Julia Rowan answers your management, leadership and team development questions
Q: My team is positive, proactive and eager to learn more. My company doesn’t invest much in training and won’t give me a budget because ‘nothing is broken’. How can I keep them motivated?
There is a lot you can do to motivate and upskill your team.
First, think about how you would describe your team. Is it strategic? Independent? Collaborative? The words you select will guide the way you direct them.
The next step is to consider the way you engage with your team. Set yourself up so that your conversations become a learning experience. Coach and listen. Trust the team enough to share your challenges and see what ideas they have. Here are a few ideas to get started:
- Start a pool of resources – books, articles, podcasts, webinars – where everyone is able to access the same material. Schedule protected time to discuss and share ideas, allowing team members to choose the material and chair the discussion.
- Organise an away day (even if you are on company premises) and scope out a small number of business projects that will move the team forward and give them learning opportunities. Small groups could work on individual projects and report back regularly to the wider team, making sure that all retain ownership. Ask them to report back on the ‘what’ (what we are doing), the ‘how’ (the process) and the learning (what went well and what could be improved on).
- Make your team meeting a place where people can share their learning about their everyday experience. This can be done in very simple ways: like opening with a ‘check-in’ (what are you proud of achieving this week? What has your biggest challenge been?), but also by asking team member to make presentations around projects, tasks or initiatives that they have undertaken, and sharing their learning.
- Seek out cross-functional projects that your team can get involved with.If you put together a business case with learning objectives, outputs and impacts, your company might give you a budget.
Q: At meetings, my contribution is often overlooked, but I’m often the only person who has prepared. There is lots of aimless discussion. When my ideas are heard, they are often taken up but attributed to others.
This is a common problem, very frustrating and exacerbated by online communication.
To address the issue long-term, talk to the meeting owner, explain your challenge, and suggest that they do a ‘go-around’ from time to time, hearing from each individual. Meet the main movers and shakers one-to-one to discuss challenges and share ideas – this puts you on their radar.
Some tactics: sit close to the Chair so that it’s easy to get their attention. Quieter people often contribute tentatively, in short sentences. Note the points you want to make so that you can be deliberate when you speak.
I’ve devised a structure that quieter clients have found useful: ‘Signal, State, Suggest’. Preface your contribution with a ‘signal’ that gets people’s attention: “reflecting on what I’ve heard, there are two ways to tackle this”. State (give your input): “we could either do A or B”. Suggest (a way of moving on): “Given current circumstances, I suggest we”. It’s not easy to enter the melee– but your meetings will be better for it.
If you read one thing...
Coaching for Performance – The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership by Sir John Whitmore. An accessible and practical book about coaching. The updated 25th anniversary edition has recently been published. Busy managers often direct. Coaching creates a conversational space for learning through everyday experience.
LOADING...