There are baseline responsibilities all leaders have to their teams. Do an assessment—or better yet, ask your team. How are you doing with these key accountabilities?
- Establish a clear, commonly understood, and attainable definition of success.
To be engaged, teams have to know where they are headed, what success looks like, and they must believe they can achieve it. Can your staff clearly and easily articulate what success is for them? For your organization overall?
- Create and maintain structures and processes that facilitate moving toward success.
Too many times, our systems, structures, and processes are not aligned with the goals we have established for success. How do you monitor and adjust your management systems and processes so they help align and engage your team toward that clear definition of success you have established? Perhaps more importantly—does your staff team believe that you focus on aligning systems and processes to help facilitate their success? How do you know?
- Provide opportunities for development and growth for your team.
To build and maintain excellence, you must offer your staff opportunities to learn and grow. This can build your bench strength and cross train your staff. For many smaller associations and nonprofits without a significant career growth ladder, you may be training folks to leave for more advanced work in some instances. However, the price of not investing in growth and development is a non-engaged workforce and entropy. What formal and informal mechanisms do you have—that your staff can identify—that gives them a sense that you care about their growth and careers?
- Create and Maintain a culture of trust and safety.
A search of contents on Harvard Business Review shows 213 offerings on “employee trust.” Add articles on “leadership,” and “employee engagement,” or just “trust”, and the numbers go up exponentially. The fact is, if your team doesn’t have confidence in you and a sense of trust and safety, it may not matter if you have met the other accountabilities listed above. In fact, it may not be possible to successfully achieve the three prior accountabilities if there is not a bedrock of trust. Again, it is your team that can best answer whether trust and safety is present in the workplace, not you as the leader. How long has it been since you’ve asked?
Put these accountabilities to the test! Create and consistently implement a plan to consistently ensure that you are meeting them. These are keys to success.
Executive Director's Toolkit 