As you evolve your management competencies, you will be required to help set direction, priorities, and goals. These can be done at an individual, team, and organizational levels. Having a vision and knowing where you are taking your team is key to being successful. Without being able to not only formulate but articulate the vision, strategy, or direction, you and your team will flounder.
Setting Direction
To be great at setting direction, you must be able to set a course toward a destination that others will recognize as representing real progress for all involved.
Progress may mean:
- Taking a clear step ahead in overall efficiency.
- Adding a clear ability to serve a new set of customers or markets.
- Gaining recognition as the leader in new technology or product area.
- Making the impossible, possible, or merely difficult while making the very difficult seem to be just another day’s work.
As part of setting the direction, being the coach that the team needs is vital, to be an effective coach, let your team know where you stand, your vision, and what you will do to make it happen. Be committed to success, helping them grow and improve constantly.
Setting Priorities
When it comes to setting direction, we would be remiss if we didn’t set priorities. Let’s face it, in many businesses, we see and hear about employees who always seem to be so busy but are clearly working on the wrong things. Over the years of managing all types of employees, I have spoken often about whether people are busy or productive. There is a difference that many fail to realize. It’s OK to be busy if you are productive, working on the tasks that provide the most value overall. Too many employees lack focus because the work they are doing isn’t prioritized, making them less productive.
Help your team by doing the following activities:
- Having a top-priority task first mentality. I recommend and personally only spend time on 3-5 main priorities per day. If it’s not a priority, I don’t recommend even touching it until you get the priorities out of the way.
- Getting better organized (with their desk layout, email inbox, and calendar). It amazes me how unorganized many people are in terms of where and how they work. Clutter, piles of paper, and random stuff surround people’s desks making it harder for them to be effective.
- Removing distractions or cutting down on volume can do wonders. This holds especially true with emails as there are people with literally thousands of emails in their inbox. No wonder you don’t get a response from them! Ask these individuals to clean up their inbox and get as close to 0 as possible. They will thank you and feel less stressed overall.
- Help them be more comfortable in saying no. Saying no isn’t a bad thing; it’s a necessity. If you say yes to every request, you will lose focus and not tackle the biggest priorities.
Setting Goals
You and your team need to be working toward something. Whether they are referred to as targets or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), goals are important. The following are the main reasons to set goals whenever you want to accomplish something of value:
- They help provide direction
- Goals tell you how far you’ve gone
- Make your overall vision attainable
- Clarify everyone’s role and responsibilities
- Goals give people something to strive for
SMART Goals
A lot of leaders struggle early on in their management careers with defining goals for their teams. The best and easiest way to set goals is to make them SMART goals:
- Specific: They tell employees exactly what’s expected, when, and how much.
- Measurable: Because the goals are specific, you can easily measure your employees’ progress toward their completion.
- Achievable: Goals must be realistic and achievable by employees. Setting goals that are not attainable is discouraging.
- Relevant: No one wants to chase a goal that has no impact on their career or business. Work for the sake of work is useless.
- Time-bound: All goals have starting and endpoints, with fixed durations, tying into the measurable part.
Setting direction, priorities, and goals are essential for leaders of all types. When setting direction, the number of priorities and goals should be kept to a select few options. If the list is long, everything is seen as a priority, which means nothing is a priority.
