One of the challenges of being a new leader is building loyalty and respect within your department. We all want to be popular amongst our employees, but aren’t exactly sure how to get there. It’s not the kind of thing you can just come out and ask for, and no one wants to be seen as fake or thirsty in pursuit of it.
Fortunately, whether with your team seven days, seven months, or seven years, you can use a simple approach that focuses on orienting to each individual’s goals on your team.
- Understand what their goals are
- Show them that you’re qualified to help them achieve those goals
- Achieve milestones that put them closer to their goals
Understand their goals
Whether on-boarding a new employee or orienting to a new team, you need to understand why the employees show up everyday. What incentivizes them? What are they hoping to achieve? Do they want acclaim, stability, independence, autonomy, balance, or something completely different?
To figure this out, you need to ask them how they got here and where they see the path they’re on ending. For the most impactful response, ask your employee what success would look like for them in one year. You’ll be surprised at the answers you get.
On larger teams with a broader range of goals, keep an excel sheet with the answers your employees give you. Use this for reference when in conflict with different members of your team. By understanding your employee motivations you’ll be better able to speak their language and better understand your employees’ perspective.
How can you help?
Your team needs to believe that you can support them on their journey. This means showing that you’re capable of giving them a) the direct mentorship to achieve their goals (direct support) or b) facilitating the experiences they need to achieve their goals (indirect support). Whether direct or indirect, you need to show that you’re capable of producing experience for them that allows them to move closer to their objectives.
If your support is more direct, organize monthly mentorship meetings where you can offer to give them feedback on their performance or show them a new skill. Make it a goal to create a safe environment for open-discussion. What are the areas where the employee is struggling? Are their skills that are underdeveloped for them? Focus these conversations on giving them tangible support and helping to build their strengths.
If more indirect, then coordinate opportunities and experiences for them within their responsibilities that allow them to grow. Help the employees get on committees, give them challenges that push their skill sets, or encourage shadowing in other departments where you know your team has interest.
At all times, your actions should be telling your employees: “I’m going to take your development seriously.”
Stack receipts
Do regular check-ins with your employees to see how they’re progressing. Keep a running tally of the positive changes that you’ve made and be shameless about showing that you’re getting sh*t done. It’s obviously valuable to be humble, but it’s even more valuable to be effective. It’s perfectly reasonable to say: “it’s important to me that you all see that I’m in your corner, and getting [item 1], [item 2], and [item 3] done was part of showing you that I’m serious”.
Unfortunately, no one sits up at night thinking about you and what you’ve accomplished. You need to promote yourself and be assertive about the value you’ve added. Connect the results the department is achieving back to the goals from step 1. Keep a running tracker in the break-room of all the things that have been accomplished. Show that the collective wins aren’t accidents, they’re the results of intentional behavior on your (and their) part.
By staying connected with the motivations and ambitions of your employees, you give each member of your team something concrete to use when evaluating you as their manager. Instead of just being “the person who bosses me around” you turn yourself into “the person who’s helping me get where I want to go”, a much more favorable position to be in.
And while nothing can guarantee that you’ll build loyalty with every member of your team, consistent practice and intentionality will give you the best chance for sustainable results. Don’t worry about the one or two employees that seem indifferent to your efforts. These employees probably won’t be around 6 months from now, and every manager knows that these employees would be dissatisfied even if you tripled their salaries.
The best part about this is you can start tomorrow by learning more about your team and what their goals are. You can show you that you genuinely care about the success of your employees. Give yourself 30 days to sit with your employees to listen and learn. Then, give yourself 60 days to accomplish one thing on behalf of your team. State your goal publicly, at a team meeting or huddle, and then keep the group updated every two weeks or so with how things are progressing. Even by starting small, you’ll start to see positive results quickly.
Let me know how this works out for you. Say hi on Twitter or email me. Getting results? Consider sharing this post with someone who could benefit. Good luck out there.
Patrick