As a leader, you can delegate a lot of things, but you can’t delegate accountability for the team’s success. Ultimately, you’re responsible for monitoring all of the team’s activities and results. In some cases, this will mean making adjustments as you go — putting someone else in charge, reorganizing roles, or modifying project plans.
And then there’s the challenge of guiding the company’s strategic direction while also monitoring all of the smaller details that shape its success. You’re responsible for being the voice of the brand, building its credibility. For assessing risks and opportunities. For building relationships with key clients and vendors. For designing your sales and marketing plans (unless you’ve hired someone for that role).
At the same time, you need to stay plugged into the status of all organizational initiatives and operations. As you grow, you might hire frontline managers to handle some of these oversight duties. But for now, much of it rests on your shoulders. All of that pressure can lead to perfectionism, which might cause you to get even more bogged down by minutia. It’s no wonder that 72% of leaders report being burned out.
So, how to prioritize as a leader when you’re completely overloaded? I’ll share some key lessons on how to motivate and empower your team to take charge of their own success.
Setting Key Performance Indicators
Only 50% of employees have a good idea of what their boss expects of them. Define what success looks like, spelling it out in clear terms. Establishing these benchmarks will help everyone move steadily toward goals.
- Make sure goals cascade down from top to bottom. This will structure and streamline each department’s efforts.
- Set KPIs that are ambitious enough to motivate people but not unachievable (think SMART goals). These are metrics that illustrate whether you’ve reached your objectives. For example, “Increase customer retention by 20% by the end of the fourth quarter” could be a key performance indicator (KPI).
- After setting a KPI, work backward: What do you need to do every week to move toward it?
- Refer to these benchmarks and stepping stones in weekly or biweekly conversations. Talk about how to adjust performance to boost progress toward KPIs, if necessary.
By setting strong KPIs, you’ll give each team and individual a roadmap to their goals. If conditions shift, you can reevaluate KPIs and change them if needed.
Balancing Autonomy and Accountability
Striking the right balance between giving people autonomy and holding them accountable for results can feel tricky. Giving people agency over how they work shows you trust them. At the same time, you want to make sure they’re working efficiently and not cutting corners.
So, empower people to take accountability for their own success. Here are a few ways to do that:
-
- Let them own the outcomes. When they succeed, praise their efforts. Name the things they did well. When they don’t succeed, help them troubleshoot what they could do differently next time.
- Ask for regular progress updates. Hold team check-ins where people share efforts they’ve made in the past week or two.
- Encourage asking for help. Create an open-door policy: specific times when people can check in with you to field questions or get your input. If people need more support on a task or project, see if another team member can pitch in.
Following these steps will set people up to excel, ironing out any issues before they become major problems.
Leading with Vision
It’s easy to assume your shared mission remains front of mind for everyone. But that won’t be the case if you let it fall into the background. Lead with vision every day, infusing a sense of purpose into your team’s work.
As people connect with purpose, their motivation and productivity will soar. Remind them of the difference their work makes to customers by solving frustrating challenges or giving them peace of mind. Kick off a team meeting by sharing a story from a client that highlights this point, for instance.
Hiring the Right People
If you’re still trying to juggle multiple roles, it’s hard to devote enough time to your core responsibilities. How to prioritize as a leader when you’re already working 60+ hours a week?
First, restructure each role, including your own, into a list of key functions. Then, think about hiring a virtual executive assistant, who can help take care of the details so you can focus on the big picture. Or, hire virtual assistants for other roles, like handling client renewals, data management, and customer correspondence.
Taking Ownership of Mistakes
“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people with a habit of making excuses,” said George Washington Carver. In other words, you can usually correct course if you simply admit you’ve made a mistake and work to remediate it.
As a leader, model how to own your mistakes and learn from them. Be transparent about your shortcomings and errors, even when others may not have noticed them. Taking accountability as a leader for your own mistakes will instill a culture of assuming responsibility instead of shirking it off.
Guiding the Team Through Change
Tough times can either make your team stronger or cause things to crumble or fracture. As a leader, you’ll sometimes need to steer the ship through stormy waters. How you react to challenges will shape how everyone else responds.
Most importantly, strive to stay calm and in control during uncertain times. Your mood affects every single person in the organization, whether you have 5 people or 500. As the leader, your emotions are especially contagious. Your reaction to change and stress shapes how everyone else reacts.
Before making a big decision, pause to gather information and ask for others’ input, too. If the situation demands some ingenuity, assemble a team with complementary skills to brainstorm solutions. Your job as a leader isn’t always to have the answer, but to figure out how to draw out great ideas from others as well.
Taking these steps will help you cultivate a team of people who are empowered to take ownership of their success. As you show them that you recognize their efforts, guide them to own their results, and instill a sense of purpose, you’ll ramp up motivation and productivity. As you skillfully handle change and model how to take accountability, you’ll set a strong example for everyone to follow. And by hiring the right people and learning how to delegate tasks effectively, you’ll grow an increasingly more capable team that’s poised to handle any challenge that comes your way.
Ready to explore how hiring a virtual assistant — or a virtual executive assistant — can enhance your leadership? Schedule a call. We’ll identify your primary needs and how an assistant could help solve them. As you onboard a VA onto your team, we’ll share guidance on how to fully integrate them into your organization and culture. When you have skilled help in handling your company’s daily operations, you’ll be able to focus more attention on strategic priorities.