If you are part of an organization, productivity is expected. It doesn’t matter if you are in a secular organization or religious organization—you have to produce.
Most likely as a leader, you won’t actually be productive. You’ll have a team that is responsible to produce, and you are accountable for that productivity. In a nutshell, you are a reflection of your team.
Sometimes, producing might be easy due to the nature of the business; many times, producing might be difficult, and you and your team have to be proactive to gain levels of productivity.
Either way, below are some ways you can foster productivity within your team:
1. Let your team be part of the planning process.
This is a great way to get your team engaged. Many times, leaders get caught up telling team members what to do instead of soliciting feedback. There are many creative ideas swirling around your team members’ heads, so get them involved.
2. Give them autonomy to execute.
I prefer to give direction, provide training and then let team members execute. Besides, who better on the technical and practical details than those who need to execute? Also, providing autonomy allows creativity to flow, and your team members will be able to find different solutions to problems.
3. Give feedback.
This is very important. Your team members won’t know how they are doing unless you tell them. One of the practical things I do is hold bi-weekly conference calls with each team member. I let them know where they stand and ask for their input on how they think they can improve.
4. Measure their success.
In order to measure success, you have to have targets to measure against. It can be sales quotas or number of new clients gained. Regardless of how productivity is measured, targets must be put in place, then measured to see how successful your team is.
What are other ways you can foster productivity within your team?
