How to Be More Valuable to Your Team as a Leader

And if they are A-Players, they want to know which way are we heading. Am I on a winning team? Is this direction inspiring to me as well? And does it lie with my own individual life purpose? I'm Dr. Grace Lee and you're listening to the Career Revisionist podcast for executives, team leaders, people and managers, and ambitious professionals from all backgrounds. It's for those among us who can't stay stagnant and admire anyone who demonstrates exponential growth. We challenge ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and into higher levels of leadership. And we are determined to rise confidently in our industry so that we can make our greatest contribution using our knowledge and expertise. We have worked hard to become great at what we do, but only so we can achieve the goals that give our lives meaning and purpose. And while we persevere through a college education to get us here with our technical skills, we understand that to get to the next level where we desire to be, it requires a different kind of skills. And we're not comfortable with failure because we experience satisfaction when we are advancing. And while some of us work well under pressure, all of us perform the best when we are part of a winning team. And instead of just hoping to achieve what's important to us, we choose to become a more optimized version of ourselves to make it happen. We're not just A players. We are A plus players. And we are the source of consistent output that makes positive advancements in the world around us. Are you currently leading a team in your organization? You want to find more ways on how to add value to them, how to motivate them as well so that everyone's pulling in the same direction towards a common mission. Well, if you're an executive, then in this video, what I want to share with you are five ways on how you can add more value to your executive team. And this is key because one of the most important skill sets of a leader and as an executive is to be able to coach your team members for success, to be able to fully utilize our team members as well, to create a culture of collaboration and also momentum, staying in maintaining momentum towards the mission. So in this video, you're going to come away with five very tactical, very practical tips as well. And you can bring those into your organization and coach them for success. So this is the video for you that really resonates with you. Then give me a thumbs up. And remember to subscribe to my channel as well. If you haven't done so already, ring that bell as well because every single week, I release videos like this and so much others on similar topics. So these five ways are going to be very easy to remember because I have designed them. So they all start with the letter E. So the first way how to add more value to your team is to express clarity of vision. So what do I mean by that? Vision. Vision is where do we want to go? Which direction are we heading? Vision is the overarching mission of this is the hall of fame goal, this is where we want to go. And this is really important because without that, without clarity of vision, there's no alignment on the team. So expressing clarity of vision creates alignment. Because A players want to know where they want to go. A players want to know this is I'm on a winning team. And you have A players on your team because you chose them there for a reason. You want to continue to motivate them and inspire them to work hard, to be innovative, to be productive. And if they are A players, they want to know which way are we heading. And does it line with my own individual life purpose? So that's why it is infinitely important as a leader of your teams to be able to create alignment by telling them this is where we're going. And this is the clear picture of where we're heading. And every single team member that is reporting to you understands what the vision is. And you are constantly, consistently, sharing the vision and getting them excited about it. If you know that you have a good vision, you know that you have a clear vision when everybody on the team can articulate it themselves with certainty and clarity. And you know that it is a clear vision when every single member on your team can get on board with it and they're excited about it. And that's what truly creates alignment. The second way to add value on your team is to exhibit transparency. Right, most of us have been inside of a company where they kept secrets from us, where they made things a mystery and they had displayed a lack of transparency, right? I definitely have. Comment below if that has been you. You've experienced that before, lack of transparency. Right, it could be that maybe the higher ups did not express to you what the goals were or maybe the higher ups did not share with the teams why certain decisions were being made and said they just told you that decisions have already been made. Right, so that lack of transparency from executive leadership, that lack of transparency from team leaders causes a lack of trust. The reason why it causes a lack of trust is because everybody, every individual on your team wants to know that what they're doing is making a difference. They want to know that their efforts are contributing to the greater good. They want to know that what they're contributing to is making a difference and that gives the meaningful, that gives the meaning in their life. Every individual wants to know that. So as soon as you lack transparency, what that does is it creates questioning of leadership. They don't trust the leadership. And the reason why is because when there is a lack of transparency, it causes individuals, team members, to be inside of a bubble, inside of their own individual bubble where they don't know which direction they're going. They don't know what they're contributing and how that's making a difference at all. And so that causes a lack of meaningful purpose in their work. But what does transparency mean? 'Cause we hear that thrown around a lot on the internet, but what exactly is transparency and transparency on what? Transparency is as simple as this. It simply means having metrics on where we're going. Because when it comes to metrics on where we're going, now every team member knows exactly how far we are from our goals. And every team member will know whether or not we are successful in what we're doing. And also going back to the first way as well, they under every team member has clarity of the vision. They know where we're going exactly. They know how far we're progressing. They know every step of the way in their day to day how their work and their efforts are contributing towards that. So they want to know for moving forward. 'Cause every person wants to know if we're moving forward or not. And if we are moving forward, it creates that meaningful experience. If we're not moving forward, then what do we need to change so that we can create that momentum? So transparency is key. When you exhibit transparency, it means that transparency is important to you, first and foremost. And therefore, you can create that culture of trust, trusting in your leadership, trusting in the momentum that we're going and trusting in the vision as well. The third way to add value to your team as a team leader is to ensure team utilization. 