To quickly cement yourself in your new role, here are three effective actions that you can immediately take as a new leader to maximise your team’s performance.
1. Benchmark current performance against expected performance
It is important to understand any gap between the current performance of your team and the level of performance expected from your team.
Examples of the minimum metrics you need to be across are:
- Inputs received on time
- Outputs delivered on time
- Standards to be met
- Budget within which to do the work
- Complaints against your specific area of accountability.
Having insight into how current performance compares against expected performance will enable you to direct your team toward the actions that will yield the outcomes desired by you and your boss.
2. Review the reporting calendar
A reporting calendar identifies all reports produced by you and your team, and when they are due, including:
- Reports received by you as the team leader
- Reports provided to your manager
- Reports provided to stakeholders
- Reports provided to the organisation through your manager.
If there isn’t already a defined reporting calendar that shows what reports are due by when then take the initiative and create one.
The key benefit of a reporting calendar is that it provides focus, certainty and structure around performance reporting for you and your team. Your team reports are a valuable form of communication that you can use to highlight anything that is not going as well as expected and what corrective action is needed to get performance back on track.
3. Establish clear communication channels
Effective communication channels allow you to set expectations, track progress and keep everyone informed.
At a minimum, set up the following:
- Regular Team meetings – Make sure you have an agenda, record decisions and action items. If your team is not co-located use enabling technology to support regular and interactive ‘voice’ communications.
- Regular One-on-Ones – Use these to engage with your key people in more depth. These meetings are an effective avenue for discussing suggested improvements and changes before they are implemented.
- Regular Reporting – Share reports that are relevant with your team, your boss and your stakeholders. This demonstrates transparency about what you are saying about the team performance and builds stakeholder confidence in you and your team.
These communication techniques enable you to quickly and effectively share the current performance of your team with your team members, your boss and your stakeholders. They also enable collaboration as you develop and execute your strategy to achieve the bottom-line results expected of your team.
Combining these three actions of benchmarking performance, reviewing the reporting calendar and establishing clear communication channels when you start a new leadership role allows you to quickly gather the information you need to measure progress and communicate success. At the same time, you will be establishing the foundations for an actionable framework that supports your team to achieve future business performance expectations.
I encourage you to take these three actions in your first few weeks in a new leadership role and then to review them on a quarterly basis.
I am confident that you will find them useful and wish you the best of luck in your new leadership role.
