Great leaders get the best out of their teams by providing 12 core leadership “services”. The best leaders provide these services in an efficient and effective way.
Today’s guest post is by Mike Figliuolo, co-author of Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results.
Every leader wants to give their team all the help they need. That help can come in many forms. How do leaders help their team members grow and become more autonomous? Are leaders serving their teams in the most efficient and effective way?
In our new book, Victor Prince and I describe the 12 “leadership services” that leaders must provide to their teams:
Directing
- Planning: Leaders translate their vision for the organization into team goals and individual goals.
- Prioritizing: Leaders prioritize the individual goals into team priorities.
- Coordinating: Leaders use their higher seat on the org chart to provide their team members with broader organizational perspectives and make connections for them.
Doing
- Deciding: Leaders make decisions that can’t be or shouldn’t be made by their team members.
- Motivating: Leaders motivate people to do things, particularly when those tasks are difficult.
- Clearing: Leaders help people overcome the roadblocks they face at work.
Delivering
- Monitoring: Leaders are accountable for delivering team goals, so they track team progress against set metrics and milestones.
- Correcting: Leaders help correct their team members’ work.
- Repairing: When errors occur, leaders help repair the damage.
Developing
- Training: Leaders teach team members new skills and ensure they receive the training they need to perform their jobs effectively.
- Coaching: Leaders help build their team members’ confidence and capabilities.
- Promoting: Leaders advance their team members’ careers by positioning them for growth.
If you’re a team leader, think about whether you are providing all of these services to every member of your team. If you aren’t, why not? If it’s an issue of “not having enough time” you might want to reconsider how you’re spending the limited time you have.
One reason you may spend too little time and energy with some team members is because you spend too much time and energy with some other team members. Our new book offers an assessment tool to help you understand where you’re investing your time and energy across your individual team members now, and a framework to show you how you should shift your efforts in the future.
Getting the best out of your team is your primary responsibility. Making better and more efficient use of your limited time is the key to delivering those better results.
Mike Figliuolo is the co-author of Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results and the author of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. He’s the managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC – a leadership development training firm. An Honor Graduate from West Point, he served in the U.S. Army as a combat arms officer. Before founding his own company, he was an assistant professor at Duke University, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., and an executive at Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He regularly writes about leadership on the thoughtLEADERS Blog.
