If you find some team members are not following through on tasks and projects they’ve been assigned, the problem could lie in the process through which you delegate those tasks.
Financial advisors are often not specific enough when asking tasks to team members, says April Lynn Levitt, a coach with the Personal Coach in Toronto. Or they spend too much time micromanaging their team.
The outcome is either an employee who is unsure of how to follow through on a project, or one who worries that it won’t be completed exactly as you wish. Either way, it is likely your team member will find it difficult to fulfill his or her responsibility.
Levitt provides three key steps to prevent this confusion when assigning tasks to team members:
1. Get specific
You must be clear about every task you assign. Advisors often fail to adequately communicate assignments to their team, Levitt says.
If your goals are unclear, it is likely your team will not be able to follow through on what you want done.
So, define the tasks that you want to see completed and set timelines. Use a spreadsheet or your contact-management system to keep track of progress. This tracking system should be set up in a way that all team members have access to it and can update it. Everyone should be aware of all projects’ status and how they affect their own tasks.
2. Have staff report progress to the team
The spreadsheet is one way to keep track of ongoing projects. But team members should also be expected to present all developments in a group setting. So, make checking in on projects-in-progress a regular part of every team meeting.
Levitt finds that having people report to each other and not just the leader raises the performance of the entire team. The result is positive peer pressure, she says. Team members become motivated when they see their colleagues achieving their goals.
Additionally, you will be able to see who is consistently producing positive results — and who is not.
3. Avoid micromanaging
Constantly reviewing everyone’s progress and dictating exactly how tasks should be completed is not the way to go. Micromanaging wastes everyone’s time, Levitt says, and is demoralizing to your staff.
If you are clear about your preferred outcome for a particular assignment, your team should have the flexibility to develop their own process — as long it is compliant.
For example, you want to check in with clients but you’re swamped with review meetings. Knowing that your clients are very familiar with your junior advisor, you give her the task of getting in touch.
Your first instinct in doing that job yourself might be to personally call every client. However, your assistant is aware that certain clients prefer electronic communication; so, she sends emails to those individuals. That method may not be your preferred way of taking on that task, but your assistant is completing the job more efficiently and in a way that more closely matches clients’ preferences.
This is the first part in a two-part series on team accountability. Next: What to do when tasks are not completed.