Checking yourself as a Leader

Creating a safe working environment is key to getting the best from your team.

Giving people a voice to suggest improvements, or report incidents and near misses and let you know when things aren’t working as well as they could are important steps in maximising productivity through staff engagement.

Getting the right environment provides the sense of purpose, belonging and trust and allowing innovation.

As a leader, it is worth checking the following to ensure that you are enabling that environment:

- Do you answer questions when they are asked? Or do you ignore or forget the hard ones with the “I’ll get back to you on that” promise?

- Do you notice the little changes in your team members which might impact the way they feel, and hence their performance. Do you take action and talk to the person if you do notice?

- Do you provide feedback even when it might be difficult? Or do you avoid it and leave an ambiguous void?

- Is your feedback genuine and in conjunction with developing your team members. Remember that praising a person for working longer hours doesn’t mean that they can continue to do it and sustain it, and your appreciation does not make the possible resulting fatigue or burnout ok.

- Do you give sufficient time and attention to all your team members? Remember that this may vary from person to person, so recognise their needs.

- Are you inclusive of the whole team? How do you ensure that the person who wasn’t able to attend the team meeting is brought up to speed?

- Do you regularly review the workload for each person? Or does it creep up as new tasks come in. Do you review the priorities for each person so that they know what is important and what can be delayed, delegated or left off if their workload becomes overwhelming.

- Do you regularly ask for feedback of your own performance from your team? Remember that this is a great way to ensure that you develop your own leadership skills.

Checking your own performance as a leader is a great way to ensure that your team see you are vulnerable and you’re still learning and developing.

The performance of your team is a reflection on your performance as a leader. Their input enables you and the team to thrive.