Leaders need to take full responsibility for training, development and coaching their teams. It is their commitment to those who work for them, and a personal investment in their working life and well-being. Personal development is not an added attraction, a sideshow or a ‘nice-to-have’. It is an integrated element of building and sustaining a high performance team, who will ultimately decide how successful you and your organisation are. The secret of attaining excellence from each member of your team is to ensure they see their personal interests, and the interests of the business, are the same. People respond well to being highly thought of, and invested in, especially if it provides a perceived way of unlocking their potential and creates a route to greater personal achievement.
So how do you go about this?
I am a great believer in providing the inner-confidence people need to progress. An important element as to whether a person ‘steps up’ to the next level, learns more and delivers a higher attainment comes from within. You only have to look at a child to see that a lack of confidence is often all that holds them back. How does a leader develop an individual to have greater self-confidence? – through praise and encouragement, the recognition of the good work they do, their achievements, and ability.
It takes personal involvement
This is down to you! How you interact with your team is key, making them feel valued appreciated and a vital part of your organisation. It’s also how you set an example for your senior managers to ensure they do the same. They need to see for themselves your commitment to growing the abilities and strengths of each individual into something better and more effective. In its simplest form this is the guidance and encouragement you provide.
Sing their praise!
Praise will reassure that person that their home is here, in this job, and that you value them. Praise will ensure they feel wanted, and belong, and that they are not missing out on greater recognition elsewhere. Even an employee who resents you, and probably everything you stand for, will respond more positively if you offer genuine praise! Never fawn over or falsely flatter people; trust me, people can discern between what is heartfelt and what is lip-service. Instead, ensure it is personal to the recipient; praise individuals for who they are, what they have achieved.
So why is praise so hard to serve up? For some reason this appears to be the single most difficult area for any leader or manager to accomplish effectively. Is this because in the past they received very little praise themselves? Have they ever felt embarrassed when on the receiving end of praise poorly delivered? Is it because at a certain level everything is just ‘expected’ of you so it seems unnecessary to comment? Do leaders feel it is beneath them to offer praise? Is it just a waste of your time as a manager?
Stop and consider the effects of offering little or no praise to an individual. What is the message you are sending them? What you may be saying, if you say nothing at all, is ‘I haven’t noticed what you’ve accomplished through your hard work, and I don’t care or value what you’ve done. I am paying you for your work – so just get on and do it’. All it takes is a word in passing, a comment at a meeting, a sentence in a report on a project to show you value their hard work, and indeed to encourage within them the desire to work harder on your behalf!
‘Thank you for completing that task today’ says more than you would believe. They hear: ‘I really appreciate all the time and effort you have put in and the standard you achieved – I value you as a hard working employee. I have noticed it, and have made time to comment upon it, because it is worth doing so in my mind. Go home satisfied with a job well done. I am sure you will be keen to achieve as much if not more on our behalf tomorrow’. Handing out praise requires so little effort, and gains so much!
Praise is absolutely essential to build up an individual’s esteem and develop your relationship with them. This will ensure their continued full commitment. Praise will provide a wealth of benefits to an individual:
- A real feeling of value and worth.
- A heightened sense of prestige and standing within the business
- An affiliation to you as a manager, and loyalty to the company
- A realisation that hard work does not go unnoticed
- Personal recognition – particularly in a busy or large environment
Never forget to praise teams as well as individuals. In many ways this is easier than praising individuals as it is less personal and you tend to be more comfortable offering it. Remember to work on integrating any ‘loner’ into a team environment. It will provide the individual with a support network, and a sense of belonging. There is a great human need to belong, particularly to something successful.
Offer encouragement
Encouraging a person requires you to know an individual well enough to provide encouragement that is personal, relevant and meaningful. Don’t think it is only those who lag behind in the performance stakes who need to be encouraged! Encouraging individuals to play to their strengths is much more important the better they become. I once heard a sports coach admit he found it far harder to coach his good players. Their weaknesses are much less of an issue, so you really need to work on improving their strengths in small yet significant ways.
Help them grow
As well as the essential pairing of encouragement and praise, a further factor that aids personal development is a vote of confidence displayed through the act of delegation.
Enabling growth through greater responsibility confirms you feel able to do so because you have every faith and every confidence in their abilities. This will mean a great deal to them, and what results will be a greater sense of achievement, accomplishment and personal satisfaction, a stronger inner-confidence and greater loyalty to both you, and your company.
Inviting others to develop your team
I have always found it difficult to quantify expensive ‘out of office’ training and development sessions, in terms of tangible step change within individuals, and every organisation wishes to see a real return on their investment in training. Off-site training, unless carefully grounded in an individual’s role within work, can be so abstract as to have very little value.
