At times, leadership can be a heavy burden. For some, being a strong leader means subscribing to the idea that a leadership role entails bearing the pressures of the position alone. And while this belief can and has led to gains, shouldering every aspect of a business on one’s own will only work to a limited degree of success.
Instead, learning how to build, manage, delegate and lean on your team can positively impact the entire team and the business long term. Below, 14 Newsweek Expert Forum members offer strong leaders tips for successfully managing their staff to drive business growth.
1. Set Clear Goals and Expectations
Strong leaders can effectively manage their team members to drive growth by setting clear goals and expectations, providing regular feedback and offering opportunities for growth and development. By fostering a positive work environment and empowering employees to take ownership of their work, leaders can help drive innovation and improve productivity, ultimately leading to business growth. – Joseph DeWoody, Valor
2. Make Growth a Realistic Goal and Practice
There’s a difference between growth and innovation, and it’s a leadership vs. finance issue, respectively. People in any company need to know growth is not achieved through unlimited aspirations, but by turning realistic, applicable insights into innovative practices. Rather than being financial in nature, growth is a limited but useful projection of leaders’ perceptions of their business, so avoid going overboard. – Jacob Mathison, Mathison Projects Inc.
3. Build Connections With Employees
Take the time to build rapport and nurture a relationship that is curious about the “whole” person, not just the employee working for you. Having conversations that identify your employees’ motivations, values and barriers is an effective way to simultaneously lead with empathy and challenge them. Employees that feel connected to their leaders and teams tend to avoid perpetual burnout. – Leah Marone, Corporate Wellness Consultant
4. Reach Out for Help
It’s OK to let go. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Delegating and including your team members in driving growth and other business goals will not only lighten your load and develop the skill sets of others, but also engage your team into contributing to the success of the organization. Provide a vision and give clear direction and support while your team members learn how to drive the business. – Joyel Crawford, Crawford Leadership Strategies, LLC
5. Instill Confidence
Leaders must instill confidence in their teams by giving employees direction and space to complete their work. This starts with trust and a culture of accountability to ensure that expectations and timelines are clear. Employees who know their leaders believe in them and celebrate their successes will feel empowered to drive growth for the organization. – Faisal Pandit, Panasonic Connect North America
6. Be Transparent
Strong leaders who manage their team members to drive growth are transparent about goals, including their own, the company’s and those of all team members. When all goals are public, team members can then work together to leverage each other to achieve their goals. The more aligned the team members are on the goals of the company, the more the company, and team members, will experience growth. – Donna Marie Cozine, Consult DMC
7. Learn What Motivates Them
Motivation for growth comes from either pain or hopefulness. Choose the one that is most compelling to drive your team, and perhaps sharing your actual reality will do the trick. Then, give them the information they need to understand why growth matters, what is valued, what cannot be sacrificed, what resources are available and which actions and mistakes are considered fatal. – Mylena Sutton, Voltage Vista
8. Grant Autonomy
Strong leaders can empower their team members to drive growth by granting them decision-making autonomy and valuing their input. Leaders who give their team members the opportunity to make decisions encourage them to think critically and strategically about the task at hand. By doing this, team members become more invested in the project and are more likely to be successful. – Tammy McCrory, McCrory Center: Behavioral Health
9. Give Them Opportunities to Provide Feedback
Team leaders need to have methods for team members to submit ideas that could drive growth. Many lower-level employees have ideas but never talk about them. That’s either because they think no one will listen or some “golden child” on the team seems to get all the attention. Change the team dynamics to spread power around so others feel like their contributions are worthwhile. – Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure
10. Remain Consistent
Stay consistent around accountability and clear goals. A strong leader is empathetic all the while staying focused on results. A healthy team will ultimately get you the results you need. The leader needs to consistently balance the well-being of their team with the clear communication of goals. A team without accountability for each individual’s portion will never drive the best results. – Uriel Saenz, THE US LIFESTYLE GROUP LLC
11. Set Quota Requirements
Set daily quota requirements. In our business, we monitor production to prevent employees from slacking in job performance. We set a daily quota for the amount of work they need to perform. Doing this not only helps with employee performance, but also drives growth. – Tammy Sons, Tn Nursery
12. Provide External Incentives
Reach out to your team and say, “If we accomplish X in the next year, we will all get the biggest raise or promotion possible.” Clearly define what X is, reverse engineer it and share each team member’s role in accomplishing that goal to ensure the team is motivated to get that raise or promotion. – Mark Goulston, Mark Goulston, M.D., Inc.
13. Create Personal Development Plans
Implementing a personal development plan is a method leaders can use to improve growth. Each team member’s talents, limitations and career goals should be noted in this plan, along with a road map for their advancement within the organization. Leaders may then offer specialized coaching, education and tools to assist their development on both a personal and professional level. – Dr. Kira Graves, Kira Graves Consulting
14. Hire the Right People for the Job
Empowering team members by putting them in the roles of their dreams, wherever possible, is a surefire way of inspiring them to do their best and outperform expectations. When people are in roles that match their skills and passions, they will automatically drive growth since they’re set up to succeed—and they will want the company to succeed, too. This often means creating jobs where there were none. – April White, Trust Relations
