Communication is the key to effective and compassionate leadership. The more open and frequent the communication, the better a team works. As company leadership, it is our responsibility to keep communication open and flowing. A great way to do this is to plan regular, ongoing conversations with your team. These conversations should cover everything from current performance to their future career goals within the company. Here are five conversations you should have with every team member regularly.
1. Strengths & Skills
You may have hired them because they are an incredible coder and app maker. They had the skills and experience to round out your dream dev ops team. However, people are multifaceted. Imagine this team member also spends their free time creating stunning 3D graphic designs. This artistic talent with their coding skills could make them a valuable asset in creating the UX. Having a regular conversation about their skills and strengths will help you identify your team’s talents outside of their role. Talents like graphic design could help them progress in their career while also adding value to the company.
2. Performance & Feedback
Performance and feedback is the most common conversation between leadership and their team. These are often done in a structured setting as a way to measure performance against incentives like raises and bonuses. However, it is far too often that team members are surprised by their performance reviews because they hadn’t had adequate feedback until that point. Regularly reviewing performance and providing feedback outside of this formal structure can empower your team members to perform their best. It allows you to help them identify gaps in their knowledge and prevent small issues from becoming larger performance problems. It also creates the trust needed for them to come to you when they are having issues.
3. Goal Planning & Empowerment
Another great conversation to regularly have with your staff is about goal planning. You’ll want to talk about their personal career goals. Whether they love what they do and want to constantly improve or want to take your job one day, it’s important to know their goals. That way you can set mutually beneficial goals for their role. These goals will help empower them to achieve their career ambitions. It will also help you achieve the company goals for the role. When these two things are in alignment, employee happiness and retention stay high.
Having these three ongoing conversations can help keep you and your team get in alignment. However, it’s not always easy to find the time or the bandwidth to have these conversations. That’s where The OM Factor comes in. Deploying the leadership tools provided in The OM Factor will ensure that you always have open communication with your team, no matter how busy your team is. It will help you keep the communication open and your team on track to their goals.
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