SOAR Consulting

16/11/2022

Sorry girls… as the Captain of this ship I take full responsibility for any crash landings. I’d like to say it won’t happen again…

07/10/2022

Quick share of some of the many leadership lessons learned from a very nice part of the world...

Leadership comes in many forms and needs to change to suit the environment. Today I'm sharing a couple of lessons learned from some high performing teams whi...

29/11/2018

If you want your team to reach peak performance, get out of their way!

Business owners often dig themselves into a hole, falling into the trap of constantly directing their team, pushing them each day to achieve more...with the best intentions of helping the team perform at a higher level.

The problem is, while this approach may help the team in their early stages of development, their results will soon plateau because they rely so heavily on the leader for instruction and motivation.

When the team fails to meet expectations, the easiest answer is to blame them…they lack motivation, they aren’t skilled enough, they’re the wrong type of people for the job. This does nothing to improve the team’s performance and only adds to the stress and grief for all involved.

Once leaders started taking ownership of their teams performance, they are able to identify their own mistakes and make simple changes to achieve massive results.

Here are 3 simple steps you can use to start developing your own high performance team…

First, when you get the next task or project for your team to complete, avoid giving them detailed instructions. Instead, give them a clear end goal and a good reason to make it happen. Let some of the team come up with the plan, throwing in your own suggestions only when seriously required. If your team feels responsible for the plan, they will do their best to achieve the results.

Second, reward your team for their wins. There's no need to go over the top but remember to recognise even the small wins. This is a particularly effective way to motivate your team because it's human nature to crave and work hard for appreciation.

Third, get out of the way...You’ve given your team the direction and the chance to be more involved in planning and achieving the results. The difficult part now is to resist the temptation to get too involved and take over.

You have to let your team make decision, and mistakes. They will learn fast and will soon be accomplishing far more. As the leader you should keep guiding them in the right direction and get out of their way so they can thrive, and you can enjoy extreme results.

So if your team is underperforming right now, how much income and growth are you missing out on?

What could you do differently to give your team the opportunity to reach peak performance?

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. Feel free to leave a comment or PM me if you want to know more.

13/10/2018

An experienced business leader had a team he knew could perform at a high level but their performance had dropped off significantly.

Many of the individuals were star performers in their own right but as a group they weren’t motivated to get the jobs done, even after being giving good reasons why.

They were skilled and knowledgeable but lacked enthusiasm. Their lacklustre performance was affecting company profits and the blame was starting to fall on him.

The leader was starting to feel like a failure because he couldn’t work out a solution. He was stressed about keeping his job, which gave him a good income, but was his families only source of income.

When asked how he went about executing team projects, he pointed out that he puts a lot of effort into working out the best strategy, then allocates tasks to team members. He knows the team understand their tasks because he explains in detail, but they are just going through the motions when they execute them.

The worse the team performs, the more effort he puts into spelling out each task in the hope that they will execute the way he wants, and expects.

The business leader was asked some specific questions designed to change his perspective on how he could motivate his team, a perspective which he may have lost sight of in the struggle to achieve results.

These are questions which any team leader could ask occasionally to remind themselves what might inspire their team to achieve the best results:

What is the minimum level of direction you need to give an experienced team (or an inexperienced team)?

If your team is given the freedom to make their own decisions during projects, what is the cost of any mistakes they might make?

What are the long term benefits of allowing them to make their own decisions and learn from their mistakes?

What is going to motivate an EXPERIENCED team more;
being given the opportunity to provide input into the plan and make their own decisions, or being told exactly what they should be doing?

03/10/2018

Not enough direction or too much direction, which is worse for your business?

What happens when you don’t give your team enough direction?

Things can start to go wrong very quickly, jobs that you assumed would be done a certain way are done poorly or not done at all.

You inevitably find yourself spending hours of your valuable time correcting mistakes, or just doing the work yourself.

So what could be wrong with providing too much direction?

The team will get the work done but at what cost?

People will adapt to their environment in order to survive. Your team can quickly get used to waiting for instructions rather than making their own decisions, making sure they are doing things your way.

It's not unusual to stop making decisions when there is little opportunity to do so. Most prefer to ask you what they should do in these situations rather than come up with their own solutions, out of fear that they'll only get it wrong.

As the leader, you can find yourself spending way too much time making sure each team member gets the job done. Even the most highly motivated team members will eventually lose motivation, doing only what you ask of them and little more.

Leadership is a balance. When things aren't going well you work a lot harder than you should, but when you find the sweet spot between under managing and micro managing, you get to lead your team while they achieve incredible results.

25/09/2018

Does a leader need charisma to build high performance teams?
Being a leader can provide many challenges that will require using the right leadership style for the right situation. In Daniel Goleman’s book The New Leader, he writes: “research found six distinctive leadership styles, each spring from different components of emotional intelligence.” Having effective social skills is a capability for leadership that gets results. Charisma, inspiration, influence and teamwork are key attributes of leadership.
What about the leaders who use a coercive style that we have either worked with or met? There are many that achieve successful business results and some of their team members, shareholders and others have high regard and respect. Yet in most cases the coercive leader lacks charisma.
If charismatic leadership is important in building high performance teams or communities then can these be learnt or are they innate?
We look forward to the wisdom of our group sharing your thoughts, opinions, ideas and questions.

06/09/2017

A process for getting the right people aligned.