HR Management & Compliance

7 Tips for Raising the Expectations–and Productivity–of Your Team Members

As we saw in Yesterday’s Advisor, when managers have high expectations for their employees and when employees have high expectations for themselves, great things—like high productivity and increased retention—can happen. Here are some tips to build those expectations.

Top consultant Susan M. Heathfield, who serves as HR expert for the website about.com, suggests the following seven ways in which you can encourage positive, powerful self-expectations in the employees on your team.

1. Provide increasingly challenging assignments for your team members. (Make sure employees succeed at each level before moving forward.)

2. Enable each team member to participate in potentially successful projects that bring continuous improvement to the workplace.

3. Provide one-on-one coaching for your team members. (This coaching should emphasize improving what the employee does well rather than focusing on weaknesses.)

4. Provide developmental opportunities that reflect what the employee is interested in learning about.

5. Assign successful senior employees to play a developmental mentoring role with team members.

6. Hold frequent, positive verbal interactions with team members, and communicate consistently your firm belief in each employee’s ability to perform the job. Keep feedback positive and developmental where possible.

7. Make sure team members receive consistent messages from other supervisory personnel. How you speak about employees to others powerfully molds their opinions.

How about the team leaders in your organization? Are they Pygmalions for their team members? Of course, we should say, are they positive Pygmalions? Or are they, unwittingly, dragging their team’s performance down with low expectations?


BLR’s Audio Click ’n Train: Teambuilding for Supervisors uses both PowerPoint® slides and a soundtrack to create leaders that get the most from teams.  Read more.


“Let’s face it, the key in the productivity equation is the supervisory level,” says one BLR editor. Using a military analogy, he says that “while the generals make the plans, it’s the sergeants who get the troops to carry them out.”

If your team leaders are like most, they are eager and capable, but untrained in communication and motivation. Fortunately, there are good training materials available.
One program we especially like is BLR’s Audio Click n Train: Teambuilding for Supervisors. It uses both PowerPoint slides and a professionally recorded audio soundtrack to draw attention to its lessons, which makes them stick.

Necessities for Team Success

Here are some of the necessities for creating team success at the supervisory level that Audio Click ’n’ Train: Teambuilding for Supervisors suggests:

▪ Manageable size.  Keep your team’s size no larger than needed. More than 10 to 12 members will have problems getting to know and bonding with one another. Communication will also be more difficult.

▪ Diverse skills. This factor allows each member to add his or her own knowledge and perspective, not only to check and balance that of the others but also to build on the efforts of the group. 
 
▪ Common goals. Regardless of their backgrounds, team members must share a common vision of what’s to be accomplished. A written mission statement is a valuable tool to that end.

▪ Open exchange of ideas/information. Whether it’s through formal meetings or “water cooler chats,” team members must share what they know and think, both about their own roles and the roles of others inside and outside the team.


What’s it worth to get your teams to work better together? How about less than $150? See how you can do it with BLR’s Audio Click ’n Train: Teambuilding for Supervisors. Click to learn more.


▪ Cooperation. Going hand-in-hand with the open exchange of ideas is a desire to help one another over the rough spots. That comes from …

▪ Mutual respect. Even if they’re not friends socially, teammates need to be professional with one another and listen to all ideas. They must offer support when they agree and objective, constructive (not personal) criticism when they don’t.

▪ A resourceful leader. Without someone to point them in the right direction and keep them on track, teams can quickly dissolve in conflict and disagreement over what course to take.

Training supervisors to be that kind of leader is the objective of Audio Click n Train: Teambuilding for Supervisors. We highly recommend this program and suggest that you click here for more information or to order—satisfaction assured.

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