You’ve got a business and you want to get people to step up, to take responsibility.
How do you get people to step up?
A quick story.
Michael walked into his office and wanted to offer Neal an opportunity to step up and take on more responsibility. Michael thought, “I’ll just offer it to him and he’ll jump on it.” Michael didn’t take the time to understand who Neal was, what he wanted to achieve, what he hoped to get out of it, what he was worried about, and what he saw standing in his way. Michael plunged ahead. “Hey, are you interested in taking on this project?” Immediately diving into the project details and what it was about. Neal said, “yes, sure, I’ll take it on.” But clearly, he wasn’t aligned. Neither he nor Michael knew it. Over time, Neal found reasons why he couldn’t do certain tasks. Michael got frustrated. Neal started focusing on tasks he felt more aligned with, more comfortable doing. Michael become more frustrated. He felt Neal was not stepping up.
What did Michael miss?
People need to be aligned with you and the business. If they are not aligned then it’s a non-starter. There’s no match. Period.
A fundamental principle to get people to step up — Understand them
You can demand alignment, expect it, and when you don’t get it, get frustrated and reorganize or move people around.
Or you can take some time to understand your team. Understand their wants and values. Take the time to listen to their goals, what they hope to get out of working with you, what they are worried about, and what stands in their way. Of course, that means you have to care.
As the leader, yes, you are smoothing the way for people to buy in. You are knocking down obstacles to alignment.
If you step back, ask open ended questions, listen and understand what’s important to your team the steps to alignment, it will be much easier.
People want to feel a purpose and feel aligned with what they are spending most of their productive time doing. As the manager, it is your job to search out that alignment.
The obvious question: What do you mean by alignment?
People are aligned when they share values, their big why, vision, direction, cultural preferences of behavior and decision making.
To get people to step up here are 7 time tested methods.
Clarify your own values and articulate them clearly and often. Write them down, review them. Get them just right. Now share them with your team endlessly. Values really define and surround your big why.
Define and clarify your big why. Why are you doing this business? To make money is not good enough. That’s the lazy answer. You may have to do some work here if you’ve never thought about it.
Establish a succinct vision of where you are taking your company, group, organization. This vision is crisp picture of the future with all the details you can muster. The vision sets your direction and serves as a guide when things get uncomfortable or rough. A vision is tightly tied to your big why.
Set clear goals for the company and individuals. Goals define “what” will be accomplished. Not how. There are lots of ways to accomplish a goal. Avoid getting stuck on how it is accomplished. Do get firm on what you want accomplished. Tie these to values and the vision in a meaningful way to you and others. What do people get out of accomplishing the goals? Communicate these goals often and clearly to each person individually and as a group.
Get people to write their own values, big why, vision and goals tied to yours. Have them present theirs to you and explain how it fits. Here is where the rub lies in getting alignment. If people only want a “job” and don’t really care about your values, vision and goals, over time they will gravitate toward their own. Their behavior and decisions will become obviously unaligned if you pay attention. So, ask questions and listen.
Let people come up with their own tasks and approaches to reach their goals. Coach them, train them, teach them as necessary but let them take the lead on this. This is the foundation of delegation. Set the expectation that people are to step up.
Communicate, engage, expect, ask and listen. Do these as often as you can. Once a week is a “barely meets” for any serious manager or leader. This needs to be done continually in many different formats (in person, in meetings, over the phone, email, hallway conversations, their presentations, their meetings).
Eric Chester has his take on it. See his article, “10 ways to get employees to step up and really own their job”
Now it’s time to get after it. Get yourself to step up. Get your people to step up.
Helping Leaders Breakthrough
“Dominate your life with Focus, Decision and Execution.”
Phil
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve done several of steps on my part. But I’ve failed to have others complete their parts. I will work having this done.
Thank you,
Thanks for the comment Tim.
This is excellent! Your efforts will pay off. The process of delegation (getting people to step up) works.
It is all about alignment.