By integrating a three-part success cycle you set your team, your department and your company up for infinite possibilities. Evaluation is the third step in the cycle.
These three phases of leadership are a cycle because if you are doing it right, your employees are advancing in their skills, levels of responsibility and in their careers. That means, new level – new devil. Your employees need constant education, empowerment and evaluation.
Phase One: Educate
It is imperative that every employee clearly understand their role and the responsibilities that come with it. It is also imperative that they understand HOW to fulfill those roles and responsibilities. If you missed phases one, you can read the full article here.
Phase Two: Empower
Once educated, employees need to be given the space to work through the projects on their own. They need space for creative problem solving. They need to know that they have some latitude for experimentation. That space is what is required for innovation. Innovation is what is needed to move your team, your department and your company forward. For more on phase two, read the full article here.
Phase Three: Evaluate
The first two phases are easy in comparison to this one. This phase requires providing feedback and most people shy away from giving feedback; especially negative feedback. Negative feedback does not have to result in confrontations. The key to delivering feedback, good or bad, is to ensure that your employees know that you care about their future and that you are invested in it enough to help them maintain momentum.
There are tow areas that you should focus on: individual performance and team performance.
Individual Performance: If you are working your way through the cycle, you’ve already set the expectation for performance in phase one when you spent time educating the employees on their role and their responsibilities. Listen, most people genuinely want to do a good job. If you don’t provide them feedback, they will not know how well or poorly they are performing. This also means that if they are performing poorly and you are not providing regular feedback, you risk loosing a good person who could have been developed into a valuable employee at the end of the year when you deliver a big blow, in the form of a negative annual performance review.
Team Performance: Evaluation means that you are constantly providing feedback not only on performance but on progress against your team goals. By focusing on team goals, you eliminate the need to constantly single people out. You also provide your team with an opportunity to unify and collaborate. When this happens, the stronger team members will naturally help to bring along junior members of the team.
Educate your team. Empower your team. Evaluate your team. Repeat. Repeat again… and again… This is called a success cycle for a reason.
You don’t have to do it alone. For help creating a system that moves your team through the three phases of leadership, schedule a consultation today.
