Always re-motivating your team? Dragging them along? Why do some teams break down when pushed to their potential?
In sports or in business, it is our duty to push past comfort zones and require our team to become better. Raise the standard. Expect excellence. Require performance despite circumstance and sacrifice over self-fulfillment. That’s what great teams do!
For the team! For the mission! Never stop!
But through that process, if we FAIL to TELL them:
I see you and how hard this is
I recognize that your heart is in this
Your sacrifices and efforts make me proud even before you hit your targets
I value you and your choice to walk through the fire to help us all achieve greatness.
I know this is difficult and can be frustrating. Then….
We will eventually burn out the light we were hired to ignite.
No team member wants to feel disposable, replaceable, worthless, threatened or invisible while they put everything they have into the process. 🫥
Great leadership should not be in the business of short term gains and cycling people through a revolving door to serve an agenda. When leadership becomes manipulation to get what you want out of people, the team loses faith, hope and trust.
And we know that growth isn’t linear, yet we often hold a team accountable to perform in linear patterns where they feel set up to fail. Success is in fact, an iceberg. How can a great leader fail to recognize all the work going into what’s being built and labored on under the surface?
So…..What stops this from happening? Because it’s not an uncommon trap, or limited to heartless dictators, as we try to get the most out of our team members.
RELATIONSHIPS.
When you build relationships with your team members, it becomes virtually impossible not to recognize effort and know the work being put in. It takes away the ease in trading out someone who is exhausting themselves to meet expectations, despite challenges and change, for a fresh replacement you don’t know. It redirects the tendency to care more for the objective than those who are there supporting it with everything they have.
But if all that is too much to take in, I can sum it up really fast.
Build, prioritize, and value strong relationships with your team to be a great leader, surrounded by a powerfully loyal team, who together grows exponentially and accomplishes great things, for a long time. ♥️
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