Aligning Your Team To Reach Your Goals

How can you get your team aligned to hit their goals?

As a leader, you have a few different tools at your disposal. First, realize that if you want your team to achieve different results than before, you’re going to need to take those goals and translate them into behaviors that need to change. You’ve heard the saying, that if you want the same old stuff, keep doing what you’ve been doing. You need your team to change what they’re doing to drive better results.

Here are a few ways to achieve positive change within your team:

First, lead by example. It’s important that your team sees new, positive behaviors from you, that sets the example for what you expect from them. Second, you need to explain why the goals are so important and connect them to the bigger picture. Let your team know how achieving those goals helps the company succeed, and how it affects your organization’s customers. That way they can get a sense of the big picture and how they contribute to it.

Finally, you need to check in and follow up on those goals. This isn’t the same as micromanagement. Micromanagement is hovering over your people asking, “Did you do it yet? Did you do it yet?” That’s not what we’re talking about here.

When you follow up, you want to check in to see how things are going. If your team never sees you asking them how projects are progressing, then they’re going to assume that the goals and behavior changes aren’t that important. Of course, if the goal is a real challenge for your team, make sure that you celebrate and acknowledge all progress towards that goal. By celebration and acknowledgment, your team will know that they’ve reached a new beachhead or a plateau and that they can then go up to the next level.

Share with me in the comments below: How do you keep your team aligned with the goals that you have?