Aligning needs

- For one of my first gigs as a consultant, I was brought in to do a team building for a mid-size manufacturing company. The CEO said the team was pretty high functioning and he was really just looking for some fun engagement and a refresher about the importance of teams. Well, now I know to always check whether the team really is healthy before doing any fun team building but that early in my career, I said, sure. Thankfully, this guy was a great leader. And his sense of his team really was amazing. His strength as a leader came not only from assessing the needs at all levels of the organization but more importantly, from using that data to align those needs for everyone's success. I want to talk you through some key steps you can take to make sure you're balancing organizational, team and individual needs. Start with yourself. You should know by now your strengths and your weaknesses. Now take the time to determine what you need and want for success. Making sure to include personal success outside of work. Are you looking to move up in the company, spend time with family, develop specific skills, lead your team more effectively, position yourself in a certain way? What do you need to do to get from where you are to where you need to be? Write down your goals and the steps needed to get there. Then move to the individuals on your team. Good leaders build their team. They identify the strengths and weaknesses of their team members and help them take advantage of their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses. You should know what your team needs to succeed and then help them reach their goals. Be careful to balance their needs with your own though. Only worrying about the needs of others is a sure fire for burnout. From here, it's not enough to only work at meeting your individual goals and the goals of the individuals on your team. If you want your team to act like a team, you have to lead them like one. A common mistake is to coach and lead a team as if it were a group of individuals. But there'll be times when your needs or the needs of the individuals on your team need to take a back seat to those of the group for success. As the leader, you need to know that and work to hit that balance. Finally, you need to make sure that the individual goals and the goals of the team as a whole align with the needs of the organization. If the needs of the organization are not met, eventually you won't have a team lead. As the leader of a team, you need to remember that you're also a member of a group of leaders that work together to keep the organization running. There are times when you'll need to persuade the organization to meet the needs of your team and other times you're going to need to persuade your team to do something that supports the needs of the organization. This is a balancing act, but if you can keep all these goals aligned, you'll be an even more successful leader.