The question “How can I get more out of my team?” is one that I have heard managers ask on many occasions. Sometimes, it is asked as a contemplative question in a planning discussion while other times, it is asked out frustration with the current level of collective performance. Whatever the situation, type of business or size of team, it is not an unusual question for a manager to consider. However, it’s a different question that will lead one to the answer.

Let’s change the question from “How can I get more out of my team?” to “How can I give more to my team?”  While, it may not be the answer that a manager wants to hear at first, it is a question that highlights the significant influence and opportunity that managers have. Although important, the role of a manager is not only to provide oversight to the completion of quality work. It is also to ensure that conditions exist that enable the team to perform at their highest level. Considering that, asking how a manager can give more to their team is a fair question and shifting the question in that way completely changes the options available.

For example, managers can reflect on the following:

–          Does the team know what our goals are?

–          Do they understand how their work is moving us towards these goals?

–          Have they been recognized when they have done outstanding work?

–          Do they have an opportunity to improve the quality of our department’s products or services?

–          Do I care about them and their well-being and do they know that?

–          Do I provide them with valuable feedback and support that helps them do their jobs?

Each employee is part of the larger system.  It is the manager’s role to ensure that this system is continuously improved and that the climate within the team is conducive to collaboration, respect and communication.  Dr. W. Edward Deming, who consulted to the Japanese automakers before working with Ford Motor Company in the early eighties, had a “systems view” of the workplace, recognizing that work is a dynamic and complex social system with many individual parts connected together. He asserted that as much as 80% of the problems that occur within workplace systems are the responsibility of management. This doesn’t mean that an individual employee doesn’t have any accountability to perform at their best. Each day, we make a personal choice to determine how much effort we will put forward and how we choose to respond to the events within the workday. Our personal choices matter. So does the system in which we work. With that in mind, looking inward is a good place to start for a manager who wants to improve team performance.

It may be a lot to think about and no manager is perfect.  I can recall a number of my own missteps and there are many situations where I’d welcome the chance to do them again. But that’s part of learning and developing as a manager. If you really want to get the most of out your team, you are committed to continuously improving and you are giving as well as getting, you are on the right track.