Leader - Care Your Team

How can leader show their care to their team?

1. Get personal - First and foremost is to be a people’s guy and also show interest in people’s lives and understand them. Make a personal connection with every member of your team. Stretch yourself to learn something new about someone every day. Many leaders are good instructors but many aren’t good listeners. Use active listening to get into the minds of your team members in order to find out what they think and feel. Find out what they need from you and provide it for them. And support Work-Life Balance by controlling the flow of work and it’s your job to match the flow of work with the employees ability to manage the load at the moment. Also, when an employee has a personal situation such as a birth, illness, a graduation, a wedding or a death in the family, be sure to let the employee know that you’re there for them and let them know that they shouldn’t hesitate to ask for support. Ex: In this pandemic situation, if employee or employee’s family is impacted with COVID, give all the support you can by granting them leaves as much as they need and if any financial support needed and most importantly backups for their work.
2. Connect the dots - Ask your employees what they believe as their impact in the organisation. Share with them the impact you know they make. We all want to know that what we do matters, that our time, energy and creativity add up to something important. Help each person who works for you see the difference they make. They’ll be more invested in the work and achieving the big goals. Ex: If your team is preparing some report for Customer, employee should understand what is the business value Customer will get out of that report or say if your team is working on new feature, they should understand what is the use of that feature and how it will help Customers/Client’s Business etc.
3. Measure what matters - Most things that are being measured by Senior Leaders at work are meaningless for individual team members. Help your employees measure what matters to them. How can they know at the end of a day that they were successful?
4. Show Appreciation - Many times team members tell me how unappreciated they feel by management. One of the best ways for a leader to show appreciation is by thanking their team for the hard work they put in, and telling them they are grateful for the talents, skills and success they bring to the team. Ex: Every now and then, reach into your wallet and throw a pizza party or bring in coffee and donuts. These little gestures will show you truly appreciate your team. Not only this, whenever there is promo/hike cycle make sure all employees in your team get something(based on the impact they made) out from total budget!
5. Trust - Trust is a big deal in any relationship but it’s an even bigger deal in the relationship you have between you and your team. Showing your team members you trust them is always a great way to show that you care. It shows that you care enough to not harass them via micromanagement. It shows that you value their quality of work. And the easiest way to boost trust between you and your members? Give them more responsibility. It not only shows that you trust them with higher levels of work, but it also shows that you care about their professional development. If you want to show you care, set them up with opportunities - whether it’s inside the organisation or outside the organisation - is a great way to show you care. It’s also a way to make life-long friends.

Previous Blog - https://raghulprasanthpsg.medium.com/leader-take-failure-yourself-but-give-success-to-team-d8e8b5673a97