As a leader, you are always optimizing for something even if it's just chaos. Take control and set a clear agenda that makes sense to your team and will power them to both individual and company-wide success. That mostly ignored mission statement on the wall in the lobby won't cut it. You need to be intentional.

Read on: blog.WednesdayWin.com​

Read time: 4 minutes

How can you help your team reach goals that really matter? Let's explore:

1. Be intentional: know your goal

At the core, if you don't set a clear course for your company, your division, or your team, you are setting up your organization for chaos.

You get to choose your organizing principle and the sooner you do, the easier all of your major decisions will become. Let's look at three examples of well-known companies and key organizing themes:

• Amazon ➡️ Innovation
• Costco ➡️ Employee satisfaction
• Walmart ➡️ Lowest prices

Ultimately, all three are seeking to increase long-term shareholder value, but their pathways for achieving that are markedly different. While Walmart might pursue a logistically challenging opportunity with a supplier to gain a slight price advantage, Costco would bypass that same opportunity due to the extra staff burden. Amazon might opt to pursue notably challenging opportunities with a comfortable recognition that not all bold attempts will succeed.

What is the driving force for your team? How does that align with your personal priorities as a leader? Are they in sync with the company's needs from your team? Be specific. You should be able to write it out in less than three sentences spoken in a few seconds.

Are you driving top-line revenue through incremental sales to existing customers? Developing net new customer relationships? Increasing site views? Reducing customer churn by direct engagement? Increasing factory line output by 3%? Whatever it is, get precise and specific.

• Know the guiding principle that underlies your organization
• Define precisely what your team needs to do to support overall goals
• Write down a clear, brief statement of the very top priority
• Be mindful of timescales: sometimes what you need to do this month or quarter will be different than in the next

2. Be clear: communicate your priorities

Now that you are clear, you must successfully socialize that with your team. This is where your brief and easy to recite statement of your top priority is so useful. Don't make your team guess what matters. Everyone should know and understand it clearly.

This is where most organizations fall apart. Information is kept siloed and hidden from the team members that have the most direct ability to deliver the must-do work. Yes, there's always some highly sensitive customer or financial information that must be kept compartmentalized, but the more you hide from your team, the less they can help you deliver on your goals.

Everyone on your team should be able to recite the top priority from memory. If they can't, you haven't communicated it enough. You are providing a decision-making filter for your team to keep them focused as well as a tool for fending off distracting requests from others. Make it as easy as possible for them to deliver on the true priorities.

• However often you communicate goals, it's probably still not enough. Reiterate them again and again
• Share context to get the most useful recommendations in return on how to reach the team goals
• Ultimately, you are responsible for what your team delivers so take the time to make sure what they are doing is supporting the priority goals

3. Be supportive: align team and personal goals

This is the ultimate leader superpower: bringing team and personal goals into alignment. This means taking the time to understand where each member is trying to gain experience, learn new skills, or be exposed to new opportunities. Who is looking to expand their breadth or increase their depth?

Look for how you can help each member of your team gain in a direct path for delivering on the overall priorities. Not every task will perfectly align with personal goals, but even then you can create opportunities for expressed leadership, organizational learning, and deeper understanding of how to manage a team that many will appreciate even when the specific task isn't a favorite.

This is a great area to explore with Gen AI tools as well. Share your specific challenges and your insights about the various goals your team members have expressed and seek out alignment recommendations. (If this paragraph reads like a foreign language to you, I've got some great content coming soon in the newsletter that will help).

• We all work best when our personal goals are supported by the work we do to reach wider team and company goals
• You need to understand your individual team members goals and that takes time and attention
• Look for natural alignment on tasks as well as big picture themes
• When all else fails, you can focus on the value of teamwork and supporting one another by doing what needs to get done together

4. Be consistent: live your values

If step three is where teams are set-up for potential success, this step is where you create long term value. It's not enough to be intentional, to communicate, and to align. You must also live out the values and priorities you've detailed throughout.

Reward successful execution. Be consistent. Align your actions to your words. Be honest when you make errors. Take responsibility for changes to the goals. Surprises happen, but how you treat your team in the face of those unexpected events will have lasting impact on the team and your authority as a leader.

• Your team will hear what you say, but will do what you do if that doesn't match
• Praise in public the team actions that align
• Correct those actions that miss the mark in private, direct communication
• Don't just be transactional, you are building a reputation as a leader that can either serve you or hold you back over the long-term

Action Summary

With some care and attention, you can help your team perform better, receive greater recognition, and create more opportunities for both you and them. This doesn't happen by accident, though. You must clearly identify what you want to achieve, communicate that effectively, and find ways to align with your team.

And of course, if you don't demonstrate that you are operating under those same directions, you won't see it in your organization either. You have to be it to see it.

• Be intentional
• Be clear
• Be supportive
• Be consistent

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What do you think? When have you experienced a team that's moving together effectively? Reply to this email and let me know.

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To your success,

Christopher

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P.S. Like this one? You'll probably want to check out this earlier Wednesday Win essay on the power of effective communication as a leader, too.

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