If you want your team to operate like a well-oiled machine, this is what you need to know.
Being a great manager is all about boosting engagement to get the most out of your team – without stress and burnout. After 50 years of working with teams around the world, we’ve seen that the most successful managers follow a simple framework called the Three C’s of Performance.
1. Clarity
The best managers are crystal clear on their own strengths and the strengths of everybody on their team, in all three parts of the mind.
If you’re not familiar, there are three facets of the mind that drive performance. They’re formally called the cognitive, affective, and conative. At Kolbe, we refer to them as the thinking, feeling, and doing parts of the mind.
If you don’t have clarity on your strengths in all three parts, it’s much more difficult to lead a productive team.
When you’re clear on your strengths, decisions become easier, and you can quickly spot where you should be spending your energy.
2. Commitment
Once they have clarity about everybody’s strengths, top managers make wise choices each day about how to commit those strengths to the best and highest use of that energy. Perhaps more importantly, top managers know when to say “no” to new commitments to save time and energy.
If a project is going to make your team work against their grain for long periods of time, you’re going to burn them out. Top managers keep this from happening.
3. Collaboration
This is a big one. Nothing truly great is accomplished alone.
The best managers are strategic about who should work with whom for various projects and when team members should be working alone to accomplish their goals. They can quickly put together ad-hoc teams that are the most productive because they know how to combine strengths to maximize energy and output.
When you can find clarity on your team’s strengths, commit to them, and use them to make collaboration intentional, you’ll find that your team operates with effortless performance.
So how do you become one of these great managers with a team that gets more done, more naturally?
A great first step is to enroll in the Pain-Free Team Performance Workshop. This new on-demand course will unlock 3 team activities and expand on the shockingly simple process for solving your most critical people problems.
In less than 60 minutes, you’ll have key questions to ask yourself and everyone on your team to get at the root of your productivity issues and activities and guidance to ensure that your team is equipped for sustainable success. There’s no better action you can take to start getting more out of your people when you need them the most.
