Your team members are the lifeblood of your organization, whether or not you want to admit this. They are the people your customers see. They’re the ones dealing with the day-to-day issues. And they’re the ones who create the biggest impressions upon your customers.
You don’t want team members who don’t care. They will repel the customers you desire and keep your organization from reaching the level of success it should.
So…
The question is: What can you do to create better team members? The answer… Do these 5 actions.
5 Actions For Better Team Members
1. Treat your team members with value:
Watching The Peanut Butter Falcon, a quote from Shia LaBeouf’s character Tyler was talking with Dakota Johnson’s character Eleanor. He was frustrated with the way Eleanor was treating Zak, the young man who changed both their lives.
Tyler saw her actions as devaluing Zak. Her actions coddled him and took away his value.
As leaders, we cannot be like Eleanor. We cannot coddle our team members. We have to treat them with value. We have to help them understand their value.
When we do this, our team members will begin to take ownership and grow.
2. Stop the competitions:
Sales competitions used to be all the rage. You would pit your salespeople against one another to see who could bring in the most sales. Many times this resulted in underhanded, dirty tactics to get sales.
You may have created a monster in taking this action. You showed your team members sales and the almighty dollar were what was truly important.
Instead of having sales competitions where you pit your salespeople against one another, begin offering ways to help salespeople collaborate with one another. Find ways to have them work on building sales relationships with customers together.
Their collab will go further than their competition.
3. Give them meaningful training:
Do you remember when you became a leader? There was probably very little formal training and it felt like you were tossed to the wolves.
That’s what normally happens. We bring people on and we expect them to know the intricate little details of their jobs. We also expect them to know things beyond that as well (you know how we all love to put the little line of “and duties as requested’).
You can’t expect your team members to know everything regarding their role. Things rapidly change or they specialize in specific areas.
What you can do is to give them meaningful training. If you continue to train your team members, do you know what will happen? They will get better.
4. Have clear roles:
We want a jack of all trades and a master of the trade rolled into one. Yet, people cannot be a master of all their roles if they’re expected to wear multiple hats.
We have to be willing to lay out clear roles with clear goals.
When we give clear roles and goals, our team members can better anticipate what is going to come their way. They can train and learn about the situations they will have to deal with.
Let’s get better at defining the roles we want our people to own. Only then can they truly become better.
5. Celebrate your team members success:
Do you want people who are doing successful things or people who are doing unsuccessful things? If you celebrate the success your team members experience, you’re going to get more of the same kind of behavior.
Celebrating your team member’s success means patting them on the back, cheering them on when you see positive actions or having a party in recognition of the hard work they’ve done.
You get more of what you celebrate as Andrea Bauer mentions in this article. Celebrate their positive actions and success and you will get better team members.