'Cause let's face it, every single member of your team desires to be contributing at their fullest potential. Like you've been there. Imagine when you were earlier on your career path, every step of your career growth, didn't you also desire to be contributing at your fullest potential? Reflect on those moments where you felt like you had a lot more potential than you were giving in an organization or you were giving on that team. Reflect back on how that felt. Because when it comes to team members, if they feel that they're not working at their fullest capacity, if they feel that they are not contributing at their fullest potential, what happens is that they don't trust the leadership and they start to pull back. They start to wonder why they're there. They start to wonder if they're whether or not what they're doing is important or not. Or they even start to wonder why. And they fill in the blanks as to why we're not being used at full capacity. Because they know they have so much more to give than how come we're not giving these opportunities, how come I'm not being utilized. If every member of your team is underutilized, they will pull back. And when they pull back what that creates now is a lack of momentum. Because you have one person, any individual who's not feeling utilized, will start to pull back. And anytime you have one person or more than one person pull back, it really creates a lack of momentum and a lack of productivity. And there have been studies that showed that even a single individual on a team, if only one person was underutilized, it can cause as much as 80% reduction on the productivity of the whole team. Just one member who feels underutilized. So that's why the third way is really crucial is to ensure team utilization that every single member of your team is working at full capacity. Because if they are employed, but they're not employed at their full capacity, there's a lot of questions and insecurity that can come up into play. So ensuring utilization of every member can also ensure for you that the team is moving forward and that has maximum and optimized productivity. So far we talked about expressing clarity of vision also and having transparency on your teams. And now we talked about ensuring that every team member is utilized. All of these things require systems and processes that you put in place. But it also requires systematic management of your people. It also inquires. It also involves effective communication of the vision and being transparent as well. How do you communicate to your team members? Because it is inevitable that sometimes there will be team members who disagree with the vision, who disagree with a certain level of metrics as well. Or who have a different ways of doing things. And so there's going to be always a complexity of landscape of teammanship and managing teams as well. There's always a complex landscape. But if you're somebody who truly values your team and you want to take your team performance to the next level, because you want to take your own career path to the next level as well, then I invite you to work with me. The below this video in the description, there's a link to apply to my executive coaching program. And this is where every single week, I go through training with a team of executives on how you can be more effective as a team leader, how you can coach your team, individual team members for success, and how you can navigate the complexities of communicating with different team members who have different perspectives, who come from different educational backgrounds and different work histories as well. How do you effectively navigate that? and what happens when there are conflicts that arise, how do you navigate through those as well and different human values as well? How do you navigate through those? So if you're somebody who genuinely and sincerely wants to develop that skill set, then submit an application below to talk to either myself or a member of my team and I look forward to working with you on the inside. The fourth way to add more value to your teams as a team leader is to exemplify your values. 'Cause as a team leader, you have your own personal and professional values and your values are within the context of your role in the organization and definitely within the context of your goals that you want to achieve for the teams, the projects and the company at large. So when it comes to your professional and your personal values, it's important to communicate to those to the team because your team needs to be in alignment with your values as well. But one of the most important ways and effective ways to communicate what's important to you is to exemplify it for yourself, which means that you have absolute congruency inside and out congruency. So what that means is that it's one thing to say this is our values, these are our team tenets. But it's another thing to live them out yourself, to be practicing what the tenets are, to be practicing the way that you want the culture to become. So that's the best and most effective way to communicate to your teams. What is important? And these are the tenets that we live by on a day-to-day basis. So exemplify your values. Don't just tell them that these are important, these is what our team culture's gonna be. Exemplify that in the way you live, the way you work, the way that you communicate with your teams and so on. So that is the fourth way. Exemplify your values. And let's go right ahead and talk about the fifth way. The fifth and final way on how you can add more values to your teams is really quite simple. And that is to ensure transformation. Transformation is key. Because you want to have be in momentum. You want to optimize your team's productivity. You want to optimize the collaboration and interactions of your team. But the problem is that most leadership out there is transactional. It's transactional. It's touch and go. It's fly in, check in, or hover around to make sure that they're doing their work or micromanaging. Right, that's very transactional. But transformational is very different. Transformation is where you are ensuring that every team member, every individual team member, is being coached for success. That you understand what their individual values are and how they know for themselves, how their own values are aligned with the vision of the team and aligned with your values as well. So this is where you're ensuring individual optimization, providing resources, consolidating resources, where they need it. But also being able to communicate with them and coach them towards greater productivity, towards the success they want in their own individual career. So these are five ways that you can ensure that you add the most values to your team. And that way you build a culture of trust. And more importantly, your team stays in momentum. (upbeat music)