Team Vision — 3 Ways to Build Your Team Strategy For The Coming Year
What do you want to accomplish with your team next year?
For this article, I am not specifically referring to the results and outcomes that your team will generate, but rather, how your team will grow and develop over the course of the next twelve months. We just covered in a series of articles how you and your team can set up for the more strategic planning and goal setting activities. How you work to develop your team is equally important.
Having a vision for how your team works together, how they work with others, and the skills they develop can make a dramatic impact on the results you collectively deliver. Additionally, it will create engagement and strengthen relationships that can lead to further success.
Goal Statement and Goal Setting
Again, I am moving beyond the traditional results-based goals and focusing in on the team aspect only. Your goal statement for your team development should follow the normal SMARTER framework, but be focused on what your team will look like a year from now. For example, you may set a goal to have two or three of your direct reports considered ‘promotable now’ by the end of the year. You could state that you have a goal that your team will work collaboratively with each other on solving problems before they contact you. It would be simple enough to measure this by asking them, when they come to you seeking advice or a solution, who else did they speak to first? Once you establish time considerations for these, they will fit the SMARTER framework and help ensure you are developing your team throughout the year.
Developing Together
How does your team grow together? What can you do as a leader to help them work better as a cohesive unit that will yield benefits for everyone? I have had a lot of success in conducting multi-day offsite meetings where the team spends extra time working on day-to-day issues together and then having time to socialize throughout the day. This is a positive way to strength the relationships between individual team members. Time together in concentrated periods does lead to natural interactions that allow trust to deeper and new areas of support to develop. The more you can get the group together to work on common outcomes, the more likely strong team bonds will be.
Using Individual Development Plans and Link to the Team
Connecting the overall team goal to individual development goals is a good way to ensure they team can see that they are in this together. When everyone knows that they are having similar discussions and the development process is evident, it creates commonality that each can relate to. Over time, this will likely lead to the team members becoming support and development partners, helping to alleviate some of that from your role. You can then spend more time facilitating those types of discussions between team members. This also helps to keep multiple perspectives in play for everyone.
As part of each team member’s individual development plans, ask them what they would like to get from the team dynamic? What would they like to learn from others on the team? Depending on the team size and your specific environment, they may not all know each other as much as you would think. This can be especially true as a District Manager, where your Store Managers do not see each other regularly. They may not always know the strengths of their peers. That is one of the most important roles you can play in as a multi-unit leader — pair peers together for learning purposes. Create a safe environment for communications and sharing, then encourage them to learn from each other for the benefit of the greater whole.
As you pull all the individual components together, you can work that into the larger team goal you have for the group. It is important to share that vision and where you hope to be in twelve months, so everyone knows that there is an expected outcome. It may feel a little unusual at first, but the vast majority of people want to be connected to other teammates and find success as a group as well as individually. Painting a picture of what that can look like is just the start of something that can be transformative.
What does your team vision look like?
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