Beyond the obvious, does your staff know what will enable their success? Do they each how to ‘get to the next level’ vs. just obtaining results in their current position?
No matter what level you’re at, or what organization you work for, the more clearly you can communicate your thoughts on the topic, the greater the likelihood that your staff will incorporate them into their routine behaviors. That benefits both you and them at review time, you know!
What, then, are Success Enablers?
Simply put, they are what help really good performers become really excellent ones.
Employee success enables vary from boss to boss, but some examples might include things like their communicating clearly, crisply, and consistently; providing timely updates; asking helpful questions; honoring their commitments; knowing where they stand in terms of primary and secondary performance indicators so they’re not surprised come review time. Also important is them knowing how to handle mistakes or misunderstandings should things go wrong; and one of my all-time faves: ‘no bad news on Fridays’ – shame on them if they didn’t realize until Friday that there even was a problem, and even more shame on them if they did know, but chose to wait until then to let the boss know.
Some Additional Examples
A Supervisor can enable greater success of a Clerical Support Team by articulating the value of:
- Applying what they know to make existing processes and procedures that much more efficient
- Having them demonstrate their competencies so thoroughly that others can’t help but respect each and every member of the team
- Never, ever, underestimating anyone’s capacity to learn and master new things
A Manager can enable greater success of Sales and Marketing personnel by articulating the value of:
- Knowing more about their prospects more than anyone else
- Insuring that the details of their proposals make good business sense to both their prospect’s company – and your own
- Regularly and freely sharing Best Practices and Lessons Learned with coworkers and associates
A Director can enable greater success of a department’s Project Managers by articulating the value of:
- Having an abiding respect the due date
- Insuring that all key parties are updated on good news and bad with equal speed and clarity
- Consistently providing important information to those who can benefit from it, before they ask
A VP can enable greater success of Technology Services Personnel by articulating the value of:
- Insisting that any request they receive to bypass company policy includes a cogent business justification that they can agree with and support
- Anticipating potential system vulnerabilities – or performance vulnerabilities if you are working with 3rd party vendors – and working proactively to harden them before an outage occurs
- Resolving whatever does go wrong, quickly and efficiently
The Ultimate Litmus
What should be YOUR team’s success enablers? Simply ask yourself (repeatedly) what would help your employees’ performance grow increasingly stronger and more consistent. THAT’S what you want to be sharing and discussing with them on a regular basis.
In the simplest of terms, your job is to help them know what they’re supposed to be aiming at.
Why? Because once they know exactly how they can be even more successful, the odds of them actually being so increases rather significantly.
Thoughts?