Are your employees made up of followers or leaders?
Both followers and leaders are crucial in the workforce. Your style of communication shapes your team’s outcomes.
If you want a bunch of people to just follow directions, then you’ll have a team of followers.
A word of warning with this approach. If the directive approach practiced exclusively, your company will only grow to the capacity of what you can give.
There are times where you must be directive and your team must follow, however, intentionally growing your team to become leaders will allow growth for your company beyond what you can do yourself.
Empowering your employees into becoming thinkers and solvers allows you to not have to do all the thinking.
To have a team that drives results, you’ll give your them the “why behind the what.” Helping your team understand your thought process builds their problem solving to work toward getting the desired results.
The Importance of the “What”
To get the best out of your team, you’ll need to explain the “what” behind the project. What you want done by clearly conveying the expected results. Outcomes should be your focus here and not detailed instructions. Become your teams guide when it comes to directions on how to do a task.
Help your team over hurdles but recognize that the steps on how they complete a task may not be exactly like how you would do it. They don’t think exactly like you. They will find different efficiencies that you may not have otherwise discovered.
The Importance of the “Why”
Explaining the why behind the project helps your team take initiative.
By communicating the why behind the what of any given project or process, you empower your team members. You give them autonomy to be able to think into the problem or situation for themselves and come up with a solution.
With autonomy, your team will not come to you to solve every little problem. Processes are improved and problems are resolved faster and better.
Sometimes projects require your employees to be followers and other times you need them to be leaders.
If you’re struggling with growing your company to the next level, then chances are, you have too many followers and not enough leaders in your organization. It’s time to be developing leaders within your team. Contact me today to learn how.
