Aligning Your Team is the second step in the Make an Impact phase of the Roadmap.
The AIM Leadership Roadmap helps leaders who have a new mandate, new team, or who need new ideas to lead with confidence, accelerate impact, and deliver results in their leadership role. In this article series, I’ll break down the steps you can take to inspire growth in your people and your organization and build your leadership legacy. Want all the info in one place right now? Jump to The Definitive Guide to Leading in a New Role.
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Today’s topic is Align Your Team. Step 5 in the AIM Leadership Roadmap.
Aligning Your Team is the second step in the Make an Impact phase of the Roadmap – with a focus on leading your team to develop a game plan then execute on game day and everyday.
Aligning your Team will help you go from inconsistency to being in sync by building common understanding and buy-in to goals, behaviours, and expectations.
Here are three actions to achieve this:
- Player Assessment – this focuses on identifying the skills and talents of your team members. This is an activity I do with my coaching clients. Sometimes we look at it from the perspective of who are your A players and your B players? And how can you develop your B players to be A players. Learning about your teams members – what makes then tick, what their strengths are, and how they show up each day – is key to achieving your business goals. I believe you need to make the assumption that everyone wants to do a good job and knowing people’s skills and motivations can help you lead them to do a great job. Download your free Situation Assessment Interview Guide and use the ‘Team Questions’ to get started.
- Team Assessment – Knowing your individual players is step one, seeing how the team works together is step two. You may have a whole team of A players, but can they work together effectively to achieve goals? Do they all know the direction you are trying to go? Is every person contributing equally, or is there an imbalance? The ‘Team Questions’ in the Situation Assessment Interview Guide are a great starting point to gain this understanding. I also like to use my SCOTT Team Index and the Stages of Team Performance (forming, storming, norming, performing) to gain a pulse on the team dynamics, identify any barriers to team cohesion, and decide what to focus on next.
- Engagement Conversations – the goal with this step is to gain commitment from your team members to the direction you are going. The concept of Engagement Conversations is from my book, Talking Change: Must-Have Conversations for Successful Leaders. When making any sort of big or small change, people like to feel heard and like they have some control over the situation. Engaging people in conversation is the best way to do this – through conversation you gain an understanding of people’s perspectives, ideas, and possible resistance. I have a colleague who took a lot of his employees for walks during the pandemic – he realized that they needed to talk through their concerns and challenges and the best way to do this was outside of the workplace and in a space they felt comfortable sharing. Many points of resistance were overcome during these walks! The conversations you had with your team when creating plans, picking priorities, and assigning actions are all variations of engagement conversations. You can find more ideas in the Engagement Conversations section of my book.
In the next article I’ll discuss how to Measure Results to go from making best guesses to making informed decisions.
Team Alignment Coaching and Workshops
Do you need to align your team around common goals, behaviours, and expectations? Find out more about my Team Alignment Coaching and Workshops. Working together will help you achieve the following outcomes:
- Set Direction – define purpose and strategy
- Innovate and Re-Invent – generate new ideas and solve problems
- Improve Decision Making – have the right people making the right decisions
- Build Team Cohesion – improve team dynamics and create a high performance culture
Connect with me today – jen@actionimpactmovement.com or book an intro call.