If you aspire to exercise team leadership, asking questions to members of your organization is key for communication to flow and for you to become a successful manager. These are the six key questions you must ask your team:
1. What is success for you?
It is quite possible that success is not the same thing for you than for your team. Therefore, it is very important to ask this question so everyone will row in the same direction and success will be shared by the whole organization.
In other words: set goals together with your team, do not impose them externally. As a leader, you can set the big, strategic long-term goals, but small team goals can be set together as a team.
2. What do you need from me / us to succeed?
If you already know what success is for your team, or even if you have defined it together, the next step is to ask what you can do to help them succeed. Your role as team leader is to pave the way for your employees to achieve success so this will mean a benefit for your company.
Sometimes the answer will be material (resources for the office, work tools), other times your team may only ask for your recognition, feedback or further information to do their jobs.
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3. What is your role?
Every person plays a different role in our team. Leaders should ask themselves where each employee fits, beyond where their title places them in the organization chart. Ask them directly what their contribution to the department has been in recent weeks, what their next goals are, which tasks are they involved in, directly or indirectly.
In other words, do some research on the weight each employee carries within the organization and whether they feel comfortable (or not) with their daily tasks. This question will help you locate the natural leaders and make your team assume responsibilities.
4. How do you measure performance?
It is the duty of the leader to ask about the team’s performance and, of course, to inform them whether they are on the right track or not. Team leadership involves measuring performance by tracking completed tasks. This can be a positive aspect of management, because the team’s performance usually increases the more information people receive on their productivity, and it can be a source of motivation as well.
5. What will we do to reach the goals?
An essential point in the agenda of every leader is goal definition. It is important to be able to define a plan, a goal and a victory to celebrate even today, but do not neglect the greater goals, which are those that will eventually make possible the progress of your company.
Set periodic meetings to design the way that will help your organization reach the goals. Only if the goals are present in the day to day, will you ensure that your team is moving in the right direction.
6. What will we do to correct our mistakes?
It is not the easiest question, but it is one of the most important for the manager. Team leadership requires of you to know how to correct mistakes, so it is also important to ask yourself how to act when things do not go as expected. In other words, what needs to be done differently, what do we need to change?
And you, what questions would you add to achieve good team leadership?