Dear Managers: Here’s How To Get Your Team To Do Their Best Work - Forbes

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Good management is as critical for work success today as Zoom is for communication. Being a great manager is the holy grail, because if your people are happy, they will be more likely to stay at their jobs longer—and more importantly, do their best work while they are there. However, knowing how, exactly, to manage well isn’t easy, and management trainings often fall short when it comes to traversing workplace situations that shift every minute. 

Here’s the truth: To be a manager who inspires the best work in your people, you must be interested in those people themselves. You have to take the time to understand who they are, and you need to model what you’re asking of them. You can’t just talk; you need to walk your talk. 

At the root of stellar management are three basic buckets: psychological safety, communication and engagement and motivation. Here’s how you can guide your teams toward doing their best work using these elements.

Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is feeling safe to show up as who you are without fear of negative consequences—and it’s the foundation of a great working environment. As a manager, it’s your job to not only tell your people that they can be who they are at work, but also to actively model it and create a safe environment to do so. Here are some key actions to take to do this now:

1. Lead with vulnerability and ask for it in return. Share personal struggles or challenges at work, and encourage others to do the same. 
2. When confronted with constructive feedback from your team, thank them for it, welcome it and continually encourage it. 
3. Create the time and space needed for people to be who they are by allocating time in one-on-ones where they can share personal updates.

Communication

With Slack and email being the main forms of communication these days, a lot can get lost in translation. Which is why you, as a manager, need to prioritize communicating well and often. It’s easy to say, “We need to communicate better,” but harder to create the structure and habit of doing it. Here are some key actions you can take to make this a cornerstone of how your team operates:

1. Suggest your team read Radical Candor and practice the exercises mentioned in the book with your team members.
2. Model regular communication to your team, and make sure that there is transparency between different team members by regularly providing feedback and requesting it in return. 
3. Ask about each team member’s preferred communication style, and respect it. While some of us prefer the face-to-face nature of Zoom, others are experiencing on-screen burnout and would prefer a phone call.

Engagement and Motivation

As a manager, your job is to be curious about your people, create a safe space for them to be who they are and present opportunities that align with their core skills and values. Once you’ve given them that supportive work environment, it’s their job to focus on their engagement and motivation and communicate their career vision to you.

This may sound like the opposite of what you might think, but the reality is that bosses aren’t career coaches. As a manager, you can create the understanding with each team member that this job is theirs to own and that the tools are there to help them do so, but at the end of the day, they need to be the ones to take control of their performance. Here are some key actions you can take to get your people excited to own their work:

1. Get them to take the Zone of Genius Quiz and have them share with you their Genius (the thinking or problem-solving that they’re best at) and what impact gives them Purpose. Knowing this about your team members is a game-changer, since you instantly know what will drive engagement and motivation. When it comes to planning for team growth or building efficiencies, this data matters. 
2. Have them present their career vision to you, and ask them to suggest projects that align with their Genius and Purpose. If it’s feasible, allow them to step up and take on those responsibilities. 
3. Have them start tracking how often they are in their Zone of Genius at work (the weekly Zone of Genius Tracker can help!). By knowing this, you will be able to identify areas of performance strengths and blind spots that will make being a great manager that much easier. 

Inspiring amazing work in your team members isn’t easy, especially in these times. But by focusing on creating a safe and communicative environment and readily presenting helpful tools to your employees, you’ll give everyone the best possible chance to succeed.

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Dear Managers: Here’s How To Get Your Team To Do Their Best Work - Forbes
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