People Management – Why Consistency is Key to Success & 5 Steps to Build Consistency
Consistency is key to success for both leading successful teams and building people management skills. The power of consistency in leadership is about consistency of goals, consistency of actions, consistency of decisions and more.
Why consistency is key to success in improving team performance is because consistency creates confidence, trust, belief, safety and ensures team members understand exactly what is expected. This consistency gives them the best chance of delivering against those expectations and their formal objectives.
Great people managers and leaders are consistent in how they communicate the goals to achieve, and they are consistent in maintaining the best environment for team members to focus and deliver their best work.
People Management – Why Consistency is Key to Success & 5 Steps to Build Consistency
- Why consistency is key to success in people management
- How consistency builds confidence with teams
- How to master the Art of Consistency in people management using 5 steps
There is work involved in being consistent in your decisions, actions, and behaviours as a manager. Increasing team performance – a key goal for any manager – delivers huge rewards for the company and as a result rewards on a personal level for the manager too.
Great people management starts with a mindset and approach focused on personally doing what is best for the team as whole and consistently applying this team focused approach. Secondly, use the 5 steps to improve your consistency of direction, action and decisions so you are in a great place to help improve team performance.
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Podcast
Why consistency is key to success in people management
In the workplace, the majority of team members need some structure, clears goals and consistent expectations. If they don’t have consistency in goals and expectations , how do they know which tasks to practice getting good at, or which skills they really need to build.
Successful companies and managers help their employees get as good as they can in their roles so they contribute as much as possible to a successful business. Success is all about consistency.
The power of being consistent applies equally well to projects being undertaken. It remains fairly rare for leaders to consistently focus on completing the current projects before moving on the next initiative . In our fast changing world, too many leaders chase the latest shiny object or initiative while leaving multiple half-finished projects behind them. Increase team productivity and reduce wasted effort by consistently focusing the team on finishing the projects started.
For people managers, consistency of their behaviour, actions and decisions is the most powerful way I know of to reinforce and re-communicate the expectations they have set within their teams. Actions speak a lot louder than words. Consistent actions create clear expectations, certainty, and trust. Inconsistent actions create confusion, fear, and uncertainty. The manager being consistent in their behaviour, actions and decisions prevents a lot of issues arising within a team and helps drive improved team performance.
How consistency builds confidence with teams
When managers communicate consistent messages to team members again and again, the importance of those messages increases. Team members think “If the manager is keeping their focus on this area, it must be important and so I will focus my efforts on making sure I deliver in this area.”
With more team members focused on achieving a common goal with less distractions, the chance of achieving that goal increases significantly. Increasing the number of goals achieved is a common measure of success. There is nothing like success to breed confidence in every team member and the team overall.
Team members build a lot of confidence in managers when they see the manager protecting them and giving them the opportunity to consistently work to complete tasks, activities, and projects.
Managers that keep teams consistently focused on goals until they are reach also earn a lot of confidence from team members. Consistent goals means the manager is choosing the important goals and is able to protect those goals – both help improve team performance and team success.
How to master the Art of Consistency in people management using 5 steps
How to be consistent is key to successfully managing people and teams. Being consistent prevents a lot of people issues and creates really clear expectations, which keeps the team very focused on the goals you have set them.
The 5 steps I use to keep myself as consistent as possible and therefore be consistent with my team are:
- Use values as references
- Communicate a clear vision you believe
- Always check alignment
- Behave to reinforce expectations
- Do, adjust, and repeat
Explaining each one with tips on how to implement:
1 . Use values as references
Your personal values are really important for several reasons. Firstly to use as a reference points to maintain consistency because your values don’t change quickly. Secondly, when managing others it remains very important to be authentic, to be the real you or part of the real you. Acting in a way that is aligned to your values will demonstrate your authenticity to your team.
2. Communicate a clear vision you believe
Setting and instilling team direction starts with creating a clear vision of where you want to take the team. You can do this on your own, with your boss or with the team or a combination. Keep it simple and keep the main thing the main thing. Be clear on how your team creates value for the business and work on the top projects and activities you can do as a team to increase the value you create for the business. Communicate this to the team with the why.
Be 100% personally bought into your vision for the team. If you don’t fully believe in it, then your team won’t either.
3. Always check alignment
Checking alignment of actions and decisions is hard to do consistently. There are always so many requests that contradict or confuse the direction you want the team to travel in. Do your best to say no to these or if you can’t acknowledge to the team the conflict and explain why we have to work on the request.
Communicate and do the actions and make decisions that are aligned to the team vision and try to avoid the ones that are not aligned. The more your actions and decisions are consistent with the goals, the more confidence and trust you will build with the team and the more focus they will have in the right areas.
4. Behave to reinforce expectations
Developing good self-awareness helps a lot in managing your own behaviours to reinforce expectations. It is all the little things that count. Being energetic and enthusiastic when describing the expectations you want. Another is consistently praising those team members that meet expectations. It is discussing in private when team members miss expectations and teaching them how to get back on track. It is holding yourself more accountable in meeting expectations than you do the team members.
Consistently keep aware of how you behave and what you are communicating to the team through how you behave. This takes effort and work yet the improvements in team performance from consistently behaving to communicate expectations will make every second spent well worth it.
5. Do, adjust, and repeat
Finally, be consistent in how you try to improve your people management skills and how you help your team be successful. Managing others is not easy. Demonstrating that you are learning and improving how you manage others is a brilliant way to keep getting promoted. You will start off being okay. Invest in learning what to do so you are practicing the right techniques and you are using the best approaches to support and lead your team. Be sure you believe in the how you are going to get to good. Keep practicing your skills. Over time you will go from okay, to good, to great and beyond. Keep adjusting what you do and keep looking to work in service to your team so your can build a higher performing team.
in summary
You have learned why consistency is key to success in people management. Consistency creates confidence, trust, belief, safety and ensures team members understand exactly what is expected and how they can deliver against those expectations.
To recap we have been through:
- Why consistency is key to success in people management
- How consistency builds confidence with teams
- How to master the Art of Consistency in people management using 5 steps
Please do your best to be as consistent as possible in setting and maintaining goals and expectations, consistent in your actions, behaviours and decisions so the team gain confidence and consistent in how you work to improve your management skills so you can deliver even more for your team and business.
If you have any questions on “People Management – Why Consistency is Key to Success & 5 Steps to Achieve Consistency”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
Being consistent as a manager and leader is a huge help in building a happy, motivated and energetic high performing team. Offer consistent rewards and be consistent when dealing with team members who struggle. Be consistent with your decisions, behaviours, and actions and you communicate a clear framework that team members can easily understand and work within.
I have observed inconsistent leaders and the chaos and hesitant team members they leave in their wake. Unsurprisingly, they struggle to increase team performance on any level. Consistency is key to success.
