Perform Green Associate Elizabeth Shassere tells us about her new book which provides a simple guide to taking control and building a happy, productive, high performing team
Poor Management Practices
I wrote a blog recently about a time I was the victim of poor management practices. I was surprised by the strong response of some readers. I got a few comments along these lines:
- all organisations and managers are rubbish
- the farther you look up the management ladder the less intelligent people seem to be.
Ouch. I couldn’t really argue, given the story I had written was telling a very unflattering tale about both organisations and managers who had not acted very intelligently.
But I did wonder about this overall view, and what could be done to change it. Not least because I write a weekly blog in which I share my own hard lessons learned in 20 years of executive leadership to help anyone become a better leader and manager.
Stop Managing & Start Leading
I have now pulled together those lessons into a simple guide to help any manager who is feeling out of their depth or who is struggling with a new or underperforming team. This guide helps managers get a grip and regain a sense of control so they can stop merely managing and also start leading.
In Becoming a Fearless Leader: A simple guide to taking control and building a happy, productive, highly performing team I present my antidote to the feeling of overwhelm and panic that often comes with tackling a challenging managerial role, especially if you have a team that is struggling to perform well.
My antidote is to keep things simple.
Feeling out of your depth, insecure, afraid, or stuck can cause you to make poor decisions and be a bad manager. Grasping a simple tool to help you quickly get a grip and find some solid ground is essential. It will speed things up, free up your staff, and make you a more effective leader.
Top Tips to build a high performing team
You really need just a few basic components to get out of a downward spiral of poor performance and an unhappy team, to get a grip, and turn things around.
They are:
Creating a mission statement, establishing values, and setting goals with your team.
This has the added value of giving you a reason to engage with your team, and find common language and common ground to start from.
Setting up a system for and conducting effective one to one monthly meetings and annual performance reviews.
This helps you take on your responsibility as manager for not only the performance but also welfare of your team members. And, it gets and keeps a conversation going so problems are less likely to sneak up on you or them.
Reviewing the basic building blocks of your team’s functionality, including skills sets, access to information, and the workplace physical environment. The devil is in the details – these are the things you don’t usually pay attention to until they are causing you big problems. Pay attention now, and do a swift review. This will help you get ahead of any potential performance-killers and put in solutions in anticipation.
I cover all of these areas in detail in my book. I also include worksheets and questions you can work through to guide you step by step in your work with your team. You can sign up here to receive news of the launch and receive free materials to support your journey to becoming a fearless leader.
Being a manager doesn’t have to be difficult, though it will always be a challenging role. If you keep it simple and put a little work in, you can be the leader that changes the way we all write about our experiences of managers.
Elizabeth Shassere has 20 years experience working within the public sector successfully leading several multi-million pound major programmes of change. More recently Elizabeth started her own company Textocracy addressing the issue of engagement by the disengaged in public service design and delivery. Elizabeth is also part of the Perform Green team working on transformation in the NHS and across the smart health agenda.
If you would like to meet with Elizabeth or plan a session with Perform Green on how to build and nurture high performing teams please contact Lara Moloney on lara.moloney@performgreen.co.uk and we can set a time to share our insights and learn about your needs.
Perform Green has also recently welcomed Gavin Beckett as Chief Innovation & Research Officer, you can read some of his thought leadership series below:
Creating a model for Local Government as a Platform
From Smart Cities to Smart Societies — The Story so Far
Can We Still Talk about Digital Transformation?
In other news: