6 Ways To Keep Your Team Performing

Recently we were talking to a business owner who was complaining about their manager not managing the issues with the staff and leaving it for the them to deal with.  When we asked what he thought the problem was the reply was “She’s too soft, she keeps trying to be their friend and taking the nicey nicey approach, I keep telling her that she should be the most hated person in the business”.  This wasn’t quite the reply we were expecting especially as this business man is a well respected member of the business and general community.  Is this the right approach?  In our eyes, no, we feel you’ll never get optimal performance from your team if all you ever do is wave a stick, at best your will foster fear and insecurity, not the best environment to grow royalty, performance and efficiency.

So what can you do then to encourage performance and efficiency in your work place?

1. Clearly define each member’s job role:  Often as business grow and develop the roles that staff play within the business grow and develop.  If this is happening to your business re-visit everyone’s job roles and update where necessary and communicate the changes across the whole team so everyone understands how they fit in the bigger picture.
2. Clearly define the chain of command:  all too often in family run businesses or businesses experiencing excessive growth, the chain of command becomes hazy.  If new members are added to the management team or the roles of the existing management team change, a new chain of command needs to be created so everyone within the company understands who they report to.
3. Measure success:  If the team(s) do not have goals how then do they know they are doing a good enough job?  Everyone in the company should be accountable and take ownership for their part in the business, part of being accountable is having something to measure yourself against, these we call key performance indicators (KPI’s).  Once these are in place everyone will know how well they are performing.
4. Daily Meetings:  This is one of the simplest tools to use and one of the most powerful.  The meeting should talk about 3 things:
1. What have you achieved since your last meeting (acknowledges the good in front of their peers).
2. What is your focus today (collective the team will be highly focused for the day, knowing what is expected from them).
3. What hurdles are stopping you from performing your job (opportunity to discuss issues and solve them amongst their peers).
5. Incentivise Performance:  If KPI’s are continually being met, think of some ways of incentivising the the staff, maybe let them choose their own incentive up to a specific value.
6. Enforce Consequence:  If the staff are not performing having put everything in place then there needs to be a consequence for continued poor performance.  After continued support and development performance is insufficient to meet the KPI’s set, then disciplinary action may need to be taken.  Do not shy away from doing this, yes it is a last resort, but it is an important one.  It is vitally important that you have a robust disciplinary process in place.