correcting mistakes, or just doing the work yourself.

So what could be wrong with providing too much direction?

The team will get the work done but at what cost?

People will adapt to their environment in order to survive. Your team can quickly get used to waiting for instructions rather than making their own decisions, making sure they are doing things your way.

It's not unusual to stop making decisions when there is little opportunity to do so. Most prefer to ask you what they should do in these situations rather than come up with their own solutions, out of fear that they'll only get it wrong.

As the leader, you can find yourself spending way too much time making sure each team member gets the job done. Even the most highly motivated team members will eventually lose motivation, doing only what you ask of them and little more.

Leadership is a balance. When things aren't going well you work a lot harder than you should, but when you find the sweet spot between under managing and micro managing, you get to lead your team while they achieve incredible results.