I have become much more convinced that the most effective way to develop a person’s career is coaching delivered within the work environment, and within the context of their everyday working role. I believe it results in a smarter, more effective and more loyal employee who will add much more value to the business, in a measurable way that will justify the investment in that person.
After ten years of misguided emphasis on ‘clever’ training, it is a welcome sight to see a move away from corporate hugs and management bonding “adventure days”. We need to get back to the true value of training people to enhance the work they actually do within their company. We need to train people for business, by investing in real and relevant skills. Achieving this benefits both our business and the individual. Surely by allowing a person to be trained to complete their role in a more efficient and effective manner, it is not only of benefit to the business, but it also improves their confidence and status – being able to do a job, and do it well, and achieve outstanding results will improve a person’s prestige, job satisfaction as well as value to the business.
Make training person centred
People are never embarrassed about appropriately handled training that is provided to expand their knowledge, in order to enable them to work more effectively. As a company you are clearly seen to be giving your employees a measurable vote of confidence when you invest in training on their behalf. It also plays its part for you as their manager in equipping people to achieve greater success in their roles.
Your team need to be treated with respect during the teaching process. It has been said that you have to teach people in a way they feel they are not being taught, and to tell them things in such a way that you are making out they really knew all along. You are just ‘clarifying’ detail for them, or they simply needed reminding of the facts. This approach reflects the pride people have in their own knowledge and abilities, which should be protected rather than exposed. Relevant, job training is seen by most people as a positive event.
Show commitment
It is every company’s duty to commit to providing an opportunity for individuals to maintain a programme of lifelong learning and self-improvement, through external courses or using internal training facilities. Any individual who is left to stagnate will be far less effective throughout the rest of their employment life, and potential business opportunities will be missed.
Freedom is critically important to people, and feeling they are free to progress should they wish to make the personal commitment is part of the culture you should provide. Training should be on offer that allows people the opportunity to achieve their personal potential.
President Ronald Reagan said ‘each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him’
Providing an individual with the opportunity to develop will ensure a higher loyalty from that person, and an appreciation of the value and esteem you hold them in, enough to invest in their future. Your relationship with them will continue to strengthen. Do not lose good people from your company because you did not identify, or respond to supporting their aspirations and training needs.
By its nature, personal development is just that – personal to an individual. Training is wholly inappropriate if it is set up to provide a business solution for a company weakness. You cannot attempt to resolve business issues by demanding people improve themselves.
One of the hardest groups of people to train are the task workers as their job is repetitive with little scope for improvement and personal approach. The key here is to maintain their motivation, and this can be achieved by consistent investment in them in terms of time and interest in their well-being.
All too often they are taken for granted and as a consequence they feel less valued. This results in a loss of interest in their work and a subsequent reduction in either standards or output. Training them provides the clear message that they are important and you care for them. It also delivers a higher output rate with fewer errors from a more committed and valued team.
‘Low calibre’ people benefit from intensive and consistent training, using different methods of training but a consistent message, that will refresh and re-invigorate individuals to provide a quality service. Never be afraid to return to a subject, refresh it, emphasise it and underline its importance. This is particularly beneficial in delivering results in the service sectors.
The real reward and benefit from training is when as a leader you witness a transformation in an individual’s whole approach to work because they want it to, and all you have had to do is facilitate it. There are many examples of an individual changing their ways, after first searching out your support and guidance. When this happens it is the most rewarding process and investment in time you can experience.
Let me share an example with you. There was a young headstrong manager I was responsible for who loved to be ‘one of the lads’ and took every opportunity to benefit personally from situations. He was technically good at his job but lacked the depth an outstanding manager requires to be successful.
The discussion naturally fell upon this point one day as he was keen to start to progress his career. He recognised his own failings and what he had to do to change. This required a greater compliance to the conventions by which all business is run. We had a long chat about his character, his strengths and weaknesses, and the potential he held. All I did was to listen, provide encouragement and direction, and instil in this manager the commitment to set out to achieve what he already realised he wanted. The desire was already within him.
As it happened I moved to another area within the business soon after and it wasn’t until eighteen months later that we had the opportunity to really catch up on a personal basis. Admittedly by then he was not quite a ‘conformist’, retaining his personal spark and enthusiasm which was very much the driving force in his life, but certainly was a more respected manager with a greater standing within the business.
He thanked me for the focus that conversation had provided and I congratulated him on the efforts and achievements he had made both within our business and more particularly in allowing his character to change. He has a bright and successful future ahead of him.
