Using Collegues’ Own Dreams to Keep Them On Task

If you’ve ever wanted to use your leadership to manage your team more effectively. The most effective way is by filling your team with energy, and inspiration. Look no further than these Team Management articles. In the next week I’ll be writing about a few key strategies to enthuse your teams. Today’s article is on the importance of talking to your teammates dreams. After all, members of your team won’t need chasing up if they believe their actually working torwards their own goals. Here’s how to drive your team into that brilliant state of mind.

Speak in terms of their Dreams. Its a shame that in today society, most employees don’t have a burning desire to achieve the tasks they are set in day to day work. They perhaps wish to retire early, or take a round the world trip. Lets face it, they don’t honestly want to do what you have planned for them. They’re probably going to have a grand plan as to how they are going to acheive their ‘alternate’ long term goals as well, and these won’t be helping your organisation. These alternative goals are wrongly viewed as ‘distractions’ by many team leaders across countless companies and institutions. But in fact they can be used to actually do the opposite. Read on to find out how.

To put this team management technique into practise, you need to be talking to each member of your team indivdiually, and either directly or indirectly, show your team mates that their current task will take them one small yet significant step closer towards their dreams.

Easier said than done? Well allow me give you 2 examples.

If a team mate’s dream is to break away from the company to take a high position in another business, then you should mention the transferable skills they’ll gain from this task and be able to put on their CV for their forthhcoming move. Explain that this will give them a fighting chance at being noted by management as a potential leader. You see how you’d actually be doing the opposite of what most managers would do, namely isolate and discourage the employee’s move? You are taking the opposite action, and that’s why you’re getting the opposite result – motivation.

If an employee’s dream is to own their own business; don’t let their motivation and focus fall as they come to terms with the gap between what they desire, and what their current task is. Instead you should emphasise on how working on your project will eventually help them in the long term. Describe to them how they will pick up countless new ideas skills from the current task, which will prepare them for the entrepeneurial life. Elaborate in detail on how when they do become an independant businessperson, they will have an crucial edge over their competitors. The more you speak in terms of the other persons dreams, the more attention you will capture, and the more effectively you can manage your team.

To conclude. All work gives employees experience of some form, and will therefore help them acheive their long term goals. This means in whatever task you are assigned to, you will be able to relate the benefits to your teammates in terms of their desires. (This will get easier over time) Once your effective team management shows them that their current task actually slots neatly into their grand plan, they’ll gladly work hard and take care of the rest!

Tags: Dreams, Increasing Focus

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Leadership Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.