Yesterday, I encouraged senior leaders NOT to text staffers/volunteers in the middle of the services with “tweaks” or “fixes” (unless there is truly a major issue that absolutely MUST be immediately addressed). Especially production team members. Why? Pulling focus away from people’s jobs makes it MORE likely that errors will occur.
That being said, it absolutely IS part of our job to make the services the very best that they can be. So, what to do? I suggest a weekly evaluation meeting. Short and sweet, a half hour, tops. Your role as a leader is not to beat up your team for every imperfection, it’s to help them to succeed. And success is usually systematic, not because you yelled at them enough…
The evaluation setup that has worked best for me over the years is a meeting that includes as many of the people who are involved in the services as possible, and let each person list one thing they thought was good and one that could have been better. Blunt and truthful – not personal attacks, but open and honest evaluation of what happened. No rebuttals from any team member, including and especially you. Everybody goes BEFORE anyone starts offering solutions. Give the meeting a name if you want – a couple options I’ve seen are “Yays and Nays” (or “Heys”) or “Props and Opps,” as in opportunities. You get the idea…
You go last (if at all). This allows the team to self-evaluate and peer-evaluate, which are often much more effective models than “top down” (unless you just like to boss people around). They may have already identified the problem and put a solution in place without you needing to say anything, which is in fact the ideal result.
Finally, write it down. Keep a running list of each week’s good and less good items, with NO names or indication of who said what. If a problem is on the list every week for a month, you’ll know that’s an issue to address. But listing the positives as well will allow you to record and celebrate your victories – it’s nice over time as you get a sense of the things you’re really good at…
Yesterday, I encouraged senior leaders NOT to text staffers/volunteers in the middle of the services with “tweaks” or “fixes” (unless there is truly a major issue that absolutely MUST be immediately addressed). Especially production team members. Why? Pulling focus away from people’s jobs makes it MORE likely that errors will occur.
That being said, it absolutely IS part of our job to make the services the very best that they can be. So, what to do? I suggest a weekly evaluation meeting. Short and sweet, a half hour, tops. Your role as a leader is not to beat up your team for every imperfection, it’s to help them to succeed. And success is usually systematic, not because you yelled at them enough…
The evaluation setup that has worked best for me over the years is a meeting that includes as many of the people who are involved in the services as possible, and let each person list one thing they thought was good and one that could have been better. Blunt and truthful – not personal attacks, but open and honest evaluation of what happened. No rebuttals from any team member, including and especially you. Everybody goes BEFORE anyone starts offering solutions. Give the meeting a name if you want – a couple options I’ve seen are “Yays and Nays” (or “Heys”) or “Props and Opps,” as in opportunities. You get the idea…
You go last (if at all). This allows the team to self-evaluate and peer-evaluate, which are often much more effective models than “top down” (unless you just like to boss people around). They may have already identified the problem and put a solution in place without you needing to say anything, which is in fact the ideal result.
Finally, write it down. Keep a running list of each week’s good and less good items, with NO names or indication of who said what. If a problem is on the list every week for a month, you’ll know that’s an issue to address. But listing the positives as well will allow you to record and celebrate your victories – it’s nice over time as you get a sense of the things you’re really good at…
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