In any company or organization, the time may come when things don’t run as smoothly as expected. Quite often – especially in situations when new employees, or even experts, are hired on - the team workflow can hit a roadblock, which requires an action plan from the leader in order for obstacles to be overcome.
Instead of being pulled down by different opinions or personal arguments amongst team members, a true leader needs to rise from the situation and pull his team out of it as well.
Here are some useful tips and tricks a great leader should do to get things past a blockade:
Observe and assess
A good leader occasionally needs to stay in the background and silently observe how the team works. That may require writing down some comments and thoughts on specific team members, especially when dealing with higher numbers of employees.
Based on such notes, a team leader can re-assess if team members play roles that fit them well or if someone should be perhaps re-assigned to a different role to make the team work better or achieve better results.
This is one of the things a skillful leader should do from the get-go, apart from trying to prevent any hiccups while the team operates.
However, it’s never too late to pause for a second, re-assess, re-organize, and dive into work with a more organized team.
Ask for feedback and listen to complaints
Most employees will avoid going straight to the manager or boss to complain. Everyone has a tolerance level.
At first, people will try to tolerate some team members, or bad habits of team members, then complain in the background to some of their colleagues. As a last resort, they will complain to the team leader or manager who can address such issues.
At the point when an employee decides to go to the manager, the tensions in the team may have already escalated. This is why a first-class leader needs to stay ahead of the game, and ask team members for their feedback.
Every complaint towards a specific team member, or process that an employee finds dysfunctional, should be taken into serious consideration.
Split things into smaller chunks
No matter if you’re facing a project that’s really big or an obstacle that seems too daunting, splitting everything into smaller chunks may lead to better results. If you are dealing with a very large team that’s sometimes a bit hard to coordinate, consider splitting it up into divisions.
On the other hand, if you are dealing with an extremely important project ahead, you may want to split it into individual tasks and assign those tasks to either small teams or qualified individuals. That way every member of your team is accountable for a certain part of the project. By doing so, you’ll make everyone’s role in the team clear and understandable.
Eliminate weak links
This may sound a bit harsh, but eliminating a weak link doesn’t have to mean firing them. Sometimes, by simply eliminating certain team members from a process they are not good at and re-assigning them to another projects where they can contribute more can do the trick.
If you have two stubborn employees working on certain parts of a bigger project or assignment, you may consider re-organizing them to spend less time on mutual assignments.
Most of the time you cannot meet everyone’s desire when it comes to whom they want to work with, but sometimes when your whole team can benefit from such a move then, by all means, you should consider such swaps. Eliminate the stress from the process by re-adjusting some moving parts.
Use visual aids
Sometimes a team member just needs to see things visually displayed in order to better understand their role.
With that said, don’t hesitate to use sticky notes to keep track of different team member roles and assignments, draw plans and maps on the boards of your office wall to help everyone stay in the loop with the organization and progress, or use various software aids to remind your individual team members of their assignments, deadlines and goals.
Occasionally your team needs to be reminded about both their personal and their company goals.
Any sort of visual aid that employees can see on a daily basis can serve the purpose to keep everyone in the team on track.
Mediate and mentor
Use all available mediation techniques to help your team members overcome conflicts among themselves and help them overcome personal disputes. Sometimes a tap on the back and a short motivational speech will remind them that they are a team and that they should behave and work like one.
From time to time a bit more skillful approach may be needed. When dealing with inexperienced group members, an exemplary leader will even mentor some or all team members to help them excel in their work. A great leader needs to be the voice of reason and motivation for the whole team.
Document agreements and accomplishments
Throughout the whole process, a great leader occasionally needs to document agreements made between different team members and their milestone accomplishments.
In order to prevent future disputes between certain employees, documenting precisely what was assigned to whom, and who agreed to work on which part can help later on when problems arise.
Moreover, documenting accomplishments for each phase in your team’s progress can help stimulate certain members when they see for themselves that certain milestones have been met on time.
While there are certainly many more tips we could discuss here, these are some basic steps and techniques every leader can implement in order to achieve exquisite team performance. If you are aspiring to be a great leader, do not hesitate to improvise and be creative along the way.
Whatever helps your team to be motivated and to stay on track can be beneficial. Keep up the good work!
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