6 Actions For Successfully Instilling Team Direction & Hitting Goals
Instilling team direction and consistently keeping team members pointed in the same direction is a lot harder than most managers anticipate. Choosing a direction, and communicating that direction is done by most managers.
The problem is work life is so busy, and there are so many immediate priorities and demands on everyone, that most team members forget about the longer-term team direction. If direction is out of mind, then it is out of the decision making happening each day, week, and month. When team direction no longer influences most people’s decision making, then having a team direction becomes nearly worthless.
So much research shows that having common direction and consistently using that common direction in everyday decision making throughout the team has a big impact on team performance – typically a 20%+ uplift in team performance. Improved team performance as an output makes sense as everyone’s efforts are complimentary rather than some being complimentary and some conflicting.
6 actions for successfully instilling team direction and hitting goals
- Involve the team in setting direction
- Address challenges and overcome resistance
- Explain the Why
- Communicate direction in different formats
- Reinforce goal alignment throughout team
- Repeat direction until the team jokes about you
Authors Robert Kaplan and David Norton reported “a mere 7 percent of employees today fully understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of them in order to help achieve company goals.” That is a scarily poor statistic and I feel from my experience, that this reflects too many teams.
In another study by PMI, 61% of the employees think that their firm often struggles to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and day-to-day implementation. These stats highlight the huge gap in the ability of the majority of managers to maintain their team moving in an agreed team direction.
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Use these steps to successfully communicate team direction. Keeping the team focused working in the agreed team direction should be a top priority for any manager who wants to improve team performance.
Let’s talk instilling team direction. Too many managers just tell their teams the goals they have been given by their boss, and expect their team to understand and own these goals. Don’t be an average manager.
Involve the team in setting direction is the first action for successfully instilling team direction
When you set your goals and direction, they are important to you. When the team owns the direction and goals, they are important to everyone.
Most managers don’t have the luxury of setting company direction or even functional direction, so why bother involving the team in setting team direction is a common question.
Worst case, even if your manager tells you the team goals, you can still get the team involved in planning how the team is going to reach those goals. Involvement, input, and debate all increase the sense of ownership. Take a look at our article on how to set objectives for the team
I have found that asking the team to re-define the goals in their terms, define how we measure our progress and what activities and projects are being going to employed to get to these goals are all very effective in instilling team direction. This works well even within the constraints of being a junior manager in a large corporate.
Get your team thinking about and inputting into your team’s direction so they remember, understand and own the direction as much as possible.
Address challenges and overcome resistance is the second action for successfully instilling team direction
Team members have different experience, backgrounds, ideas, reference points and opinions – you are going to have disagreements and resistance. [Explore 7 Ways to Create a Team Vision]
Don’t ignore or ride roughshod over these differences. In my experience, the differences are what makes a team great, providing you harness these differences well. Get the team listening to the differences, understanding the differences, and considering the differences.
Being able to debate and input is usually the important part of bringing those with opposing views along with the group. Even if you discard ideas or views, the fact that the team has seriously considered them is usually enough for the person disagreeing to take ownership of the final position the group, as a whole takes. This process is great for building confidence in team direction.
Finally, you may need to persuade – or agree to disagree with individuals. If you as a group have listened and considered, having stubborn disagreements is unusual.
Aim to facilitate getting others’ views into the open before putting your own ideas and views forward as a manager or leader. You get more honestly within the group with this approach.
Address challenges and overcome resistance before finalising the team direction. [Use our 5 steps to to Resolve Conflicts At Work]
Explain the Why is the third action for successfully instilling team direction
Explain why the team direction is important and how it links into the company goals. This provides purpose and increases the value of the team direction in the eyes of each team member.
Make sure you understand the why. I have had to have several long discussions with my manager in the past before being clear myself on why functional goals were important. Only then was I happy to discuss direction with the team. When you are clear on the why, you will be a lot more confident explaining the why to the team. Your confidence in the why matters to the team.
