When your team is skeptical of new leadership strategies, building trust is paramount. Transparency, empathy, and consistency are your tools for success. To earn their trust and loyalty:
- Communicate openly about the reasons behind changes and how they'll benefit the team.
- Show genuine interest in team members' concerns and be willing to adjust plans based on feedback.
- Remain consistent in your actions and follow through on promises to build credibility over time.
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Encourage team members to listen to one another, respect each other's point of view and not interrupt or make personal comments. During the conversation, keep the tone of the conversation calm and non threatening. encourage active listening.
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If you're working on a common goal, and the team has conflicting priorities ( this happens when the team do not know what path to take and goal seem to be a herculean task ) - the first step would be to make the goal attainable to my team. Identify the low hanging fruits and grab them! That will definitely boost the morale of the team and it will start to converge towards common priorities. Communication, and equal participation is another important aspect to get the team work together towards the goal.
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I strongly embrace the working backwards from customer mindset. Doing so with the team, first in smaller groups and later in larger workshop settings, helps to revisit all the priorities on the table and help drive focus to those that are critical for customer. This usually helps to de-conflict work streams based on time horizons (when they are needed) or based on path of criticality etc. A key point to remember is to be transparent and take the leaders on the team on this journey with you.
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Competing priorities generally is the problem of: - Organizational structural problems: The structures like silo teams, matrix organizations lead to competing priorities - Wrong Metrics: Measurements with narrow focus lead to competition since everyone wants to achieve their goals rather than looking at the big picture - Goal misalignment: A team should always work on one goal. - Incorrect prioritization of work: Rather than working on most important items, trying to work on too many things at once will lead to this problem. - Too much waste in the system I am pretty sure there are more!
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Aligning a team with conflicting priorities is achieved by leveraging the OKR framework. Inspire with a North Star: Craft an exciting, unifying objective that everyone can rally behind. Co-create Success Metrics: Collaboratively set key results that quantify success. Key Results: Boost NPS from 45 to 70. Cut support response time from 24 hours to 6 hours. Hit 95% customer satisfaction on surveys. Laser-focus on Priorities: Identify and prioritize actions that drive key results. Sync Up Regularly: Hold quick, frequent check-ins to track progress and realign. Transparent Progress: Use visual dashboards to keep everyone in the loop. Celebrate Wins, Learn from Misses: Celebrate hitting key results. Reflect and adjust when you miss.
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