“Anytime a person puts the situation ahead of the relationship, it happens for one reason: loss of perspective.”
Winning With People, John Maxwell
“Our property, our position or power, and our agenda are transitory.”
Mark Miller reminds us that if we get to a persons heart, we get all of the person. I think we often forget how personal work can be. We spend most of the hours of life at work. So how can we as owners, leaders, department heads and managers do a better job of focusing on our people before we focus on their results? Don’t get me wrong, results are crucial. Without results we are out of business but without our people we have no business!
Having the opportunity to coach organizations all over the country, people is one of the biggest challenges I consistently see. It is usually not the actual employee but the environment we have created that creates the challenge. The first obstacles is clarity. We as owners and leaders have not taken the time to lock into where we want to go, who we want to be, what we want to accomplish and why we even exist. You can imagine if we in leadership are unclear then most or all of our team is unclear. This uncertainty creates doubt, confusion, frustration, lack of buy in and a drop in morale and passion as well as results. If we thought about our people first, we would take the time to clarify our journey and their contribution.
I teach a Continuing Education Class on Management and it is so powerful when I share the definition of what it is we are to be doing as owners, leaders and managers.
The work of creating and maintaining an environment in which people accomplish goals efficiently and effectively!
As you can see, everything we should be focused on is about maximizing the impact of our people. Creating and Maintaining environments where our people can be Rock Stars!! As Maxwell says, if we lose our perspective and we move quickly to results and overlook the environments, our people, we have put our teams in jeopardy.
So what can we do. First, get clarity. Spend the time to clarify Who, Why, What, Where, When and How. Second, share these with your team. Third, meet with each of your team members and ask how they are doing and what could we do better. Ask them if they understand their job and if they need anything to do it better and more efficiently. Then start the transition.
Start creating and maintaining environments where your people can crush it!! You got this! Go begin your journey to amazing!!
