Latest / Enhance.training / Developing Talent In Your Team - 4 Clever Actions To Boost Your Success

Transcript

Developing Talent In Your Team - 4 Clever Actions To Boost Your Success · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Developing talent in your team is one of the best ways to boost your own personal success as a manager.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was promoted 13 times in 13 years, all the way up to board level of large companies.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: When you get the best from others, your bosses will be mad not to give you more people to lead.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can make promoting you 100% in their best interests.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'll explain exactly how to boost your personal promotability and then share four clever ways to boost your success by developing talents in your team without needing a big budget.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth action I talk about brings together the other three and is a big driver of the rewards and recognition you get personally.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, let's talk about why developing talent in your team develops your personal career success.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Managing teams is a highly complex job.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every day brings new challenges, new decisions to make and new problems to solve.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: On top of this, every person is different.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: To get the most out of them, learning their quirks is a must.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even for managers of small teams, problems, decisions and people take up a lot of your time and energy.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: When you manage big teams, it can feel like problems, decisions and people are all of your job.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: To be successful, you must understand this vital fact.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: All the problems you face are not equal.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: When leading others, you should be dividing up the problems and decisions that you face into different categories and doing different things with each.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: This maximizes the value you personally can create directly and through your team.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: The more value you can create, the more successful you'll be.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: For example, problems can be split into these four categories: high and low impact problems with effective and known solutions.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And high and low impact problems without known solutions.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Problems with effective and known solutions are ones that you solve regularly and you get good results each time.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I.e.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: when you come up against X problem, you know from experience that Y set of actions solves the problem.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: When you're really good at implementing a variety of solutions to a set of known, high and low impact problems, you could either carry on solving these known problems personally or delegate these known problems to your best team members for them to solve.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you delegate, you have a lot more time to devote to solving the problems without known solutions.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Say a problem with a potential 100k profit impact on the business.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: More of your time using your expertise means better solutions.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Better solutions means higher profits for the company, and you become a lot more valuable to the company.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The more value you create, the more likely you'll get promoted and will be given personal rewards such as bonuses and pay rise, not to mention the status, recognition and appreciation that comes from your bosses.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't delegate the known problems and keep doing them yourself, you have an easier life, less stress, less challenge, less personal development, less pay, less chance of getting promoted, etc.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: You don't increase the value or profits you create for the company personally, and you don't increase the value your team members are creating for the company.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Developing talent in your team frees you up to develop your own skills.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Make yourself and your team members more valuable to any company, and you'll get the recognition and rewards that come from creating more profits for the company through developing talent in your team.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles, and if you're new to this podcast, Enhanced.training provides resources and courses for you to build management expertise and confidence to lead any team to their best performance.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've included links to additional resources in the podcast description to help you develop your team and communicate to your bosses the value that you are adding to them and to the business.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do take a look at these.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So let's move on to how to develop talent in your team.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are a ton of skills that you could focus your time on to develop in your team.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: In my experience, the highest value skills to develop in team members with ambitions of heading into management are planning, problem solving, decision making, and people management.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: These are all core skills of managers, and by developing these skills in your higher potential team members, you'll be able to delegate increasing amounts of your job to them.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: This gives you more time and energy to focus on increasing the value that you add to the company in which you work.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: One of the best ways to get rewarded and earn promotion.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The first action for how to develop talent in your team is to put in the time to create opportunities to build team member skills.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have a ton of opportunities to do this without needing a penny in budget.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: For example, when a team member comes to you with a problem, don't provide them with a solution.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, ask them questions so they produce a solution.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: What are your ideas on solving this?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: What would you put in place?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: How would you implement that solution?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: What other options might work?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Stop delegating tasks and start delegating problems is another great approach.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Define the problem carefully, explain the resources they can work with, and then ask them to come back to you with their best solution.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Another option is to hold team problem solving workshops.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Delegate problems to a small group and be on hand to facilitate and support.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Again, if you provide solutions, make sure you do this last.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can take the same approach with planning and decision making.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: With people skills, discuss scenarios and then get them to take the actions agreed.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then review how it went with them and ask what they would do differently next time.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Also, think about how you can delegate tasks, activities and projects to build skills within your team for planning, solution building, decision making and people management skills.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes open and proactively look to create opportunities for team members to put their skills into practice.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The second action is to use weekly one-on-one meetings to develop your team members.