Explain the why in the team’s language. Link each individuals’ role within the team to the teams direction. Don’t assume that team members will make the link themselves. Spelt it out clearly to them.
Take as many questions as you need to ensure everyone is clear on the why.
Communicate direction in different formats is the fourth action for successfully instilling team direction
A common mistake many managers make is explaining team direction in a team meeting with a few power point slides and then assuming everyone understands the direction and will remember it.
Please don’t make this mistake.
- Tell people in one-on-one meetings.
- Tell people in team meetings
- Write the team direction and goals on the wall for all to see
- Send emails round
- Hold question and answer sessions
- Hold quizzes about the team direction
- Gamify the team direction, with activities and prizes.
Keep talking about the team direction and answering questions until everyone is clear what the direction is and why that direction and goals have been chosen. Make learning about the team direction fun and memorable.
Reinforce goal alignment throughout team is the fifth action for successfully communicating team direction
Keeping alignment with the team direction is the tough part. The team direction shouldn’t be set in stone. The team direction should also not change quickly or easily otherwise it loses credibility as a longer term reference point to head towards.
Try to align as much as you can with the team direction.
More obvious things like sub-team and individual goals and objectives should clearly align with the team direction. Other areas to remain conscious of and align are:
- Your decisions from the day to day to those with longer term impacts
- Your actions, particularly what activities and projects you prioritise for the team and what you delegate
- Your outward behaviour should align with the team direction – examples are maintaining positivity and energy behind the direction and goals.
- What you talk about and pay attention to. i.e. spend more time on areas aligned to the team direction and goals and less time elsewhere
What you do is a lot more important that what you say. You are in the spotlight and your actions, decisions and behaviours are critical references points for the team and what they are going to focus their time and energy on.
Reinforce goal alignment wherever you can and do this as consistently as possible.
Repeat direction until the team jokes about you is the sixth action for successfully instilling team direction
I attended a talk from the founder of a FTSE listed company and he said “his main purpose was to agree company direction and keep talking about it until his team was bored of hearing about it and started telling jokes about him because he constantly talked direction all the time”.
My experience mirrors this sentiment. Everyone is so busy at work and pulled in so many directions, if the team leader doesn’t champion the team direction, no-one else is going to. If no-one is constantly reminding the team, the direction gets forgotten and the team performance drops as the greater alignment of effort and drive is lost.
I think one of the most important jobs of any leader of a team is to agree direction and begin consistently communicating team direction to keep their team pointing towards that direction. It can be very thankless task, yet it remains extremely important.
Keep bringing up the team direction. Remind people in team meetings. Regularly check alignment of team member goals to team direction. Create tracking and visibility of progress towards team goals. Gamify the progress. Keeping reminding the team to align their decisions and activities.
Don’t remind the team every once in a while, or for a few weeks. Keep going at it all year. Be that broken record.
The constant repetition keeps the team direction front of mind and I don’t know of a better way to for successfully instilling team direction. Keep repeating the team direction until your team start telling jokes about it. Then you know they won’t forget about it.
In summary
Successfully instilling team direction and keeping the team focused on that direction is an extremely important outcome for any manager. Many managers are good at setting team direction, yet few managers are good at successfully instilling team direction and building belief in team direction.
Take the actions outlined to successfully instil team direction and keep the team focused on aligning their decisions and actions with team direction.
The 6 actions for successfully instilling team direction in my view are:
- Involve the team in setting direction
- Address challenges and overcome resistance
- Explain the Why
- Communicate direction in different formats
- Reinforce goal alignment throughout team
- Repeat direction until the team jokes about you
Successfully instilling team direction with team members is an area that I don’t think many managers work hard enough on. Mostly, managers don’t realise what is needed and what the benefits are when you go through the process and the team really understand exactly where they are head and why.
This article helps start you on the road to being able to communicate team direction and ensure that this is not forgotten in the day to day decision making happening throughout the team.
