The Metiss Group's Blog

You are probably familiar with the Chinese proverb: “Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”  As a leader, you should be challenging your direct reports to always be growing.

If you are not already doing so, empower your direct reports to chair your team’s weekly staff meetings.  This popular empowerment technique achieves many purposes.  First, it develops your direct reports to run effective meetings.  Second, it saves you time as you are no longer responsible for meeting preparation and follow-up.  Finally, you become more productive in the meetings focusing on the content and less on the process.

Empower and encourage your direct reports to always be growing and success will surly come.

If your administrative assistant prepared for the perfect meeting, yet the meeting did not go well, was s/he successful?  If the operations department increased productivity by 25%, yet the company missed it’s sales goal, were they successful?  If the sales department experienced record sales, yet the organization lost money, was that success?

Most people in an organization think of their department, work team, or individual contributions as being their most important focus and measure their success by how well those work units perform. Although the accomplishments of work units are important, at the end of the day, the success of the organization is all that matters. The goals and accomplishments of the whole team must take precedent.  For that to happen leaders must clearly communicate the organization’s goals and objectives and reward everyone when the organization succeeds.

Empower your team to put the organization first and the whole team will experience more success.

Do people dislike Monday morning because they are disappointed the weekend is over or because they dread the week ahead?

There’s not much a leader can do about the disappointment direct reports feel when the weekend is over but they can help make the start of the week less dreadful by helping them understand their job’s priorities.

Use a job accountability matrix to identify the three to five major parts or buckets of the job. Once these accountabilities have been identified, rank them in the order in which you’d like your direct report to think about them at the beginning of the week. Click here to see a sample job accountability matrix.

Helping your directs reports REALLY understand the order of importance of their job accountabilities allows them to focus on what’s important and relieves some of their anxiety over the week ahead.

Empower your direct reports with rank ordered job accountabilities and you’ll experience more success.

Most organizations have core values or some set of guiding principles that determine the ways in which business is conducted.  Some organizations take them seriously, but other distribute core values within the organization with much pomp and circumstance and pay little attention to them thereafter.

One of the best ways to ensure core values are understood, internalized, and lived is to make them a part of the performance review process.  At least quarterly each employee in an organization should be asked to recount specific situations where they have demonstrated EVERY ONE of the organization’s core values.

One organization we worked with scored each employee on a ten point scale each quarter for each of their core values.  The score was determined by: 2 points for knowing of the core value, 2 points for being able to recite the core value verbatim, and 2 points for each of three instances where the core value was documented and demonstrated.  This organization has little problem with their employees living their core values.

Empower your direct reports to be measured by knowing and demonstrating core values and you’ll have a more successful organization.

More and more leaders are realizing their competitive edge lies with their talent.  And with their talent, they realize the greatest opportunity for growth is to develop their critical thinking skills.

Leaders must first create a safe environment for people to make mistakes and to admit thinking errors.  If this isn’t accomplished, people may feel afraid of embarrassment, humiliation, and perhaps even loss of professional status.

Once people feel comfortable explaining their thinking process, the leader can coach them on their critical thinking.  The leader’s first impulse will be to correct the direct report, provide the proper solution, and move on.  Providing the solution and explaining the rationale rarely works to develop cognition; the successful leader will ask questions to encourage the direct report to exercise that brain muscle and develop better critical thinking strength.  Some questions leaders may ask to coach for better critical thinking include:

• “How did you come to that conclusion?”
• “What are the facts that led you to that conclusion?”
• “What other options have you considered?”
• “What would happen next?”
• “Have you considered your bias?”

Empower your direct reports to learn from their mistakes and they will become successful critical thinkers.