"You know your job — just do it!"
Most managers forget that educating your troops is an ongoing process.
Great leaders build a learning journey for every team member who reports to them. Success relies on the consistent growth of your team, expanding their knowledge base and experience. That approach is what keeps everyone happy and engaged (and not leaving for another firm).
Here are 5 simple actions to educate more like a leader:
Use an assessment to uncover their strengths.
Before you start making assumptions — use an established assessment tool to help you target what areas need work. A great tool I use is Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath - it presents hundreds of strategies for applying your team member's strengths and also change the way they look at work forever.
Expose them to new opportunities.
Work gets boring after a while — especially when you've mastered many of the areas where you are responsible. A good leader recognizes that the associate is at the end of their learning runway and they need to pull back the curtain. Expose them to something totally new — a new project, process, group, especially if it significantly takes them out of their comfort zone.
Coach them and teach them to be coaches.
Coaching is the cornerstone of professional growth — if you share your coaching skills with your team (most managers keep them tightly hidden), you'll see them grow exponentially. And it's a virus — it will spread from your team to other departments and the higher-ups will see the positive effects with increased productivity and fewer personnel issues.
Implement job rotation to mix it up.
Move your people around frequently — ensure that they're learning a broad spectrum of abilities, communication skills, and talents. If you just exercise one muscle, the others will atrophy. Make sure that you move your people into areas that test and strengthen their weaker business muscles. This also helps with those tedious tasks no one wants - share.
Give them purpose.
I've saved to best for last — don't just teach them checkers, give them the space to learn complex chess moves. For every educational growth level you present, show them the powerful purpose of it's effects and how it makes all ships rise in the organization. That will ensure a bright future for your people by exposing them to the rest of the company, frequently.
Action Step:
Over this holiday season, implement a strengths assessment. It will guide you on how to educate your team to a higher knowledge and experience base in 2022.
We can go so much deeper into Education — but we wanted to give you a few quick, actionable steps to take away and use this week.
This is part three of a 4-part series on Leadership.
We've just launched a new program: The Four Elements of Transformational Leadership where we engage managers on how to effectively communicate, motivate, educate, and delegate their teams.
It’s a series of customized timely workshops for your team to focus on growing their leadership skills over a series of months. Why months?
People learn by doing, not just attending a single 8-hour offsite — our program ensures that each candidate learns, understands, and takes action after each 60-90 minute live session.
In addition, we include one-on-one coaching sessions for each candidate to follow up on their progress, answer any questions they might have, and reinforce the right behaviors so they apply what they've learned in their day-to-day interactions.