| Shifting Gears and Realigning your Team By Mary Ann Masarech
Originally published in the July 2004 Issue of Link & Learn. 
People are cautiously optimistic. There has been a creation of thousands of new US jobs in the past months. Some organizations are breathing sighs of relief as they move from survival to growth strategies. Others are guardedly attending to long-overdue business priorities. Still others are ramping up their workforces.
How should all this be accomplished?
Even in the midst of positive business indicators, organizations need to remain vigilant and nimble. Changing strategies - and getting employees quickly aligned and committed to execute those strategies - remain paramount.
Technology can provide a framework for formally linking team members' goals and tools like the Balanced Scorecard can provide a model for thinking through priorities. But when it comes down to making sure the right talent is in the right spot, ready (and eager) to deliver, it comes down to an organization's managers and their ability to:
- Recognize the talents of their team members
- Create a shared vision of what needs to be accomplished
- Set team members up for success.
Managers, here's what you need to do.
(1) Know Your Team…Really
The time to understand your team members' interests and skills is before you need to realign your team. Observe them. Talk to them. Get to know them as individuals. This made the difference in a recent reorganization for Joe Kastrup, Vice President, Portfolio Management Group, at Wachovia Securities. When faced with redirecting his team's efforts, he knew where he stood: "I knew some adapt easily; others resist no matter what. And despite being very talented, the majority of team members did not have every single skill required for their new roles."
- Understand and Match Skill Sets: You probably have plenty of talent on your team (at least for now - before the dire predictions of employees jumping ship play out). And you're more likely than not to know what those unique abilities are. Over 50 percent of respondents to a BlessingWhite survey a few months ago indicated that their managers recognize their talents and encourage them to use their talents as much as possible. The challenge, then, is identifying the essential skills for the task at hand. Which are most critical for success? Which can be learned?
- Understand and Cultivate Individual Motivators: Don't dwell on profiles of generations, gender, or culture. Every individual is motivated by a unique set of personal values and goals. The more you understand what's important to each team member, the better able you'll be in sparking their enthusiasm and commitment to new tasks.
(2) Create a Shared Vision
Assigning individuals to tasks to leverage their talents and understanding which personal motivation buttons to push is a great foundation. When faced with the need to shift gears, Alexis Sermeno, Director of Organizational Development Consulting for McDonald's USA, points out, "It's important to build dialogue. Aligning people to initiatives is really about honest, candid conversations."
Dialogue? Okay, but about what?
- First, the business. Employees need to understand how their priorities fit into the organization's big picture. Providing the "why" behind the "what" ensures that individual team members can act with confidence and speed. So if you aren't clear on the organization's larger strategy, find that clarity. If you are clear, use every opportunity to make that vision come alive. Help your team members imagine what success will look like.
- Second, your personal feelings. Ideally, those feelings are enthusiasm and confidence. Kastrup's advice: "As the manager, you set the tone. You need to be willing to do what you ask your team to do. If you're excited about doing something different, you need to share that with your team." Don't sugarcoat everything, however. Being able to acknowledge your worries builds trust in you as a person - and as a leader. That trust will prove valuable when you need to guide your team through an unsettling patch of ambiguity or obstacles.
(3) Set Team Members Up for Success
As Kastrup found out, it's common that team members have some, but not all the knowledge and skills needed to drive a new initiative. So it's up to you as a manager to develop them, coach them, and tolerate mistakes.
Gaps in knowledge and skills are sometimes an easy fix. At Wachovia Securities, for example, Kastrup's team has access to in-house training and speakers he selects to broaden their knowledge base. Gaps in confidence, he finds, require more face-to-face time. "The keys to boosting confidence include treating everyone with respect, acknowledging their abilities, talking about their weaknesses, and giving them the room and flexibility to act on their own. You can't be with everyone every hour of the day, and you need to catch them when they fall - without finger pointing."
That last recommendation may be a tall order if you're risk-averse, so it's helpful to be aware of your own comfort with risk. Agreeing as a team to what qualifies as "appropriate" risk taking can help smooth the bumps that invariably pop up as new strategies roll out.
(4) Stay Connected
Sermeno stresses, "There is no easy, turnkey solution that allows a company to quickly and inexpensively assess and align its talent pool; the technology is just not there yet. Leveraging talent in today's workforce is still based largely on interpersonal relationships, not measurable objectives."
Managers, go talk to your people.
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Mary Ann Masarech is Director of Employee Alignment Strategies at BlessingWhite, Inc. For more information or to contact the author, visit: http://www.blessingwhite.com.
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