Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of TimePeace: Making peace with time – and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. I help busy professionals and entrepreneurs create effective systems so that they can comfortably delegate to others, be more profitable and have time to enjoy life even if they don’t have time to learn new technology or train their staff. I have a knack for taking big ideas and converting them into smart, sound, and actionable ideas.
At the end of the day, I transform the way you run your business into a business you love to run.
Today’s comment came from a busy professional and an entrepreneur:
What are some creative management ideas that can refocus and refresh our team for fall?
August and September have been a really tough month for my team and me to stay motivated at work. I think we’ve all been slacking off a little bit and enjoying summer! As September hits, what can we do to get back on track?
It sounds like what you are looking to do is get the team motivated and focused again on work rather than on socializing. Putting the focus back on performance, performance measurements and quantifying their results will help them refocus. You can do this a few ways.
One-on-One Manager Meetings
If you don’t conduct individual one-on-one meetings with each of your employees on a weekly or twice-a-month scheduled, start them now. Meeting individually to review status, project progress, career development, performance improvements and collaborating on innovative solutions is a way to recharge them.
Mock performance reviews
You should already have their performance goals documented. These performance goals and tasks should be written in the form of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound). This makes it easy to determine if employees are meeting expectations, or needs improvement.
Conduct mock performance reviews for your employees. This can be done in one of your already scheduled one-on-one manager meetings. This gives the employees a heads up on what they need to improve upon before the end-of-the year performance review.
There’s nothing like a mock performance review to get people back on track.
Re-connecting on delivery
If you need to get re-connected or re-focussed on delivering the plan, then there are lots of ways to do this. Two that come to mind are
1) Conduct a team session where you review the plan for the remainder of the year (or next quarter if your financial year isn’t Jan-Dec). Clearly articulate the agreed upon deliverables for the team.
2) Talk through the benefits of achieving objectives, the barriers and what support is needed from the team, so you are really focusing in on what needs to be done. I would also spend some of the time together as a team talking about how you perform as a team. Most teams focus too much time on task and not enough time on how they work together.
Your job as a manager
Your job as a manager is to captain the ship. That means clearly articulating the objectives, the goals, and understanding all the pieces that will get your team/crew there. If you cannot clearly articulate the SMART goals for your team then wherever the ship lands is your doing.
Conclusion:
If you want your team to refocus on their performance and their deliverables, then you need to focus on their performance and deliverables. Holding them accountable to results (as in performance reviews and status meetings) is an effective way to show the importance of result oriented performance.
For help on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
Or sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