What do you do when you know your staff aren’t doing as much as they could be?

It’s a terrible thing to admit… and actually, often, it’s a very hard thing to admit… but sometimes you know your teams are not working as hard as they should be. Does this ring true for you? If so, well done, you would be amazed at how many managers cannot see this (sometimes very obvious) point! If you’re not sure then look for the some of the following:
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Plenty of ‘social’ chat Poor morale/ unhappy staff Little team working and communication Lots of meetings, that don’t really seem to achieve much! Frequently missed deadlines Poor quality work- or work that you have to frequently correct! Lots of tea/coffee rounds Stressed out or, conversely, very relaxed attitudes Sickness rates over 4% Barely kept to working hours So what do you do? Do you suddenly turn up to work and start barking orders and frowning at your staff as they merrily ask whether you would like a coffee? Do you stop being “the nice guy/gal”? Do you chase your team every half an hour to make sure they are on task? You can guess the answer, dear reader, “no”. Building your elusive “high-performing team” can take a lot of skill, thought and patience. There are so many things you should introduce, but by all accounts doing the following steps well will really help! If you have not already, setup weekly team meetings. At a minimum ask each team member to cover their past week’s progress, next week’s work plan, issues and concerns. This will foster team identity and natural team coordination. Make sure actions are taken in your weekly meeting- publish these actions to your team. Make sure each action as one clear owner and a mutually agreed completion date. Your team members need to be accountable. Manage team issues. When your team raise issues, record them and demonstrate active management by resolving these issues. Your team will respect for you for this. Encourage “management by exception”. I.e. You want to trust you team members to be accountable for doing high quality work by their agreed deadlines. However if they have questions/ issues/ delays that impact their likelihood of meeting their deadline, come to you. This encourages your team to take pride in their work and to feel responsible. Treat your team members as “adults”. This may seem funny, but so many managers treat their team members as “children”. If your team feel like “adults” they will behave like “adults”. This may sound funny, but look around for managers treating their team like children… please do write to me and tell me how these teams behave! Plan. Add predictability. Productive individuals like to get into their “flow”. Interruptions and changing priorities can massively impact productivity and morale. In your weekly meetings try and get a good clear view of team priorities and aim to set them once for the week. Remember, no one comes to work to do a bad job. We all want to be good at our work!
If you would like to share your team’s experience please do feel free to drop me tim.gray@thefrankboys.com an email!You might also be interested in our 3 month management development programme named Powerful Management Behaviours which delivers tangible results, or your money back!

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