The control freak’s guide to building team performance

I often see managers and teams fail to succeed. Symptoms of failure to thrive could be any of the following:

Missed deadlines
Flustered team
Conflict in meetings (and people turning up late to meetings)
Poor use of resources
Increasing levels of overtime
More people are taking sick leave
Diaries are being booked wall to wall with meetings
Duplication of tasks
People are confused about who is doing what
You are the conduit for every communication, both inside the team and between them and stakeholders
Mediocre work by the team that you must redo

You were the technical expert. And now you are the manager. But unfortunately, the skills that got you here are not the ones you need so much now.

You know that you can get great results. The trick is working out how.

Here’s what you need to know.

There are three critical areas to focus on to achieve high performance

Understanding the elements of this new role you are taking on and connecting with your team to create a sense of belonging, trust and strong relationships. My previous newsletter discussed this. Read it here.
Creating predictable performance so results are assured and consistent
Supporting your team to allow them to develop the skills needed to excel.

And there are three questions to go with these:

Q First, what are the right skills to get the best out of your team?

Q Second, how can you shift from feeling overwhelmed to being in control and creating predictable performance?

Q Third, how can you develop a sense of purpose, urgency, and accountability with your team, so they perform effectively?

My previous newsletter concentrated on the first critical area and question around engagement and skills. Here is the link again.

I’ll answer the third critical area and question in the following newsletter.

For now, I’m focusing on the second critical area and question.

2. Creating predictable performance so results are assured and consistent

Predictable performance means prioritising your work and teaching your team to do the same.

It means building connections with your team to create a sense of safety and belonging, trust, and strong relationships. You are building team alignment, so everyone understands their purpose and their part in this team.

It means creating clarity with each of your team about their role. They are clear about what they are delivering or doing. Each team member, and you, understand what differentiates them and what they bring to their role, their strengths, and areas for development.

You use a delegation framework that allows you to delegate work in ways that you and the team are satisfied with the outputs. You have regular conversations with each person to check progress, provide feedback, and provide support.

It means co-designing their future together, so you and they know what their career aspirations are, and how to achieve those aspirations.

Q: How can you shift from feeling overwhelmed to being in control and creating predictable performance?

You can develop the necessary skills to support each team member with what they need to perform well. And you can learn to trust them to do it almost as well as you (or even better).

Then, you create more control instead of being crazy busy and overwhelmed.

At first, trusting your team to do a good job will be challenging.

Reducing how much work you are doing, and redoing, will be difficult.

We hold busyness as a badge of honour. And, letting go of what you do and trusting your team to do the work can be scary as your team won’t do things the way you do.

So you become a micromanager, perfectionist and control freak as you try the direct the work and dictate how it is done.

Or you do the work yourself as you’ll do it faster, better and to your standards.

Now your team are feeling directionless.

Crazy busy doesn’t work in a hospital Emergency department, and it doesn’t work here.

Being in control means you are setting the team up for success. Everyone in the group understands their role and how each part fits with the broader team, the business unit and the organisation.

Being in control means you know the work you have allocated to the team is in safe hands.

You know you don’t need to be across every tiny detail.

When this shift in how you work happens, you can start to focus outward and concentrate on the high-value work required and appropriate for your pay grade.

You start spending less time on the technical work your team are across now and less time on day-to-day operations.

You have more time to

focus on the strategic direction of your team
build crucial external connections and relationships with stakeholders
develop your team’s capabilities.

Skills that ALL managers need to create predictable performance are:

Being able and willing to have difficult conversations. Too often, I’ve seen managers avoid having these conversations with underperformers. Team morale drops when there is perceived toleration for poor performance. New managers will inherit personnel issues from previous managers who feared rocking the boat and couldn’t/ wouldn’t have these difficult conversations.
Coaching. Having a coaching conversation means you are comfortable asking open questions for which you (and they) may not have the answer.Open questions help your team member explore what they know or how they might apply their skills to solve a problem. Too often, managers immediately try to solve someone’s problem by giving advice. However, people become capable faster when they think of a solution rather than relying on someone to provide them with an answer.
Mentoring. Mentoring is different to coaching. Mentoring is directive. It is about tapping into your technical expertise and sharing your knowledge and experience with those with less experience. You leverage your skills and expertise to guide others. You are serving as an advisor and role model.
Delegating. Develop a delegation framework and not leave delegation to chance. Good delegation means the completed work meets expectations.

It is up to you to develop and hone your management competence.

You can

Read management books. For example - my book Level Up – helping managers learn to do less and be more’ is full of tips and information about how to oomph up your management skills.
Listen to leadership podcasts. Search for leadership podcasts on your podcast platform of choice and sample a few to see which you like
Watch TED talks
Seek feedback from your boss and ask them about the areas they’d like you to focus on (more about this in future newsletters)
Ask your team for feedback – get them to focus on strengths you bring to the role, and areas for development
Sign up for some management training or join a mastermind group

Changing how you operate will shift your team’s way of performing, leading to success.