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not booking in weekly one-on-one meetings, then book them in right now.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not using one-on-one meetings to develop skills in your team members, then start in your next meeting.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Using your meetings to provide lots of useful specific feedback, your praise and corrective to your team members.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Feedback is invaluable to communicate to the team members what is going well and how to improve what is not.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure your feedback is specific.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Next, use your one-on-one meetings to create solutions to real problems they or you are facing.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Jointly create and discuss options or ask your team member to create a solution first and then input second.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Use lots of scenarios, technical, situational and people-based to build knowledge, skills and experience.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Lastly, get your team member to make decisions in one-on-one meetings.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can then approve those decisions or explain why you disagree.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can also take team members through your thinking process for decisions that you have made.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: The stronger you build skills in team members, the wider you can spread the burden of increasing the performance of the team that you lead.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: More people with better skills often speeds up implementation of solutions and projects.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: This in turn increases the performance of the team, which is only going to be a good thing for you personally.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: The third action to develop talent in your team is to ask your best performers to teach.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching is a really good way to learn.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have taught others all the way through my career and learnt a lot from teaching others.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching others is one of the big factors for my success as a manager.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Since starting a training and coaching business, I feel the amount I'm learning has doubled at least.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching is a great way to learn.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So ask your best performers to teach what they know to other MEP team members.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Focus on the skills that they are best placed to pass on and what makes sense for the success of the team.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them to prepare the training program and then review it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: The more your best performers do, the more they will learn.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Explain why you're asking them to teach in the first place.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of different formats to enable teaching.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Three good options include asking your team member to hold one-on-one meetings with the less experienced staff and focus them on development.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, set up buddy systems where the more experienced person teaches and supports a less experienced person on a more ad hoc basis.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Third, you could set up lunchtime training sessions where the team member teaches a group in a more formal setting.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, each of these options also helps build people management skills.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: The person doing the training will gain greater depth of understanding in what they are teaching, and the people being taught increase their skills and knowledge too.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: A double benefit.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: After the initial setup time, you won't need to be very involved in this process, which is another benefit for you personally.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Ask your team members to teach.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth action is to communicate what you're doing, why, and the results of what you're doing to your bosses.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Communication of what you are doing and why to your bosses is perhaps the most important of these actions for your success.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: If your bosses don't clearly link the improved performance from the team directly to your efforts, then you'll lose out on some of the rewards.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: You won't get as much appreciation, recognition or praise.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You won't build a really strong reputation nearly as quickly.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: The pay, bonuses, and promotions will also take longer to come.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Regularly educate your bosses about what you're doing and why.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Give them updates on progress.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Create KPIs for your team's performance, including some financial ones.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: These will make it easier for you to communicate the true value of what you're creating.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Start with your line manager.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about what you're doing in your one-on-one meetings and share your KPIs.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can start updating other bosses that you might have relationships with.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: You might start with something like this.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Jane, I've been focusing on development in my team, which is producing some really good measurable performance improvements.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Would you be interested in hearing a little bit about what I've been doing to see if this is something that you want to replicate in your teams?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: If they're interested, you go into the detail.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: The most important action is for you to educate your bosses on what you're doing, how it is improving performance and why it is working.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: With better understanding, you'll get a lot more credit a lot quicker.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Always communicate the good work that you are doing to your bosses.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, in my experience, teaching and developing talent in your team is a very valuable route to increasing team performance and brings a ton of other benefits, such as greater trust and appreciation from your team.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I coach a lot of leaders and train a lot of managers.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that put in the effort and proactively develop their teams are nearly always the ones being promoted and given more people or teams to manage.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Developing others is very literally a very successful way to develop your own management career.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: As a reminder, four actions to boost your own success through developing others are firstly create opportunities to develop your better team members each week and month.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, use weekly one-on-one meetings to develop four key management skills.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Third, ask your better team members to teach others.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, communicate, communicate, communicate.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: To your bosses all the great results you deliver.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do take a look in the podcast description for links to additional resources to help you develop your team and communicate to your bosses the value that you're adding to them and the business.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do take a look.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions on developing talent in your team for clever ways to boost your success, please email me at support at enhance.training and I will get back to you.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.