Over the last few posts on the Zestfor blog, we have discussed the challenges managers and leaders face as they navigate the new norm, including skill shortages and the uncertain economy.
One of the key outputs for a leader today is to mobilise their team members.
Sounds straightforward?
Not exactly.
As we have shared over the past few months, managing, motivating and mobilising a team who are sometimes in the office and sometimes aren’t can be challenging.
In this post, I want to share ideas around mobilising your team so that they continue to be motivated and move forward as they deliver performance as an individual and a fully contributing team member.
Let’s start with a definition.
Mobilising Your Team: A Definition
Mobilising your team is more than motivating them. Mobilisation is based on trust, support, respect and a collaborative management style.
A mobilising leader shares long-term and collaborative objectives that target what the team and business want to achieve.
A mobilised employee “voluntarily makes greater than usual efforts to continuously improve their work, align it strategically and coordinates them within the team by cooperation.”
So, where do we start?
Setting A Framework For Successful Mobilisation
The first thing to review is your team’s skill set and whether it continues to fit the organisation’s current goals. There has been a significant change in the past few years, and many individuals have lost skills during this time as ongoing training and development were paused.
A couple of questions for you?
- Is your current team required to deliver differently?
- Do they need to adapt and embrace hybrid working and collaboration?
- Are new team members needed to join your team?
This is your first action step if the answer is yes to any of these questions. Next, let’s look at a fundamental cornerstone.
Communicating Your Vision, Mission, Values and Goals
Many organisations are realigning their employee value proposition and consequently re-evaluating their organisational vision and mission alongside establishing whether their values are relevant to take them forward.
When did you last review your EVP and your Vision?
How do you make what your organisation stands for come alive with individuals in your team?
Unfortunately, over the last few years, this important piece of the conversation with our teams has been missed; no wonder team engagement is at an all-time low.
What can you do now to change the situation in your organisation?
Foster Innovation
Encourage your team to be creative. The open exchange of ideas among employees at all levels encourages innovation, which is critical to keeping a business competitive and successful.
Appreciate and capitalise on the diverse strengths of your team, and you build cohorts of individuals with various qualities. You should encourage your team members to conceptualise creative solutions to challenges and let them try them out, which will help build a confident, open, self-assured team.
Improving Communication Across The Team
Communication is critical in all business relationships and especially powerful when building a team; and is crucial to making goals achievable.
For example, a leader communicates project expectations to all the players, and work is divided based on each person’s unique skills and strengths.
Clear communication makes these things evident so that deadlines are less stressful and objectives are easily met and exceeded.
When each team player knows their role in serving clients or meeting a deadline, all are free to focus on their tasks without worrying about what everyone else is doing.
Communication helps you maintain efficiency under a variety of circumstances and conditions.
Collaboration
In addition to promoting an innovative environment, it’s equally important to ensure that your team members work together. When utilising the collective strength of your group, you’ll start to see powerful results.
Leaders will quickly learn that they don’t have all the answers and that their business’ most complex challenges should be discussed and faced as a team.
Until next time,
Julia
About Zestfor
Zestfor specialises in developing leadership Training programs and resources scientifically tailored for technical markets – including Pharmaceutical, I.T., and Life Sciences.
Our blend of in-classroom, online, and virtual live-stream delivery methods will engage and assure even the most introverted team members from the first meeting. Let us arrange a brief chat; call us at 0845 548 0833.
