Todd Henry talks about the three things a great team leader must provide on the Accidental Creative:
Focus
Ensure that your team’s attention is allocated to the right problems at the right time.
- What are we doing? Ensure that every member of you team has a crystal clear understanding of what a successful outcome looks like on every level of their work.
- What are we not doing? Strategic pruning of priorities is necessary to your team’s ability to focus.
- When are we doing it? Expectations around timing effect the choices a team member makes throughout the day. Understand the priorities is critical.
Function
Ensure that your team has the resources and processes in place that it needs to do its work.
- How will we do it? Ensuring that there is a clearly defined and articulated path to accomplishing your objectives. Clear obstacles out of their way.
- What do we need in order to do it? Is there anything your team lacks? Materials? Information? Buy-in from superiors? You have to go to bat for your team.
Fire
Keep the team motivated to do the work. You have to diligently tie the work the team is doing to why it is doing it.
- Why are we doing it? What difference will it make to the team, company or the world?
- What will it mean if we actually do this work? What is the change that is this going to make and how does it relate to my personal productive passion? Learn to speak the motivational language of your employees.