Must Know About Your Team Members

Leaders have a lot of responsibilities to constantly balance and deal with appropriately. One of the top priority a good leader is concerned with is what you must know about your team members. Your team will be responsible for your success and in turn you are responsible for their success as well as their wellbeing. Leadership isn’t only about getting the best out of your team members. It’s about how you can help each team member to be at their best. In order to do so, you there are certain things you must know about your team members.

It’s not enough to demand production from your team and team members. As a leader, you a must take responsibility to put your team member in the best position possible to succeed. To be able to place each member in a position to succeed, you must know what that position is. As each person is different, each team member will have different needs. It is your job as a leader to find out what you must know about your team members. Here five must know about each individual member in order to them in a position to succeed.

1. Motivation– The first is quite obvious. In order to get your team member to be productive and successful, you must understand what their motivations are. Each individual will have different motivations. Some are motivated by money and benefits. Others may be motivated by opportunities for advancements. There will also be some who are purely motivated to learn and contribute. Understanding what motivated each member and feed into their unique motivation will allow you to get the best out of each member.
2. Demotivated– Opposite of getting your team member motivated, you will also need to understand what demotivates them. When you have a member demotivated, it’s a bad sign for the entire team. Demotivating can be infectious and you need to monitor this closely. Like motivating individuals, it takes different things to demotivate different people. Lack of opportunity to grow or learn can be a demotivation to one person. Failing or not having the necessary support to be successful can be a demotivating to another. Be sure you’re aware of what demotivate each member of your team and avoid them.
3. Long term goals – In order to have a sustainable that are productive and successful, you must not only be concerned with the present. You may have good members who are productive and contributing greatly to your success. However, if you’re unaware of their long term ambitions, the success you achieve may be short lived. Take the time to learn the long term goals of each member. Try to help them succeed on only with you but also for their future. In doing so, you will retain them longer and achieve more success.
4. Working style– An employee is at their best when their working environment fits with their working style. The environment includes the equipment and furniture around them. But it also includes their coworkers and superiors and the working process put in place. Understanding what working style an employee performs best at allow that individual to be in that environment will allow that person to be at their best. Some may like to constantly be working with others. While others may like to be working alone. It’s important to understand these unique styles and give each individual what they need.
5. Current events– Besides understanding the how your members work and what their ambitions are, a good leader also needs to know about the daily lives of their employees. Knowing only everything about their work and working environment is not enough. People have lives beyond the office and beyond work. As much as we want to separate the two, it’s often difficult to do so. Major issues happening at home will have a trickle effect into the office and their work quality. A good leader must know what’s happening with their employees beyond the office. Share the good things that happens to their members. Support when possible with the bad things that their members are going through. At the very least, empathy should be shared. You can read more about empathy and how to practice it in my blog Leadership – Empathy here.

A good leader must understand these things about their team members. But it takes quite a lot of work and effort to be able to learn these things from each member. The larger the team you have the more time and effort it will take. This isn’t something that you can spend a little time once and expect to have a good grasps of the situation. It will require continuous and consistent effort. You can read more about How To Be Consistent here.

Leading a team is not just about assigning work and expecting delivery. It’s certainly not about giving orders and simply expecting others to follow. A good leader will understand the team and each team member. Learn what you must know about your team members. Apply that knowledge to supporting them and you will have a healthy and successful team that’s sustainable for the long haul.

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