As an introverted employee, I’m by nature skeptical when my manager asks me about my work. The instinct is: “why does he not trust me.” It doesn’t matter that as a internal communication specialist, I know the importance of two-way communication models and why it’s vital for managers to know what is going on. As a team leader, you are responsible for your employees performance. You feel the need to help your team, make sure the are on the right track. But how do you do it without disrupting their flow?
Most people are like me. We don’t like to be interrupted by our manager. And making a false move here can do a lot more harm than good. Handling employees like me is the cornerstone of having a positive impact on your team’s efforts and a key to having a high performing team.
Building trust and Improving performance
The way to combat this challenge is to build a strong, high-performing team from whom you can get feedback automatically. You need to build a culture of trust that makes you and your team work as one. And this needs both good hiring skills and great internal communication tools.
Trust doesn’t happen in a day. It takes people working together for a long time to get there. However, in a smaller team (up to 10 people), it’s not that hard to fasten the process.
Knowing my vices, me and my manager have built a level of trust over many lunches and time spent together outside work. Team events, open discussions and many projects finished together have subtly made me report my work voluntarily every week.
Having a reporting methodology has helped a lot as well. It has helped to build a company where reporting your work (and celebrating progress) are so deep in the company culture, you can’t consider it intrusive.
For any weekly reporting system to work, you need it to be public: everyone needs to know what others are working on and how their work benefits other employees, teams, and the company as a whole. That adds an extra level of connection that says: we’re all in this together. Building this level up, is the surest way for you to have a positive impact on your employees.
Not being too intrusive
A lot of people don’t like managers poking in their business. Your good intentions to help might be taken by many employees as not trusting them or worse. With Weekdone however, the poking part of the process is minimal Scott Wolfe Jr., CEO of zlien, has said that he likes “the weekly reports as a way for getting the communication from my team and what they are doing.”
Getting the reports is the important part. He doesn’t have to take or force the reports. And that is how I feel about my manager as well: he doesn’t have to poke in my business as I’m giving the information every week freely. That reduces stress for both of us and makes as a more highly performing team. You too can improve your team right now and try Team Compass Weekly Reporting Software for free.